Paul Beatty: The Sellout
--reviewed by Divya Dubey
Oneworld Publications
292pp
Rs 399
[Published in india Today mag, Nov 16, 2016: https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20161128-paul-beatty-the-sellout-man-booker-prize-829891-2016-11-17]
Was it as ‘post-racial’ America under Barack Obama? Beginning with Donald Trump, will it ever be?
Strange that The Sellout, Paul Beatty’s fourth novel, should not only have won the Man Booker Prize 2016, the first American novel to have received the honour, but that it should have done so at a time when the US presidency is about to be transferred from Obama to Trump. Such a book has rarely been timed so well.
2016 having been an election year in the US, the country has already seen enough action: unprecedented political polarization, a high incidence rate of the shootings of black people by the police, resurgence of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement – later eclipsed by a huge populist counter-movement for white supremacy championed by a bigoted presidential candidate – finally culminating into a shock victory for that very contender. America has not experienced such turbulent waters for a long time. So wide is its impact that on social media the US is now being referred to by some as the Divided States of America.
Following in the Swiftian tradition Beatty’s tragi-comedy, a biting racial satire, strikes every target with equal wit and force (the civil rights movement; the Black History Month, etc). Its opening lines reveal the tenor of the entire novel: ‘This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I’ve never stolen anything. Never cheated on my taxes or at cards.’
The first-person narrative flows from a nameless Afro-American narrator, who is occasionally called Bonbon by his girlfriend, Marpessa, or simply ‘the Sellout’ by Foy, the leader of the Dum Dum Intellectuals. It begins with Bonbon is waiting in the Supreme Court, charged with an unexpected crime: trying to reinstate slavery and segregation of the local high school (non-whites only) – as the owner of the black slave, Hominy Jenkins.
Bonbon is born in a ghetto – Dickens – on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Raised by a single father, a controversial social scientist and ‘a sole practitioner of the field of Liberation Psychology’, the young boy serves as a subject for his dad’s myriad sadistic experiments on race. If the accounts were not so comic, they would be horrifying. Ironically, the father is also a ‘Nigger Whisperer’, a man whose ‘sonorous’ voice calms disturbed black men – a job bequeathed to his son after his sudden killing by the police at a traffic stop. He is also the founder of the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals, a group of ‘star-struck, middle-class black out-of-towners and academics’ who meet regularly at the doughnut shop. Beatty’s portrayal of this assembly is the sharpest spoof.
The father’s death triggers the plot. Initially, Bonbon is told that his father’s memoir would solve their financial difficulties, but then he realizes the document never existed.
As gentrification of the place begins, Dickens vanishes from the map quite literally. Hominy Jenkins, the last surviving member of Little Rascals and Bonbon’s first ‘nigger whisperee’ insists on being his slave. With his help Bonbon takes upon himself the task of restoring the erstwhile ghetto on the map and starts defining the boundary of his hometown on the road with white paint and a line-marking machine.
One of the major themes in the book that Bonbon returns to over and over again comes from his father: ‘Brother, you have to ask yourself two questions, Who am I? And how may I become myself?’
Besides the ‘bat-shit crazy’ Hominy Jenkins, the other interesting character is Foy, a caricature-litterateur and the author of The Adventures Of Tom Soarer, Measured Expectations , who also rewrites Twain’s Huck Finn, replacing the ‘n- word’ with ‘warrior’ and ‘slave’ with ‘dark-skinned volunteer’, being overly obsessed with the idea of respectability.
The problems with the book, as they have increasingly been with the Man Booker Prize winners over the recent years (Richard Flanagan, Han Kang, Marlon James, etc) are the almost esoteric culture-specific references and dialects that appeal primarily to academics and intellectuals. But to a general reader’s palate? Not quite.
****
--reviewed by Divya Dubey
Oneworld Publications
292pp
Rs 399
[Published in india Today mag, Nov 16, 2016: https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20161128-paul-beatty-the-sellout-man-booker-prize-829891-2016-11-17]
Was it as ‘post-racial’ America under Barack Obama? Beginning with Donald Trump, will it ever be?
2016 having been an election year in the US, the country has already seen enough action: unprecedented political polarization, a high incidence rate of the shootings of black people by the police, resurgence of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement – later eclipsed by a huge populist counter-movement for white supremacy championed by a bigoted presidential candidate – finally culminating into a shock victory for that very contender. America has not experienced such turbulent waters for a long time. So wide is its impact that on social media the US is now being referred to by some as the Divided States of America.
Following in the Swiftian tradition Beatty’s tragi-comedy, a biting racial satire, strikes every target with equal wit and force (the civil rights movement; the Black History Month, etc). Its opening lines reveal the tenor of the entire novel: ‘This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I’ve never stolen anything. Never cheated on my taxes or at cards.’
The first-person narrative flows from a nameless Afro-American narrator, who is occasionally called Bonbon by his girlfriend, Marpessa, or simply ‘the Sellout’ by Foy, the leader of the Dum Dum Intellectuals. It begins with Bonbon is waiting in the Supreme Court, charged with an unexpected crime: trying to reinstate slavery and segregation of the local high school (non-whites only) – as the owner of the black slave, Hominy Jenkins.
Bonbon is born in a ghetto – Dickens – on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Raised by a single father, a controversial social scientist and ‘a sole practitioner of the field of Liberation Psychology’, the young boy serves as a subject for his dad’s myriad sadistic experiments on race. If the accounts were not so comic, they would be horrifying. Ironically, the father is also a ‘Nigger Whisperer’, a man whose ‘sonorous’ voice calms disturbed black men – a job bequeathed to his son after his sudden killing by the police at a traffic stop. He is also the founder of the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals, a group of ‘star-struck, middle-class black out-of-towners and academics’ who meet regularly at the doughnut shop. Beatty’s portrayal of this assembly is the sharpest spoof.
The father’s death triggers the plot. Initially, Bonbon is told that his father’s memoir would solve their financial difficulties, but then he realizes the document never existed.
As gentrification of the place begins, Dickens vanishes from the map quite literally. Hominy Jenkins, the last surviving member of Little Rascals and Bonbon’s first ‘nigger whisperee’ insists on being his slave. With his help Bonbon takes upon himself the task of restoring the erstwhile ghetto on the map and starts defining the boundary of his hometown on the road with white paint and a line-marking machine.
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| Paul Beatty |
Besides the ‘bat-shit crazy’ Hominy Jenkins, the other interesting character is Foy, a caricature-litterateur and the author of The Adventures Of Tom Soarer, Measured Expectations , who also rewrites Twain’s Huck Finn, replacing the ‘n- word’ with ‘warrior’ and ‘slave’ with ‘dark-skinned volunteer’, being overly obsessed with the idea of respectability.
The problems with the book, as they have increasingly been with the Man Booker Prize winners over the recent years (Richard Flanagan, Han Kang, Marlon James, etc) are the almost esoteric culture-specific references and dialects that appeal primarily to academics and intellectuals. But to a general reader’s palate? Not quite.
****
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