Erasure: A Novel

Someday, like a lot of things, we’ll figure this all out. No, it’s not the biggest issue out there. Yes, it’s a good thing the publishing business went through this substantive self-reflection. Went? No. It’s still going on. It’s still being calibrated, I believe, in the summer of 2024. And that’s good. More voices are being encouraged, more effort is being put into finding those voices, and there’s healthy discussion about who gets to tell what stories. My belief is any writer should be permitted to tell anyone’s story. That’s one guy’s view. One white guy’s view. One white writer’s view. But there’s one big caveat with that permission. Writers need to put in the work, do the research, and avoid clichés. Do I know precisely what all that means? No. But I know it when I read it. And if writers are limited to writing about their own kind, well, we’re in for a very dull world when it comes to reading novels. All that said, Percival Everett’s Erasure is a pitch-perfect send-up of the publishing industry during these hand-wringing times of trying to correct decades—er, centuries—of white editors publishing and celebrating white writers. Erasure is a spoof of agents, publishers, and literary critics and their phony posing and precious handwringing over diversity. The novel was published in 2001 (that’s amazing in and of itself, long before the issue reached a fever pitch). I listened to the audio book of Erasure, narrated by Sean Crisden, on a drive last winter and I was transfixed the entire time. The movie version (American Fiction) is wonderful but two things are better about the book. First, the ending. And, second, the book-within-book My Pafology by Stagg R. Leigh. In the written version, My Pafalogy runs a full 80 pages. In the movie, it’s almost an afterthought. My Pafology is the heart of the matter. Stagg R. Leigh is Thelonius “Monk” Ellison’s briefly adopted pseudonym so he can write a novel that is trashier and blacker than his more typical literary fare. He writes My Pafology in disgust at the crap that is drawing praise. Until My Pafology, Monk Ellison had only written smart literary stuff. He is “widely unread.” An agent tells him: “I could sell many books if I’d forget about writing retellings of Euripides and parodies of French poststructuralists and settle down to write the true, gritty real stories of black life. I told him that I was living a black life, far blacker than he could ever know … The hard gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it. I don’t believe in race. I believe there are people who will shoot me or hang me or cheat me and try to stop me because they do believe in race, because of my brown skin, curly hair, wide nose and slave ancestors. But that’s just the way it is.” And then, in response to the publication of the runaway bestseller We Lives in Da Ghetto by Juanita Mae Jenkins, Monk has is compelled to respond. Juanita Jenkins? The photograph of Jenkins’ face on the cover of Time magazine causes Monk physical pain. He’s got to write. The result is My Pafology. The result is, cha-ching, a hit. And movie deal. And soon Monk winds up on a national critics’ committee picking best novels of the year and finds himself arguing against picking My Pafology. Er, well, it was no longer called My Pafology because Monk had argued that the title should be changed to the simple word F***, most likely to see if the publishers could be pushed around in order to have their name on the precious piece of literature they think they’ve discovered. The layers of skewering and ribbing here are manifold. And then Monk is asked to sit on a committee of writers choosing ‘The Best Novel’ we can see it coming. Of course. Monk must consider his own work, written as Stagg R. Leigh, and there are scenes where “Leigh” must be seen in public and Monk must make sure he’s not unmasked as author of F***. Erasure is rich. Around the thread with My Pafalogy/F***, Monk is dealing with his mother’s mental decline, his sister’s financial stresses caring for their mother, and a brother who is divorced and coming out as gay. Monk will learn about his late father’s duplicity and deceit, too. Monk’s own journey, outside the My Pafalogy/F*** business is, well, the stuff of any main character’s search for identity and a sense of belonging. And those threads, alone, are amply compelling in Everett’s hands. Could a white guy have written Erasure?In a perfect world and with someone very talented, I’d like to think so. But Erasure is so good and so full of subtle observations about race—even though Monk doesn’t believe in race—that it’s a damn good thing that a white guy didn’t try. Someday, like a lot of things, we’ll figure this out.

I liked the writing from the first chapter. It was funny and intelligent without trying too hard. The chapters that were the novel within a novel caught me off guard at first because they were consecutive instead of spread throughout the book. Once I read them that decision made sense, but I can see how it would make it difficult for some people to get through that section of the book. Some of the content went over my head, such as the sections that included dialogue between notable people from the past. The second half of the book, after Monk's novel started to gain popularity, wasn't as interesting to me. His charade was far fetched and the story began to drag. The parts I enjoyed the most were the family dynamics and learning how his upbringing led to his feelings of not fitting in as a child and an adult.

