The Sellout: A Novel

Who writes like this? I asked myself, having been overwhelmed with satiric jabs after about 25 densely written pages. Ishmael Reed? And then why compare Beatty only to another black writer? Was that racist? Woody Allen wrote this densely, stories full of caricatures and outrageous situations, but New-York-Jewish in subject, and then only a few pages long, not an entire novel. Surely Beatty couldn't keep it up.

But by page 227 his comic inventions were still going strong. Here the protagonist converts the "long out-of-business brushless car wash" in his L.A. ghetto into a "tunnel of whiteness" for the local children, with "several race wash options:"

Regular Whiteness:
Benefit of the Doubt
Higher Life Expectancy
Lower Insurance Premiums

Deluxe Whiteness:
Regular Whiteness Plus
Warnings instead of Arrests from the Police
Decent Seats at Concerts and Sporting Events
World Revolves Around You and Your Concerns

Super Deluxe Whiteness:
Deluxe Whiteness Plus Jobs with Annual Bonuses
Military Service Is for Suckers
Legacy Admission to College of Your Choice
Therapists That Listen
Boats That You Never Use
All Vices and Bad Habits Referred to as "Phases"
Not Responsible for Scratches, Dents, and Items Left in the Subconscious

By "dense," I mean that almost every sentence contains a comic explosion, a twist, something that leaves you breathless or laughing out loud. Who does that? I thought of Barry Hannah, a Southern writer now gone. I think Hannah would have admired Beatty and recognized a literary kinsman. Also, something about Beatty's writing seemed to come from African-American oratory, its ornateness maybe, like Stanley Crouch's writing about jazz, but it wasn't self-conscious. Certainly the point of view was uniquely African-American, and I'm sure as a white reader I missed some of the inside humor. But plenty hit home with me, and would with almost any other half-alert citizen of this great land.

Speaking of which: this is a horrible time in our culture—with everyone's cell phones recording the underbelly of brutal racist policing, with political reactionaries running amok—to be attempting satire. It damn well better be funny. Beatty succeeds with a scenario that's not only side-splitting but right up to the minute. (I'm tempted to give more examples but will forbear) He's brilliant. (He's also profane and vulgar, as how could he not be? The n-word alone is used probably 1000 times)

Chris Rock can be devastatingly funny sometimes. Key & Peele can be outrageously funny sometimes. Making a barb leap off the written page is harder. As one critic said: Beatty can reduce a sacred cow to hamburger with one sentence.

Beatty explores what it's like to be black in "postracial" America with searing, acerbic, ceaseless, absurdist humor, and by turning the tables on bigotry by having the main characters, Me (or Bonbon) and Hominy Jenkins bring back slavery and discrimination and argue for them before the Supreme Court.

This is not a novel as most understand the form. It is more of a long standup routine that rains down on you for a couple of hours, comprised of riffs on films, culture, psychology, gangs, territories, education, and Me's passion, horticulture in an urban desert. The storyline, which surfaces for sustaining air periodically, is the one line from my opening, an apparently absurd idea that illustrates how absurd what engenders it really is.

Okay, so what kind of reading experience is [[ASIN:0374260508 The Sellout: A Novel]]? The best way to describe it, apart from imagining yourself at a meeting of the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals (founded by Me's psychologist father, deceased but impossible for Me to forget, gunned down by police in the street) in which Me finally arouses himself enough to fire off his riff, like the black comedian who brings life to the club on the cusp of its demise. Or, view a few Diego Rivera murals of culture, oppression, history, and revolution to get a sense of how the frequent digressions mesh to paint a picture. Or, reach further back into art history and study Hieronymus Bosch's famous triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, depicting the delights (what's beyond the barrio of Dickens) to the hell in places like Dickens. In short, a ton of stuff splattered on the wall, formed into tales, taken together to impart an impression.

