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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Chris Rock of Prose,
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,
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,
By mlarroca@mailhost.cccs.es (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.
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