Customer Reviews

Erasure

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In "Erasure",Percival Everett has written a book within a book and the reader can be excused for feeling he or she has purchased two books in one. Everett is clearly fed up with the current plague of "blaxploitation" novels, badly written by writers with no art and even less craft, whose only purpose is to jump on the "ghetto fab" bandwagon and make a quick buck. His protagonist, Thelonious Ellison (with the name Thelonius, what else could he be called but Monk?), writes literature deemed too obscure (read: too "white") for a black audience and finds his work relegated to dusty corners in the back of the bookstores. Fueling his outrage is a piece of trash literature called "We Lives In Da Ghetto", hailed as an "authentic" voice of the "black experience" by reviewers who lump all blacks as ghetto blacks, which rakes in $3 million. What's a struggling author with bills to pay and a terminally ailing mother to do? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em... better yet, out-do 'em. In no time at all, Monk has banged out the blaxploitation novel to end all blaxploitation novels, a mishmash called "My Pafology" (later renamed a four-letter word I can't print here), under the pseudonym Stagg R. Lee, which not only wins the National Book Award, but also has Hollywood beating his door down for the movie rights. Everett is clearly disgusted both at those whites whose contempt of blacks runs so deep that they take trash "blaxploitation" novels at face value and consider them as representative of "the black experience" (as if there is one single "black experience"), and at those blacks whose lack of self-respect is so deep that they buy into the hype. As a black reader, I share his feelings totally. Everett at times takes himself too seriously and this is the only thing that kept me from giving this book five stars; but he's an enormously talented and promising writer who has the gift of making you think even while he has you laughing out loud. I'm looking forward to his next book.

I've recommended this book to about 10 people since finishing it about a week ago. This writer blew my mind and I cannot wait to read his previous titles. Nails the black lit scene to the wall, makes you laugh out loud and throws in enough obscure references to send you running back to college textbooks. A wonderful book from top to bottom.

This book offers perhaps the first great protagonist of the new century. Thelonius "Monk" Ellison, college professor, author of "dense" experimental novels, and recipient of seventeen rejection letters, is forced to leave L.A. and return to his childhood home in D.C. to care for his ailing mother. He parlays his frustrations into "My Pafology", an exploitive novel that represents everything he hates about the publishing industry. The novel, written under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh, catapults him to the forefront of literary scene, causing Monk's wildest dreams and worst nightmares to unfold simultaneously.

Using Rinehart (from Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man") as a role model, Monk's pseudonym becomes all too real and comfortable for him. The elusive Stagg is able to show just enough of himself to impress a Random House editor and sell the film rights to his novel for a whopping $3 million. To his shock and horror, Monk now finds "My Pafology" on the short list for the most prestigious book award in the country.

The compelling plot takes many interesting turns, addressing themes of race, family, and publishing. A murder, family secrets revealed, and his mother's worsening condition all swirl around as Monk's literary transformation unfolds. He grapples with his creative integrity, but it is hardly a moral dilemma over taking the money. The conflict lies in his extreme sense of isolation, even in his own family, and his level of acceptance at "selling out". While Monk is ultimately able to come to terms with "My Pafology" as his masterpiece, his sense of isolation remains all too real.

With multiple layers of satire, "Erasure" takes no prisoners in its assault on the publishing industry and its notions of "African American literature". Percival Everett thumbs his nose at the literary snobs and the commercial hounds alike. Television is also a target for his wrath, as he dedicates several unforgettable scenes to exposing the adverse role it can play in literature and the stereotyping of Black people.

Everett masterfully executes this novel-within-novel ("My Pafology" is presented in its entirety, comprising 75 pages of "Erasure"). The result is a multidimensional protagonist interacting on several different levels. There is Monk, a lover of wood, fishing, and intellectual humor; his altar ego Stagg, the pimp-like ex-con-turned writer; there is also Van Go Jenkins, the shuckin-jivin main character of "My Pafology"; and finally, there is the prevailing voice of Everett, threatening to turn the literary world on its ear with his relentless attack.

This is not a good book by a Black writer, nor is it a Black book by a good writer; it is a remarkable work of fiction that transcends labels. With his strong intellect and satirical wit, Percival Everett has seemingly resolved his own place in the literary spectrum while providing readers with the best of both worlds. "Erasure" is a compelling and insightful read, and a must study for serious writers.