Now, it would be nice to quote from The Sellout, however, let's just say that the slang-slinging in [[ASIN:B00BJS7LHC Django Unchained [HD]]] might be tame by comparison. But wait. There is one part that might pass. That's the opening, which sets the tone of the book nicely:

"This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I've never stolen anything. Never cheated on my taxes or at cards. Never snuck into the movies or failed to give back the extra change to a drugstore cashier indifferent to the way of mercantilism and mimimim-wage expectations. I've never burgled a house. Held up a liquor store. Never boarded a crowded bus or subway car, sat in a seat reserved for the elderly, pulled out my gigantic penis and masturbated to satisfaction with a perverted, yet somehow crestfallen look on my face. But here I am, in the cavernous chambers the Supreme Court of the United States of America ..." and so it goes on, intensifying.

Worth your time? Absolutely, if you'd like to make a little sense of times that seem to make no sense whatsoever.

I tried so hard to finish this book, but I just couldn't. It made me laugh at some points, but it felt like I was reading a run on conversation that was completely one-sided. It's not really like a novel at all. There is no plot or true direction. It's just a series of stories that are cut into sections and chapters.

I'm sure that's fine for some people, but I found it boring. Once the initial shock at Beatty's honesty wore off, I lost all motivation to finish the book. I honestly don't care what happened to the main character. I can't even remember his name.

If you're a hipster, a literary critic who wants to sound hip, an academic, a Jeopardy fan, or a masochist, you'll love this pointless mishmash filled with cultural references designed to show how brilliant the author is. If you like sharp, intelligent, stylishly written satire, as I do, you'll hate it. Actually, after I took it out of the library today, I saw that Beatty had also written "White Boy Shuffle", which I also disliked. It goes back tomorrow. You have been warned.

I enjoyed the first twenty pages of this dystopian work and admired the writer's audacity and good intention. Ten or fifteen pages is about as long as a euphoric feeling of having discovered a keen, new voice actually lasted. A lot of truth seems to be buried in this book under an avalanche of lightly edited writing that some might find self-indulgent. A firmer editor might have made a critical difference in this case. All iconoclastic authors want and often need to write down everything at once. It is the editor's job to get the mind's cornucopia sufficiently organized for publication. Mr. Beatty will surely try again though he may have no desire to bend even a little to a more conventional approach. Also, he may develop a wide readership that will vindicate the path chosen for this novel.

Unreadable, made it through 100 pages and then gave up, too much effort required to wade through the convoluted language.

If satire is defined as "witty language used to convey insults or scorn", and "the use of humor or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices..." Under that definition The Sellout definitely qualifies as a work of satire. As a conscious reader, I cannot help noticing who is being satirized and to what degree. And obviously this is a satire of black life and as such Black people bear much of the ridicule to varying degrees of effectiveness. And that can be ok, but if it feels like the author is trying consciously to avoid reaping scorn on others, then it begins to feel gratuitous.

From the prologue: "Still, I don't feel guilty. If I'm indeed moving backward and dragging all of black America down with me, I couldn't care less. Is it my fault that the only tangible benefit to come out of the civil rights movement is that black people aren't as afraid of dogs as they used to be? No it isn't." Is that laugh out loud funny? It may be to some, but others may find it offensive, especially those who actually may have experienced the German Shepards biting and nipping at their body parts. Ok, we say well that's what satire is. But, the counter is, well are all groups handled so harshly? And sadly, I have to say no. And although, there are some good natured moments in here, and Paul Beatty is quite skilled at flipping words and sentences, the novel falls a little short to me. And the lack of balance is grating.

Once, the main character, known to readers as Bonbon is reminiscing, "A long time ago, my father taught me that whenever you see a question on the cover of a news magazine, the answer is always 'No,' because the editorial staff knows that questions with 'Yes' answers would....scare the reader off." Bonbon as narrator offers up a few examples. "O.J. Simpson and Race: Will the Verdict Split America? No." And "Has TV Gone Too Far? No." Then, "Is Anti-Semitism on the March Again? No, because it never halted." Hmmm, why the brief commentary there? None of the other supposed magazine titles had brief comments. That just jumped off the page, like the author feared being misconstrued as negative and insensitive for such a remark. For the record, I don't think it would be perceived that way, but maybe the author had reservations.

