I cannot properly convey how much Everett twists and turns and reshapes and reconfigures these themes over and over until they tell us something entirely original and blisteringly truthful. Your dilemma is which to actually become, the stereotype figure people expect you to be, complete with a certain lingo and behavior, or a new and unique individual, trying to be simply yourself, free of all stereotypical behaviors, yet not trying to pass for white. Anyone who was fortunate enough to see him in person or those who have seen stills and recordings of the man knows how influential he was and continues to be in the art world and as a worldwide cultural icon. Everett is skeptical about the truth-value of race as a concept, but that hasn’t kept him from writing about it extremely well, usually with an eye for the absurd. I am sure that the author has experienced some of Monk’s frustration and I hope that he made piles of cash selling the movie rights to this book.

But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America.His agent repeatedly explains to him that publishing houses don't believe his writing to be "black enough". The satire/drama blend is a little uneven, but this is an entertaining novel if you are prepared to follow its snakes and snarks. If you've seen the recent trailer for American Fiction, the new film adaptation starring Jeffrey Wright, Issa Rae, and Tracee Ellis Ross, and garnering lots of early awards season buzz, then you already know that Monk's rage-fueled parody doesn't exactly get the kind of reaction he'd hoped for. Sadly, in these days of "civility" and identity politics, one can never read this piece too many times: http://gawker.

I listen to Mahler, Aretha Franklin, Charlie Parker and Ry Cooder on vinyl records and compact discs. his book was published a few years ago, but the audio book was just produced, probably because the book has recently been made into a movie. Maybe I've been away from academia for too long, or maybe this was just a case of right book/wrong time, but much of this went over my head and caused my eyes to glaze over with boredom. And perhaps we wouldn't even be in this fucking mess to begin with if people were reading books that actually know how to maneuver the power tools of language without lopping off a finger, people who know how to make something a little better than a lumpen ashtray for their moms in ceramics class. At Erasure's end, a New York literary audience wonders why Thelonious Ellison has risen to accept Stagg R Leigh's prize.These are the existential non-conformists (I get the paradox of naming them as such, so eat this term before reading). I ended up impressed with how Jefferson nimbly incorporates metafictional commentary on adapting novel to film. Everett] knows that trying to deny racial classification is hopeless; his awareness charges Erasure with both quixotic idealism and mordant resignation. The Guardian review described the book as a "skilful, extended parody of ghetto novels such as Sapphire's Push. It's possibly for this reason that Percival Everett's argument as a novelist is less with individual racists than with the ultimate cause of racism: language and culture.

The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection. I highly recommend this one for readers that are up for a challenge and won't give up because they don't understand everything. After they’ve been seeing each other for a while , Monk finds Coraline with a copy of Fuck and proceeds to grill her about the book.I believe there are people who will shoot me or hang me or cheat me and try to stop me because they do believe in race, because of my brown skin, curly hair, wide nose and slave ancestors. Ready Steady Book focused on the novel being "full of anger" about the African American literary establishment. But it's also possible that PE and I just differ, which is one of those things that can happen to you when the person with whom you are engaged, with whose art you are engaged, is actually smart and is willing to step up and have a fucking opinion. The characters were well written, and the satire was razor-sharp, but there were too many Latin quotes and obscure cultural references for my liking.