The White Boy Shuffle: A Novel [Paperback]

Paul Beatty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1997

A celebrated young black poet offers a partly autobiographical coming-of-age novel, a multicultural, multi-generational story filled with the cadences of the urban street and the media of pop culture. Reprint. 35,000 first printing. NYT. "

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is a laugh-out-loud first novel, but be forewarned: Paul Beatty's humor is literate, but in- your-face outrageous. The faint of heart (or politically correct) should stay away. The White Boy Shuffle is a gleefully satiric gloss on black history and culture, featuring a main character named Gunnar (as in Myrdal) Kaufman, descendant of Euripides Kaufman, who stood aside and let Crispus Attucks get shot during the Boston Massacre, and Swen Kaufman, who--in an unfortunate reversal-- escaped south from freedom into slavery. Elsewhere, it features a character who attends Dred Scott High School, and another who works for the Department of Visual Segregation in Nashville, Tennessee, painting "Whites Only" and "Colored Only" signs.

From Library Journal

Stylistically, this first novel is a tribute to one of Beatty's teachers, Allen Ginsberg. An author of two volumes of verse who has often been proclaimed the poet laureate of Generation X, Beatty effectively uses the Beat influence to amplify the voice of the hip-hop generation. Gunnar Kaufman, the protagonist of this coming-of-age story, earned his streetwise education in West Los Angeles, not unlike the author. Gunnar is just trying to be Gunnar?an intelligent, sensitive young African American who survives great tribulations while sparing no one his enormous wit. He is clearly a product of our times, and many readers will enjoy his piercing, often hilarious observations on contemporary society. It will be interesting to see what else this talented writer produces in the ensuing years. Meanwhile, this work will ring especially true to those under 35.
-?Susan M. Olcott, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., Ohio
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; First edition. edition (June 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031228019X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805053517
• ASIN: 0805053514
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,275,935 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Chris Rock of Prose, January 2, 2000

By 

Franklyn (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The White Boy Shuffle (Paperback)

Paul Beatty's "White Boy Shuffle" is a scathingly irreverent look at modern day African-American "street" culture, and some of it's more ludicrous characteristics. Sort of an anti "Boyz In The Hood". Detailing the picaresque adventures of African-American Gunnar Kauffman as he makes the adjustment to a black inner city neighborhood after growing up in the relatively benign white neighborhood of Santa Monica, Beatty displays dazzlingly creative wordplay and mastery of language, in the tradition of James Joyce and Ralph Ellison. I give it four stars only because I reserve five stars for a book like Ellison's "Invisible Man" which is the apotheosis of the coming of age novel. But believe me, "White Boy Shuffle" is no slouch in that department. Plus it's laugh out loud funny. It's the black "Catcher In The Rye". I once recommended it to Chris Rock telling him, "This guy is doing in prose what you're doing on stage." Which was telling the truth. And while the characters of "White Boy Shuffle" are not developed emotionally and psychologically, this is an extremely clever rant against all the hypocrasies and excesses of contemporary American society.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Effing Brilliant, December 2, 2005

By 

Chris (Angeles, Baby) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The White Boy Shuffle: A Novel (Paperback)

Look, you have five minutes. I know you do. You're goofing off at work right now. If you have five minutes, open this book up to page 12 and read the main character's recitation of his family history, a deleriously self-loathing parade of misunderstanding and Uncle-Tomism throughout the entirity of American history, starting with his great-grandfather pushing Crispus Attucks in front of a bullet. If you can make it through that entire section without laughing, you probably shouldn't buy this book. But only because you don't have a soul.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wide View Mirror, November 5, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Seville, Spain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The White Boy Shuffle (Paperback)

Nose pressed against your life? Not getting out enough, smelling American sights and sounds beyond the new mall? Is your current prose reading as soggy as 2% milk on cornflakes left overnight? Might I suggest a romp through past and present, 'burb and 'hood, white and black, in Paul Beatty's White Boy Shuffle. Unlike a lot of "the silent tragedy of my pathetic life" novels, White Boy Shuffle plays for high stakes and generally wins all bets. As a suburban kid myself, I can attest to the sharpness of Beatty's eyes and ears in his depictions of that flat landscape. Every other area gazed upon, inner-city LA, academic life, pseudo radicals, receive the same treatment of the right detail, the cutting insight and the exploding humor. It's all over the top, as black suburban skateboarder finds the inner city, get stomped on, plays ball, writes poetry, is wooed by academia only to become black messiah preaching suicide. It works most of the time and even when Beatty can't pull everything off, your left with the talent of a man who knows how to make a paragraph sing. In an age when social satire is bad manners, the ambition to take it all in and give it back to us, mean and beautiful, has to be appreciated.