Erasure: now a major motion picture 'American Fiction'

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It’s the story of Van Go Jenkins, tough-talking, 19-year-old father of four babies by four different mothers. Dullard will win that rigged game no matter who plays against him, race, gender, creed, whatever, because the underlying problem is that the world likes dull. And yet, the Ellison family’s resources are limited enough that the children argue over how to manage the financial burden of taking care of their mother, itself a subtle commentary on the precarity of Black wealth, even among bourgie Negroes like the Ellisons. The only spoiler warning it makes sense to offer: I’m going to discuss some of the differences between Everett’s novel and American Fiction, Cord Jefferson’s highly anticipated adaptation now in theaters. Black people have to be careful what we wish for when it comes to representation in popular culture.

That includes Monk’s new girlfriend, Coraline (as someone who grew up in “a ’90s kind of world,” it’s wonderful to see Living Single’s Erika Alexander in a meaningful supporting role). E poi ci sono spezzoni di conversazioni tra artisti famosi, Klee, Rothko, Wittgenstein, Derrida, dialoghi immaginari che sembrano appunti per futura scrittura, taccuini letterari. There is a certain “smartest person in the room” quality to his books, which can also be very sharp and amusing.

Everett’s writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, Wounded), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, Erasure), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, Big Picture) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, Zulus).

Part of the book features the author’s family - 2 siblings who are doctors, his elderly mother who is developing dementia and his doctor father who committed suicide and left behind some secrets. Moreover, these moments of interiority show that race really isn’t all that important to the Ellisons when they’re alone together and relate to one another as family members, not as Black people burdened with representing the race in public in front of prying white eyes, as they do in a galling scene showing them scattering Lisa’s ashes on the beach; a white male neighbor interrupts the moment to grill them about whether they have a permit to do so. Percival Everett is a master of comic and ironic novels which also offer biting commentary about racism and white obliviousness. Monk’s attitude about race is as much a feature of his education and class standing as his individual genius. Monk reads a review in a major glossy that praises Jenkins's novel for its "haunting verisimilitude".

The film’s ending recreates that of the novel and is an earnest metafictional attempt to address the difficulties of making a sincere and satisfying movie ending. Ne scaturisce improvvisamente un romanzo (breve) all’interno del romanzo, quasi un Rap scritto da Luigi Nono, che è l’invenzione più dirompente di “Cancellazione”, ma che resterebbe un espediente autoreferenziale se non fosse racchiuso all’interno di un’opera densa di ironia, commozione, rabbia, umanità e malinconia che Everett sa giostrare con grande maestria. Only after having written this did I realise the influence of Ursula Le Guin in The Left Hand of Darkness : "No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism.

I feel, sadly, all too ready to believe that this commodification of blackness, complete with grotesque sexual overtones, is a thing.Jeffrey Wright is captivating as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a professor and novelist who, like Everett, harbors deep skepticism about the truth-value of race as a concept. The name seems a bit silly and artificial at first, but develops layers and layers of meaning as the book proceeds. E mentre fa tutto questo, Percival Everett spara bordate contro l’archetipo culturale della negritudine, la retorica del ghetto, l’immagine stereotipata che il mondo letterario, televisivo e cinematografico ha della cultura afroamericana. After they’ve been seeing each other for a while , Monk finds Coraline with a copy of Fuck and proceeds to grill her about the book. Ultimately, what appears at first to be fragmentary coheres into a highly intelligent, humorous and self-aware work of fiction.