Type of bind: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: October 02, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 1426245
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Product Description:
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 sucess that he covets. Monk's impending struggle with his moral principles emerges as a revolutionary and riotous indictment of race and publishing in America.
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Rated by buyers 
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Have you ever heard the term "Mary Sue?" It comes from fanfiction. It refers to a non-canon character -- a character who doesn't come from the already existing fictional world -- who acts as an author surrogate in the story. And not just any author surrogate, either. A Mary Sue is an act of wish-fulfillment on the part of the author. A Mary Sue is an expression of everything the author wishes s/he was in real life. Stuff just works out for a Mary Sue in ways it doesn't for the rest of us.
In my estimation, Percival Everett is the premier purveyor of the Mary Sue phenomenon outside of fanfiction. In Erasure (and American Desert, and Glyph...) the narrator enacts what seems to me particularly adolescent revenge fantasies of the frustrated intellectual Everett. The narrator (I've already forgotten his name, like it matters) delivers a largely incoherent ("Oh, but it's not!" the defenders already shout. Yeah, yeah, save it for the comments at the end, okay?) paper that, evidently, gets the goat of his starchy academic nemeses. And the narrator gets to keep his cool as the kingpin frothingly quotes Pynchon at him afterward.
And the narrator -- no really -- uses his wits to best a raging redneck at a diner. And the narrator gets to stick it to the literary establishment that's overlooked his doubtless brilliant other books, slurping up a piece of pop dreck he whips off in an evening. Never mind, of course, that the narrator of that pop dreck is a more nuanced and sympathetic character than the narrator ever manages to be himself.
But all this is ironic, you say! Well, I say, maybe it is. It's also a singularly unsatisfying reading experience, not to mention a singularly smarmy and embarrassing one too. I have no doubt that Everett felt better about himself after writing this. Probably as good as I feel after masturbating. But you don't want to read about that, do you?
Rated by buyers 
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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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Let me preface this review by stating that I was "forced" to read this book in an American Literature Survey course. I am so glad that I was introduced to Everett's work. As many of the reviews of this book point out there is definite racial tension in the novel. However, it was not the friction created by Everett's criticism of the "stereotypical" grey American that i found most interesting in this novel.
At its core, Erasure is a novel dealing with identity, or the lack thereof in today's world. Everett's numerous allusions to Ellison's The Invisible Man are only arrows, roadmarkers along the way to gear your mind towards thinking about Monk's identitiy.
I will not spoil the end of the novel for you, which by the way is a cataclysmic gathering of all of the loose ends, but I will say that Everett's style is engaging to even the most amature literary critic. And, if you feel up to it, the novel makes good leisure reading as well.
Keep your mind open while reading this contemporary masterpiece. Be sure not to miss Everett's wit, sarcasm, and criticism. And, pay special attention to the changes that occur in and around Monk (the novel's main character); allow yourself to ponder your own identity as Monk sheds his own.
Rated by buyers 
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Percival spends the very first 1/4 of the book telling you how dreadful Da Ghetto literature is, then makes you READ some for the subsequent 1/4 of the book. That may be a clever conceit, and maybe it would work in smaller doses, but for me it was a major turn-off and I almost stopped reading, I certainly skipped a fair bit of it .... I suppose if you are more familiar with the genre then the parody is more obvious. It certainly did not strike me as "blisteringly funny". Maybe the echoes of other literature might also work for some, as mentioned in other reviews, but it didn't work for me. The rest of the book, and the protaganist's dilemma struck me as more entertaining and mildy funny.
The only other novel I've read which is written in a black-vernacular is Colour Purple. Is Alice Walker one of the writers that he is mocking? It was to find an answer to that question that I have come on-line today. I appreciate that this in not a discusion board, but does anyone know where I can find out more on this issue?
Rated by buyers -
Honest and direct, are the two words best fit to describe Everett's Monk character. He struggles with so many things including his writing career, his relationship with his brother and sister, and his ailing mother. This truth-telling story shows the real feelings people face when it's their turn to step up to responsibility as seen in Monk's novel (which is cleverly included within Everett's). We all wonder when it's our time to be the hero or if we should let someone else step up. This book is witty and maniacally hilarious, as Everett strips the layer of racism and ignorance in this country down to bare bones--all in an effort to reveal complexities that only a few of us can unravel. Job well done!!
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