ERASURE is an amazing book, though as Everett's too-few readers already know, each of his books are in their own way challenging, inventive, and well-written. In book after book, Everett creates characters and scenes that remain with the reader long after the book's been put back up on the shelf or lent to a friend. They come back around to me like the details of a particularly vivid dream. I'm still haunted by the characters in CUTTING LISA and BIG PICTURE. Anyway, what I appreciate most about ERASURE is that despite the sensational aspects of this story -- the situation Thelonious "Monk" Ellison creates for himself after writing a book in dialect under the name Stagg R. Lee -- it is still the characters who shine. The members of the Ellison family are distinguished by their singular voices and their singular actions. Memorable voices, vivid scenes, believable conflict. I hope ERASURE helps more readers find Everett, in both his back catalog and his future releases.

Written primarily as a satire, "Erasure" works on so many levels that to pigeonhole it as a novel about race is inadequate. The book also succeeds as an oddly affecting family drama, as a spoof on the "ghetto novel," as a parody of academic pretension, and as a commentary on the publishing industry's infatuation with fleeting trends.

Nevertheless, "Erasure" has received prominence largely because of its discussion of what it means to be "black." The protagonist, Theolonius "Monk" Ellison, is a professor at a major California university who writes postmodern, academic fiction but finds himself unread and ignored largely because he refuses to publish the type of work "expected" of African Americans. To an obviously significant extent, this portrayal is autobiographical: in an interview published in The Guardian (a British newspaper), Everett commented, "When I see my books in the Black Fiction or Black Studies section, I feel baffled. I really don't know what those terms mean." Similarly, in the novel, Monk has a fit when he finds his own novels shelved in the African American studies section at a major bookstore chain. After reading this book, I went to a local branch of that same chain to look for Everett's other novels and found them all, ironically, in the last place I thought to look: under African American literature.

But back to "Erasure": When another writer, after spending a few days in Harlem, writes a "ghetto novel" that becomes a national best-seller, Monk, in anger, writes a dead-on satire that is published and, to the author's surprise, taken seriously as "the best novel by an African American in years . . . a true, raw, gritty work." The novel-within-the-novel, "My Pafology" (which is "reprinted" here in its entirety) is so over the top that it's impossible to believe that reviewers wouldn't recognize it as a farce. (An example of its humor: the main character, Van Go Jenkins, has fathered, by four different mothers, "fo' babies": Aspireene, Tylenola, Dexatrina, and Rexall.) But realism is not the point: Everett intends to reduce to absurdity the idea of the "ghetto novel" and its widespread acceptance as the embodiment of black experience.

In the previously mentioned interview, Everett carefully qualified this view of literature, saying, "I have nothing against ghetto novels or rural Southern novels, except that they are the only representations out there." This partly explains why, in spite of himself, Everett can't write a truly horrible "bad novel"; "My Pafology" is bracing even when it is ridiculous; it is undeniably authentic in its very inauthenticity. Everett acknowledged, "I can't even bear to read from that section because, despite all my efforts to the contrary, it works in some weird way." It's clear from the many ambiguities throughout "Erasure" that Everett does not mean to denounce such works as much as he means to condemn their pervasiveness. After all, Everett himself makes quite clear his own admiration for Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God"--the archetype of "rural Southern novels."

The aspect of "Erasure" that charmed me the most, however, was the interaction between Monk and members of his family: his aging mother, whose mental acuity is rapidly deteriorating; his sister Lisa, who works in a women's health clinic and is threatened by anti-abortion activists; and his brother Bill, who undergoes a hostile divorce when he reveals to his wife and children that he is gay. After you're done chuckling at Theolonius Ellison's antics as an author, you'll find yourself tearfully reflecting on the heartaches of his experiences as a son and brother. This storyline may seem detached from the major theme of the book--and that is, no doubt, exactly Everett's point: we all have families and experiences and backgrounds that transcend any notion of what it means to be "black"--or a member of any other blurrily defined group.

My last few reads have been easy reads, just a step above watching televison in terms of depth and plot. Hey, sometimes I enjoy a nice breezy read.

With Erasure, Mr. Everett isn't making things that simple. It's not a complicated, boring textbook read but you will have to *think* (and in some cases, bust out a foreign language dictionary) and the more you think, the more layers you'll uncover.

While the main plot centers around Monk, a writer with marginal success, and his sudden fame at writing a ghetto fabulous new-wave Mantan novel, the incidents that surround this rise to fame touch deeply on other themes - family ties, socio-economic status, and love (to name a few). Everett covers a lot of ground with this book and ties it all together masterfully (and with quite a bit of humor).

If you're at all interested how race intersects with the publishing industry (i.e. "Hey, I wrote a book about plumbing and I happen to be Black, why is my plumbing book in the African-American section of the bookstore?"), pick this book up. If you want a good read that will make you think without making you choke on your own yawns, pick this book up. Hey, even if you like stereotypical novels filled with difficult to read Ebonics, pick this book up - just skip to Monk's mini-novel in the middle.

