Michael
his is a biting, almost vicious satire about race and expectations. At times, it is also very funny.
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is Black and the product of an upper middle class upbringing. He is also an extremely erudite writer of dense, almost incomprehensible novels respected by critics but shunned by the reading public. He becomes enraged when a middle-class Black woman visits Harlem for a few days and then writes a novel titled We’s Lives in Da Ghetto. It is full of the stereotypes beloved of publishers and the white reading public. Of course, it becomes a best seller. So Ellison writes a parody titled My Pafology, that he later retitles "Fuck.” He writes under a pseudonym and to his horror it becomes a best seller. Everett includes the entire fake novel in Erasure and it was obvious to me that it was a parody. But I wonder if it would have been obvious if I hadn’t known this beforehand. In parallel to this the novel covers his family life: his dead father, his murdered sister, his gay brother, and his mother drifting away due to dementia.
I think this novel is about so many things: a satire about the white reading public who can’t comprehend that there are Black writers who are educated and erudite, the publishing industry that really doesn’t care about what they publish, and academic pretension. There is a stark difference between Monk’s life and his somewhat arrogant attitude along with the novel within a novel My Pafology and the tenderness and sadness of his interactions with his flawed but very real family.
I didn’t understand all the literary references. Undoubtedly that is a me problem, but it interfered just a little with my enjoyment.
This is the third novel by Percival Everett that I have read and I am in awe about how good all three novels are and how different in style they are. What a talent.
his is a biting, almost vicious satire about race and expectations. At times, it is also very funny.
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is Black and the product of an upper middle class upbringing. He is also an extremely erudite writer of dense, almost incomprehensible novels respected by critics but shunned by the reading public. He becomes enraged when a middle-class Black woman visits Harlem for a few days and then writes a novel titled We’s Lives in Da Ghetto. It is full of the stereotypes beloved of publishers and the white reading public. Of course, it becomes a best seller. So Ellison writes a parody titled My Pafology, that he later retitles "Fuck.” He writes under a pseudonym and to his horror it becomes a best seller. Everett includes the entire fake novel in Erasure and it was obvious to me that it was a parody. But I wonder if it would have been obvious if I hadn’t known this beforehand. In parallel to this the novel covers his family life: his dead father, his murdered sister, his gay brother, and his mother drifting away due to dementia.
I think this novel is about so many things: a satire about the white reading public who can’t comprehend that there are Black writers who are educated and erudite, the publishing industry that really doesn’t care about what they publish, and academic pretension. There is a stark difference between Monk’s life and his somewhat arrogant attitude along with the novel within a novel My Pafology and the tenderness and sadness of his interactions with his flawed but very real family.
I didn’t understand all the literary references. Undoubtedly that is a me problem, but it interfered just a little with my enjoyment.
This is the third novel by Percival Everett that I have read and I am in awe about how good all three novels are and how different in style they are. What a talent.