Erasure

I assumed Thelonious (Monk) Ellison was an over-the-top satirical portrayal of a tweedy, leather-elbow-patched, white academic who of course enjoys fly fishing and woodworking when he's not teaching literary theory and writing dense papers on semiotics. Someone who mutters “egads” on the basketball court after missing a shot and the obvious polar opposite of the Stagg R. Leigh persona. Turns out author Pervical Everett teaches literary theory when he isn't fly-fishing, woodworking, and ranching besides. What does that say about me and my assumptions?

The book pokes at credulous readers and the publishing industry hype machine fumbling around representation. It recalls the early days of Indigenous writers and authors from Africa selected to shore up misery porn narratives. Predominantly white industry gatekeepers shaping BIPOC narratives, fuelled by good intentions but blind to their own biases.

Ellison is in the middle of a family crisis as his sister is killed by an anti-abortion protester, his brother is newly out which has thrown his marriage on its head, and their mother is clearly deteriorating with Alzheimer's. The bank gained by his literary minstrelsy sure could make things easier but then who is Thelonious Ellison at the end of this? The existential crisis he faces is evident on the page as he drops snippets of dialogues between Wittgenstein, Derrida, and Joyce along with the entire hit making novel My Pafology. It can make for a disjointed story that careens all over the place, glancing lightly on both the satirical, like the literary award panel, and the sombre struggles of his family situation.