Book Review
Paul Beatty’s
Booker-winning (2016) novel, The Sellout,
is hilarious satire that makes fun of many things that America holds
sacred. But the satire and its fun are
so much American that many Indian readers may find it hard to comprehend. Frankly, I had to refer to the internet
scores of times in order to understand the allusions that the novel carries on
almost every page.
The book and the author |
The narrator
of the novel referred to by only his surname, Me, is facing a trial in the
Supreme Court for keeping a black slave.
Me is black himself. The slave he keeps is Homini, the last of the Little Rascals actors still alive. Homini wanted to be a slave. It helps him retain his African-American
identity. The whiplash on his back makes
his back feel good though his heart feels good while living in a Black-only
area. The narrator also has a strong
though complex affiliation with Dickens, a Black-only ghetto.
Me’s father
was a sociologist who used the little boy as a subject of many psychological
experiments. As a grown-up Me wished to
tell his girlfriend Marpessa (who deserted him and married somebody else) about
one of those experiments when she accuses him of getting a “fucking hard-on”
looking at a naked white woman swimming in the ocean. His father locked his head into the
tachistoscope and for three hours flashed split-second images of the forbidden
fruit of his era, “pinups and Playboy
centrefolds,” in his face. It was “Aversion
therapy.” Then we get a list of American
pinups and Playboy models.
The novel is
replete with such names and allusions.
It plays on literary pieces and names.
It makes use of psychological terms and concepts to satirise different
things. Those who are not familiar with
all those allusions will find the novel hard to understand, let alone enjoy.
Some of the
allusions are easy to understand. For
example:
Theirs not to reason what the fuck,
Theirs but to shoot and duck:
Niggers to the right of them
Niggers to the left of them,
Niggers in front of them
Partied and blundered...
Or:
1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes on four legs, or six wings and a
biscuit, is a friend.
3. No Pigger shall wear shorts in the fall, much less
the winter.
...
6. All Piggers are created equal, but some Piggers ain’t
shit.
In case you
don’t understand those allusions, leave Beatty’s book alone.
However, if
you’re willing to do more research than an obscenely paid Indian university prof
of lit would ever do in his/her entire career in order to understand a novel,
this is just the book for you.
Quite Interesting, Sir!
ReplyDeleteBeatty's satire is really interesting, JG.
DeleteWill give it a try sometime. Humour and satire are my favorite genres.
ReplyDeleteMine too. But not so obscure like this one.
Deleteनोटबंदी के बाद डिजिटल पेमेंट पर जोर, जानें क्या है डिजिटल पेमेंट
ReplyDeleteReadmore Todaynews18.com https://goo.gl/BgzxC9