Books : Slumberland: A Novel

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Author name: Paul Beatty

: Slumberland: A Novel
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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9781596912403
ISBN number: 1596912405
Label: Bloomsbury USA
Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 256
Printing Date: June 10, 2008
Publishing house: Bloomsbury USA
Release Date: June 10, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 109126
Studio: Bloomsbury USA



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Editor's Notes and Comments:

Product Description:
The breakout novel from a literary virtuoso about a disaffected Los Angeles DJ who travels to post-Wall Berlin in search of his transatlantic doppelganger.
Hailed by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as one of the best writers of his generation, Paul Beatty turns his incisive eye to man’s search for meaning and identity in an increasingly chaotic world.
After creating the perfect beat, DJ Darky goes in search of Charles Stone, a little-known avant-garde jazzman, to play over his sonic masterpiece. His quest brings him to a recently unified Berlin, where he stumbles through the city’s dreamy streets ruminating about race, sex, love, Teutonic gods, the prevent
defense, and Wynton Marsalis in search of his artistic—and spiritual—other.
Ferocious, bombastic, and laugh-out-loud funny, Slumberland is vintage Paul Beatty and belongs on the shelf subsequent to Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, and Junot Diaz.




Customer Reviews
User popularity level: out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Simply amazing
As a German living in Los Angeles (well Pasadena, but you know what I am saying) I just couldn't put down Slumberland. There were a couple of unfortunate mistakes in the German expressions used in the book but I have rarely seen any American, or any writer at all, display a better insight into the schizophrenia of a person's struggle between identity, purpose, and projection. We all are constantly trying to define our identity between our own delusion, heteronomy, and reality. As this might be read as a text on racism, I would argue it simply addresses identity issues at large. That racism, "white man's burden", colonialism, and slavery still linger through the ages, is a given, but it is the individual's struggle to find his or her place in the world tat really matters. Funny enough white man travel to Asia and indulge into the illusion of "yellow fever" while white women seek the holy grail of sexual nirvana in Africa - but what does it really say about human nature? It is the other, eternally defined as something unattainable, the promise of a better tomorrow that, let's be honest, will never come. But that is not the point of this novel that deals with a fish-out-of-water turning from a seeker to a seer: It is the jazzy and irreverent prose that takes us down the rabbit hole of a "former" fascist society struggling with the contradiction of its failure to implement the bizarre nightmares of racism and its inability to make amends that transcend the narrow horizon of its overcast sky, while seeking definite absolution for the holocaust - but it does not matter if the final solution is worse than slavery - in the end it is that we are all human besides our divisive, and absurd, ideas about what constitute the other and ourselves. Music will slave us to a common beat with all our foibles and fears... I was blown away by this work and its style. I like to see this adopted into a movie. Paul let me know if you are interested...


Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - Woids
The character says "I am about words" I think Mr. Beatty is talking about himself. I am only on page 100 and I'm loving it!


Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Trust
Comment on the very first review by DatDudeCrazee. Trust his monicker: he is crazy. Slumberland is Beatty's most mature novel and, so far, his best. Trust the reviews above, like the one from the Washington Post. Trust Beatty, he is the real thing.


Rated by buyers 3 out of 5 stars - It's August and No One Has Reviewed Yet?!
I guess no one wants to say anything bad, critical or otherwise about Slumberland based on the strength of Tuff and White Boy Shuffle. I really wanted to give this book a rating of 2.75 stars. At $3.00/book for a used copy I won't be hurting him by saying Slumberland was not as good as Tuff or TWBS. Beatty's prose was extremely weighted (even pretentious) and forced in spots. I really wanted to like this book. Beatty is one of my favorite storytellers/writers.


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