If you enjoy a great story, you'll love this book. If you liked the movie, you'll love the book. If you are like me and truly enjoy a literary challenge, you will be astounded by this book and this writer. Percival Everett is a complete GENIUS. I could read this book 100 times and get more and more deeply into the narrative techniques (formidable and fascinating( as well as the linguistics and many, many threads on the loom. If you are NOT into literary stuff like that, you can STILL enjoy this story 100% without pain or weirdness of any kind. And perhaps that is another level to this genius writer. Most books that challenge me intellectually are very abstract and most people would define as "too avant garde" or "incomprehensible." That is NOT the case with Percival Everett. Interestingly, I did not look up every single thing I did not understand because there were many things I did not understand. Usually I do a lot of looking up, but I just wanted to enjoy the main narrative. But about 3/4 of the way through, I got really interested in one of his several narrative tropes -- the conversations between visual artists -- the bit was SO outlandish, I thought, this can't be real. But since the artist aside had to do with erasing, I had a feeling it was important to the construction of the meaning(s). So I researched the matter and got my brain completely woven into his narrative in a very very deep and satisfying way. Honestly, if I were an English major or a writer, I would do everything in my power to have this man as my mentor. Bravo! I see also that he has many books, including "James" which I am reading now. I am going to read every book he has ever written.

or start with the title, a word much in vogue these days, though this novel was written in 2001. in 1967, the french critic and theorist, roland barthes wrote his essay, The Death of the Author, a glance backward at the philosophical concept of erasure. for barthes’ purposes, a finished book no longer belongs to the author inasmuch as the text is open to the reader’s interpretation, the absent author, in a sense, is dead, erased, but present as is the author, that is, not cancelled as the word erasure is used these days. everett’s protagonist, the author, thelonius ellison, writes fiction influenced by french literary theory of the 1960s and 70s and what was known as the ‘new novel’. early in the story, ellison reads a paper on one of barthe’s books at a conference held in washington dc, the place of ellison’s birth, his mother and sister still living there. as expected, few readers buy the kind of fiction ellison writes. ellison accepts his calling with a zen like mien, working with his hands, doing carpentry, constructing chairs while thinking of philosophy and, as an angler, tying flies while thinking of abstract artists. stress shakes his tranquility when his mother slips into dementia and another black novelist pens a book about black urban life as stereotypical and becomes a literary success, the latter sending ellison into a near rage. he writes the most demeaning novel he can conceive under a pen name, here’s that erasure, gives the manuscript to his agent who wonders if he’s lost his mind along with his integrity, and the rest, well, you have to read the book. it’s a brilliant piece of metafiction, of a story within a story, a parody of ralph ellison’s Invisible Man, of language as theory and culture and how language might look for someone inside dementia, and of what influences writing, the literary influences and non-literary influences.

The author seems to be asking the essential question of what is literature? Is it the artificial academic writing, dense and nearly unreadable, that the protagonist writes at the beginning of the novel? Is it the novel within a novel that the protagonist writes to mock dialect writing? Or I'd it the novel we read that contains all of it? Despite the relatable subplot of a man dealing with his mother slipping into Alzheimer's, a parallel to the protagonist losing his own identity, this is not an approachable novel for many readers. However, for those who are able to see both the protagonist and author as simultaneously dealing with the same dilemma of erasing one's identity, the novel is satisfying and provocative; how much of ourselves have we lost in the quest for success?

The story and message are thought provoking. The side quests into the characters thoughts, while initially illuminating as to who he is, became a distraction.

Never knew if this author, now I have secured some other works by him. But this novel here? Lemme flesh-out the title I gave it: The interaction between his family, so intimately painted, is warts-an'-all honest and deep into the psyche of family, and I'm sure it transcends a "black" family. As such the realism is there. Then there's the inventiveness of his prose. Take Italicized, little throw-away bits that so vague and strange, but yet they betray the protagonist's intellectual depth, the depth of a black professor who sees himself as a man and not merely a black man. Most memorable, however, is his dilemma as he struggles as a writer expected to stick to only being a black writer, and how he ends trapped within the lie he fashioned to stick it to them and ends up sticking to himself, yet learns accept it and survive and support himself a mother afflicted with Alzheimer's in a racist society. "ERASURE," will also be memorable for me especially, just another I'm just another black writer left with the choice to dance the black ministrels' dance or fight for my visibility in a society in which I may be invisible as a human, but caught in a searchlight, as a black man doomed to parochial outlooks.

great