{"id":6329,"date":"2017-01-13T08:33:11","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T13:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6329"},"modified":"2017-01-16T07:56:35","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T12:56:35","slug":"the-sellout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6329","title":{"rendered":"*****The Sellout"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Elephant

photo: Sam Felder, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Paul Beatty, narrated by Prentice Onayemi \u2013 I write, knowing this review cannot do justice to this stunning satire\u2014winner of both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award\u2014which tackles a tricky subject: U.S. race relations and the essential absurdity of the human species. I can only urge you to read it for yourself as a journey to important places, dark and light.<\/p>\n

Near the end of the story, Beatty\u2019s narrator, Bonbon Me comments on a black comic who m.c.\u2019s the Dum Dum Donuts open mic nights. He says the comedian \u201cdid more than tell jokes; he plucked out your subconscious and beat you silly with it, not until you were unrecognizable, but until you were recognizable.\u201d Beatty has just spent 285 pages doing exactly that with his readers\u2019 every racial attitude and carefully buried prejudice, whether toward blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, or whites.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the only way for Americans to approach this difficult subject is with the tools Beatty wields so well: wicked perceptiveness and devastating humor. He slaps them down like a bricklayer troweling thick mortar, building his case brick by brick.<\/p>\n

At first I thought his approach was to come at racism obliquely, like an artist using negative space, rendering everything around an object, not the object itself. Draw all the plants and trees, the shape of the dirt patch, the rocks, the pond, the lines of fencing, and every other feature surrounding an elephant and, when you\u2019re done\u2014voil\u00e0<\/em>\u2014out pops the pachyderm.<\/p>\n

His descriptions of his southwest Los Angeles neighborhood, his administratively erased home town of Dickens, his father and his friends, with their intellectual floundering and frustrations as members of the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals, \u201cthe local think tank.\u201d All seemed designed to produce that elephant.<\/p>\n

We meet unforgettable characters, not least Bonbon himself: erudite, fearless, hell-bent on offending and sure to succeed. Bonbon\u2019s father was a psychologist who subjected his son to bizarre experiments growing up, which the boy\u2019s psyche was lucky to survive. His slave (yes) Hominy Jenkins, was a minor celebrity in his youth as a member of the Little Rascals cast; on-again girlfriend and city bus driver, Marpessa, tries to talk sense to him. And more. Much.<\/p>\n

However, as the story proceeds, Beatty brings the hammer down. As a joke, Bonbon puts a temporary sign inside a bus that reads \u201cPriority Seating for Whites.\u201d When it\u2019s inadvertently left in place, behavior on the bus becomes exemplary. People are treated with respect. Marpessa says, \u201cCrip, Blood, or cholo, they press the Stop Request button one time and one fucking time only. You know where the kids go do their homework? Not home, not the library, but the bus. That\u2019s how safe it is.\u201d The sign is just the start of a Bonbon crusade. If there\u2019s a word for \u201cthis is sooo crazy, it just might work,\u201d Bonbon must have had that word in mind.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s Prologue at the U.S. Supreme Court was a little slow for me, but when Beatty starts to roll, you are in for an amazing, hilarious, heart-breaking ride. Bonbon never breaks character. But at some point, all the comedy flips and you see it for what it is, the mask of tragedy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a feast for people who love language. Beatty\u2019s talent as a poet shows up in the rhythm of his prose; in multi-meaning slant rhymes, like the name of his lawyer, Hamilton Fiske; in direct rhymes, like the reference to his father\u2019s farm, \u201cforty acres and a fool\u201d; and his imagery, \u201che was unpaid-electricity-bill dark.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure reading this book in print would be transformative, with the advantage of being able to go back and reread and pause to reflect. Yet, Prentice Onayemi\u2019s narration of the audio version was pitch-perfect. His Hominy addresses Bonbon as \u201cMassa,\u201d with just the right combination of obsequiousness and insolence; Foy Cheshire and the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals bloviate convincingly; Marpessa keeps her wits about her. You see each of them in front of you, just like you cannot avoid seeing the elephant in the middle of our collective living room.<\/p>\n

Paul Beatty is coming to Princeton<\/a> on February 8, 2017, and will appear at the Berlind Theater, 4:30 p.m., sponsored by the Lewis Center for the Arts. Open to the public. Free.<\/strong><\/p>\n