Erasure

 Erasure

By Percival Everett

I liked James and Trees so much, I thought I would take a look at another one of Everett's novels. The guy

is fairly prolific, so I had to choose. Erasure was at the top of AI's list, so I went with it.

This story is wildly different than Trees, though it has some echoes of James. It is told from the point of view of Thelonious Monk Ellison -- Monk -- an intellectual novelist whose stories are so dense few people read them. But artistic integrity, rather than acclaim or fame or money, is his main concern, and so he continues to write what he wants. Audience be damned.

Until. He returns home to Washington, D.C., to give a talk at a conference, and check in with his mother. All is not right. She is increasingly enveloped in the throes of dementia or Alzheimer's. Though his mother has a live-in housekeeper/servant, Lorraine, she, too, is aging. It becomes clear that Monk has little choice but to return to his childhood home and care for his mother.

His new situation has Monk increasingly enraged at best-selling novels that claim to give an authentic window into the black experience, especially the recently-released best-seller We's from da Ghetto. Monk is, in fact, black, and his life bears no semblance to the characters in the book. So one night, he sits down at a typewriter and produces a novel in a similar vein: My Pafology. It's contained within Erasure and is full of stereotypes: a sex-crazed, high-school dropout black protagonist with four kids by four different mothers. It is a scathing parody of books of its kind. Except, when it is released under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh, no one sees it as such. 

Monk reluctantly plays the part of Stagg R. Leigh in a few meetings and one appearance on national television, and the book does staggeringly well. Movie rights are sold, and Monk becomes a millionaire. He is invited to be on the National Book Award committee, and it, too, loves the book. Over Monk's objections, it wins. It is too much for Monk to take. So when Stagg R. Leigh's name is called, it is Thelonious Monk Ellison who takes the stage.

This book is similar to James in that the main character, like James, has to take on the persona that white people want him to have in order to successfully navigate the world. In other words, he must erase himself to be seen. In a larger sense, the book seems to be making the argument that when culture promotes one version of the black experience -- especially a racist, stereotypical one -- as truly authentic, other, equally authentic ones, are, in a sense, erased. The title also refers to the ravages of dementia, which erases the mother Monk once new.

It was really interesting to read this book on the heels of Trees. Man, this guy can write.