Erasure by Percival Everett
More Than One Story To Tell....
Hailed by the New York Times as both a treatise and a romp, a bold and
brilliant novel of a man coming to terms with himself. Now in paperback,
this provocative tale within a tale details the life of avant-garde novelist and
college professor Thelonious Monk Ellison. Monk, frustrated with his
dismal book sales, composes a fierce parody of exploitative ghetto
literature entitled My Pafology, which is greeted by critics as the work of a
great new voice and garners him the success that he covets. Monks
impending struggle with his moral principles emerges as a revolutionary
and riotous indictment of race and publishing in America.
Personal Review: Erasure by Percival Everett
I have got to think that Everett cringed when the New York Times Book
Review praised his book as having addressed "the highly charged issue of
being 'black enough' in America." As Monk says in the beginning of his
story, race out of context is an empty concept, as is gender.
Throughout this book Everett spoke directly to me (a fairly old, white
woman) as if the he were my alter ego. Several decades ago, I was
enrolled in a seminar in American Literature as part of a post-graduate
program. I was looking forward to Melville, Twain and Hurston, but no, the
idiot professor was all heated up over the pretentious and impenetrable
ramblings of Roland Barthes, so we had to crawl through "S/Z" practically
line by line. Later, as I understood, English Literature departments at large
universities sort of evaporated as they abandoned art in pursuit of gaseous
theories.
Everett's initial parody of the lit. crits was, therefore, fun for me, although I
wonder how many other readers have had to suffer through "S/ Z."
Anyway, that is just a comic introduction to a comment on the entire
spectrum of contemporary literature in the context of a sophisticated
understanding of critical theory. It is a satire of the contemporary literaty
scene worthy of Alexander Pope.
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