So, you can have an extreme use of the N-word throughout your book and convey tons of scorn upon Black culture, but offer a quick caveat of meaning, when dealing with any other culture, lest anyone makes a wrong interpretation. That sort of care and concern when it comes to the N***#^€ of Beatty's imagination is hard to find.
I find it cowardly and bordering on self-hatred. If you can ignore all the derision and the ridiculousness of the plot, you may enjoy this one. I tried to like it, but as I worked my way through the novel it became increasingly difficult and not very funny.

Self-indulgent writing. Bad editing. Sentences too long to finish reading. Is it really useful for purposes of clarity to make a singular point with too many cultural references in one go ?
General lack of coherence betweeen chapters.
Couldn't finish the book.

This is another of those very buzzy books, about which much has been written, superlatives bandied about, mad-love admirations by the erudite literati gushed in the usual-suspect-we-all-ride-the-same-morning-train-and-talk publications. For the first hundred pages or so I was ready to hobo-hop my way onto that train as I often do; it was a salient satire about race and class and cynicism, one after another funny – sometimes hysterical – riff on stereotypes and ignorance and self-delusion, but then, it bogged down in what was for me a plotless plod of too much plot. I know, that makes little sense, but, it took too long for too little to happen and the variations on the social commentary that had been riveting the first one hundred pages were just repetitive in the next two hundred.

Here’s the thing about being the literati equivalent of a freight-hopping hobo: I’m not paying for the tickets to get on the trains, I’m wandering and wondering, a flaneur, going where I want, when I want, dawdling, dallying, and yes, diddling, at a pace all my own on a journey of my catch-as-catch-can design, and, my dears, doing it this way has proven to be a little dangerous, true, sometimes I’m hungry, almost always I am a little (or, in truth, quite a lot) lonely, but having already lost everything more than once, the only voyages remaining for me are those junkets in which I’ve got nothing to lose — as in, job, reputation, followers. I mean, hell, the most traffic my little book-exploration-sometimes naked guys blog has gotten in the past year has been driven by Charlie Carver’s genitalia, so, you know, here I am, going (on and on and on and on), not likely to be intimidated by the threat of further dissipation.

Thus and so, here is another of the things about me, like I said, literati-freight-hopping-flaneur with a catholic (and Catholic, I guess) penchant for being abused: As foul-mouthed as I am, as rabid an advocate for freedom of speech as I am, as far-left as I am, the use of certain words makes me uncomfortable. I never use the N-word. Mr. Beatty uses it — and other equally triggering words — throughout The Sellout, which I understand is part of his point. I get it. And, Mr. Beatty, being African-American and writing from that perspective and using the word as ironic commentary, all gotten. But, back to that thing about me, see, I think words are incredibly powerful, able to cast spells, takers and givers of energy with lives that continue after we’ve said or written or thought them, words have the power to make things happen just by being said, written,thought. Words create energy waves in our minds, in our hearts, in our world and so, I am one of those gay men who doesn’t think gay men (or anyone else) ought say the Fa-word nor should lesbians (or anyone else) say the Dy-word. I also don’t care for the use of the Bi- and Ba- words and I despise the Cu- word. I get the whole “We are reclaiming them and making them harmless and powerless” thing but I think that is a specious defense for using words born of hate. I think the world is still too full of ignorant people who upon hearing we minorities using words once (and, often, still) pejorative in nature to refer to ourselves will take that as liberty to continue to use them in ugly, distasteful, violent, abusive and damaging ways. We should be very careful about filling our mouths, hearts, and environments with those words, because, we need to protect our hearts and the hearts of others.

Entire original review available here, at my blog: HERE WE ARE GOING: https://herewearegoing.wordpress.com/2016/01/12/reading-5-days-5-books/

The joke is on me for not listening to my better senses after seeing an endorsement from Sarah Silverman....That's where I should have turned and walked away. As an avid reader and absolute lover of literature, this was THE FIRST and ONLY time I've actually thrown a book (not required for a curriculum) in the trash. To think I actually bought the hardback makes me sick to myself. If you spend even $1 on this it would be $0.99 too much.