Thank God for a good black book that doesnt deal with man and woman and other woman and infidelity and sex and man and woman and infidelity and sex. I really really enjoyed this book, perhaps because the author echoes sentiments I have had for a long time about the calibre of books being published of late. Many times I have had to stop ten pages through to check and see who published the book I'm reading because it is so awful. And often the book is published by some well known mainstream publisher, which in turn leads one to wonder if perhaps mainstream publishing believes that this stuff is a) all we are capable of writing or b)all we are capable of reading? I am so sick of books called novels that deal with nothing more than finding a "good" man etc etc. Give Jack his jacket. If a book is a romance then for God's sake dub it so and put it in the romance section but please dont call it a novel. Most of it is an insult to people's intelligence and Mr. Everett does a brilliant job of exposing it. I personally thought the book was hilarious, especially the story within the story. Mr. Everett writes like a snob (thats a simplistic description of his stance) and I love it. I love his style of writing, the book was a page turner to me but it might not be to everyone. But please try it and dont be turned off by the philosophical essays-there aren't many and you dont even have to read them, I didnt-because they dont add anything to the story except to emphasize the brilliance of the protagonist who has to literally sell his soul in order to gain some recognition. I cant wait for another book by Mr. Everett, but I wonder if anything can come close to Erasure. Thank you sir.

I picked up this book because of the cover but it's the storyline from page 1 through page 265 which kept me quickly turning the pages. Theo Monk is a college professor and a writer of intellectual, though-provoking and creatively crafted literary storylines. Unfortunately, even with several books under his belt/name very few people have heard of him and he has very few sales/dollars to show for his effort. After one rejection letter too many for his latest literary masterpiece, Monk decides to change his approach and jump on the contemporary "ghetto fabulous" bandwagon, under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh with a story called My Pafology which he later shortens to an offensive four letter word beginning with a F. Much to his chagrin, he becomes an overnight success, receives a six-figure book advance and a ... million dollar movie deal. Soon Monk's alter ego seems to take over his life as he tries to remain on the downlow and not expose his true identity. In addition to maintaining a secret identity, Monk must also deal with family issues such as a mother with Alzheimer's, a brother who's gay and a sister who runs an abortion clinic. Everett successfully pulls all the plots together and has one anxiously turning the pages to see what Monk is going to do next and what is going to be the outcome of his "scheme".

Erasure is a riveting and poignant novel. It's well-written, edgy and filled with colorful characters, humor and wit. It's a provocative storyline that's a parody and commentary on the current crop of "ghetto fabulous" fiction that continues to sell because it usually offers tons of entertainment rather than information or enlightenment. Erasure is a must read for anyone who wants a change of pace, insightful reading and a provocative storyline. While its a book filled with much substance and depth it's written in a very understandable fashion and is a very compelling read. Pick it up today if you dare to read something that's different from the norm.

APOOO Bookclub

There's a novel within a novel that appears towards the tail end of the first 3rd of this book that I must confess I mostly didn't read. Much like Erasure's protagonist, Monk--and he wrote this piece of work--I couldn't bring myself to do it. The language is too ridiculous. The characters too much satire, too much buffoonery, simply too much. That I didn't read it, however, I doubt matters much to the story. The point is that Monk wrote it. Wrote it as a giant middle finger to the world. And, yet, it is received as art.

I'd read a short bit of Erasure before. It's excerpted in Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor. I'd enjoyed the quality of writing but without context the piece didn't resonate much. I picked up the full book this time only because his most recent piece of satire--I Am Not Sidney Poitier--was not yet in stock at the library. I'm thankful for the happy accident. I can relate to Monk. Not in his constant feeling of awkwardness (feeling intensely black but not quite black enough no matter the race of those around him) but in his frustration with the reality that a standard of "black enough" actually exists. The burden and the ridiculousness of these expectations weighs on him at a time when so much of his world is falling apart. He writes something under a pseudonym, sends it to his agent and rather than everyone waking up, the world simply gets more absurd.

And for that recognition of the absurdity of "Realness" and the impeccable quality of Everett's writing, Erasure is well recommended.

Percival Everett is, as a growing number of readers are coming to recognize, our most compelling and absolutely surprising writer. He is also the smartest writer of hilarious and stinging fiction since Swift. Very lilkely the brainiest spinner of mold-breaking novels in America, he is also the most generous: always one step ahead of us, he lets us catch up. This novel takes on a sensitive and vital topic: how black writing (and black sensitivity, even "blackness") is formed by white expectations and demands, especially the condescending and formulaic demands of well-meaning liberal whites. Somehow this great book, one with an unexpected punch-in-the-nose in every line, also makes your eyes water with laughter. Most important, the wise tenderness directing the satire and the high art cause this book to glow.