The Sellout by Paul Beatty

“That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book—that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.”

Satire has got to be one of the most difficult literary modes to work in and pull off successfully. I have much respect for great satirists like Kurt Vonnegut, Jonathan Swift, Percival Everett and but it usually requires a specific frame of mind on my part to fully immerse myself in their work. Not that their writing is impenetrable or cryptically didactic, but the transgressive and ironic humor that often comes out of well-written satire sometimes doesn't work for me or tends to goes over my head. So, I approached Paul Betty's "The Sellout" with some slight hesitation only to quickly discover that the satiric humor is often on point, inviting the author's dual role as a mouthpiece for public outrage and mockery of the muddy terrain concerning race. While the novel doesn't quite live up to its hype, there is still plenty to admire here. Beatty is explicit in his irreverent satire on a 'post-racialized' Black America (of course, such notions are ludicrous and explicitly attacked) but the execution is somewhat flawed. There exists way too many digressions and the episodic narrative tends to undermine any profound critique on anti-black racism, intergenerational trauma, white hegemony and the modern black experience. 

The novel's premise revolves around a black farmer named Bonbon (the significance of his name still eludes me) who is being taken to trial by the Supreme Court for re-institutionalizing segregation to his small county as an ironic form of black empowerment. Yet, I feel that Beatty doesn't push the concern for radical black liberation and autonomy far enough. There is a fine line between satire and vitriolic ridicule that he gets almost right but too much time is wasted on absurd high-jinks, comedic vignettes and pop-culture, literary or historical references. As a result, many parts of the novel seem long-winded and drags on with no discernible purpose other than to hopefully get a few chuckles out of the reader or showcase the author's intellect and acerbic wit. Even some of the jokes come slightly repetitive and reductive after a while (a similar problem that I also had with Joseph Heller's "Catch-22"). Beatty is clearly a smart man; his writing is razor-sharp, full of crackling humor and piercing insight. When he isn't caught up in his own solipsistic posturing and focuses on the more playful and provocative dimensions of satire, the novel can actually be thought-provoking and very very funny. For example, the protagonist inadvertently becomes a slave holder of an older black man named Hominy who was once a child actor as an understudy to Buckwheat in the "Little Rascals" TV series during the 1930's. Their various comedic exploits together as master and slave provides the author with a springboard to satirize the incomprehensible horrors of slavery. Hominy desires to be slave and is intent on bringing back the ubiquitous racism of the antebellum south, which he so eloquently puts it: "True freedom is having the right to be a slave." See? Now, that's some funny ironic humor. Or the section entitled "unmitigated blackness" near the end of the novel when the protagonist's defense lawyer is explaining to the court about the different stages of 'blackness' with energetic flair is subversive as much as it is hilarious. The protagonist, seemingly bored, surreptitiously sneaks out of the courtroom to smoke a blunt outside on the steps of congress and experiences an epiphany: 

"Sitting here on the steps of the supreme Court smoking weed, under the "Equal Justice Under Law" motto, staring into the stars, I've finally figured out what's wrong with Washington, DC. It's that all the buildings are more or less the same height and there's absolutely no skyline, save for the Washington Monument touching the night sky like a giant middle finger to the world." 

I just wish there were more humorous and poignant moments like this in the novel. There were certainly scattered moments of brilliance and other times when the satire fell flat. I understand that the emphasis is on encouraging the reader to think critically about race--more specifically, what it means to be black in contemporary America--but it was still difficult for me to form any emotional attachment to the overall narrative that should have resonated with me on deeply personal level as a person of color. In short, I was left wanting more.