When I first saw this trailer for the new movie “American Fiction” the first thing I thought to myself, other than the fact that it looked hilarious, was what an absolutely timely piece of satire it looked to be.
There have been several articles and essays over the last few years about some of the important ways the publishing field has changed in the past decade or so. There was this piece from Meghan Daum, this piece from the subject of Meghan Daum’s piece, and then Pen America published an essay called Booklash, which I plan to write about at a future date (it’s over a 100 pages) that deals with the “freedom, online outrage, and the language of harm” and the “problematic” discourse that seeks to demand identity take precedence when determining who can write which types of stories.
Now I’ll be up front and say I have not paid much attention to how publishing works until fairly recently. I’ve been solely focused on the act of writing, not who might be interested in publishing me. But then when I started sending stuff out and getting rejections like the one that told me publishers just aren’t interested in books by “straight white men,” I became intrigued and started looking into it. I assumed that much of the discourse was fairly new, which in certain respects it is, or at least it’s gotten more extreme than it ever was. So I was quite surprised when I began looking into the origins of “American Fiction” to learn it was an adaptation of a book called “Erasure” by Percival Everett that had been published in the year…2001!
While “Erasure” and “American Fiction” do proceed with essentially the same plot, the structures are fairly distinct. The filmmakers understood the difference between a film and a book and did a fine job taking something intended to be literary and making it cinematic. “Erasure” is much more idiosyncratic in its form than even the typical novel. Aside from the central thrust of the plot, the novel is interspersed with small sidebars detailing, for example, the art of woodworking, which is a hobby of the protagonist, as well as various story ideas he has, many of which are quite snarky and funny. There is even a novel-within-a-novel about halfway in. Not to mention an in-depth subplot involving his family, including a sister who performs abortions, a mother with Alzheimer’s, a father who committed suicide and a brother who’s recently come out of the closet. For my purposes here I’ll just focus on the central plot, which is that of a black writer named Thelonius Ellison, whom everyone calls “Monk.” Monk has written a handful of unsuccessful, densely academic attempts at literature that though tepidly well-reviewed has failed to allow him to make his living as a writer or to garner the respect he so desperately craves. He is forced, among other things, to teach creative writing.
The moment that kicks off the story is when, while teaching a class on southern literature, and Flannery O’Connor in particular, Monk is lectured by a white student on the use of the n-word. His response to this utter display of obliviousness gets him suspended from his job. He soon discovers a new book that has become wildly popular across the nation called “We’s Lives in da Ghetto,” a novel that he feels panders to rich white people who feel guilty about the history of African-American injustice. In the trailer above you’ll see how this novel is portrayed in the film, but in the book, here is the paragraph he opens to when finding it at a bookstore.
My fahvre be gone since time I’d borned and it be just me an’ my momma an’ my baby brover Juneboy. In da mornin’ Juneboy never do brushes his teefus, so I gots to remind him. Because dat, Momma says I be the ‘sponsible one and tell me that I gots to holds things togever while she be at work clean dem white people’s house.
I mean, DAMN, talk about a vicious takedown of a certain kind of American novel. Percival Everett is unforgiving.
Then, to add insult to injury, while perusing the same bookstore he takes offense to the discovery that his own books exist in the “African American Studies” section despite having nothing to do with African-Americans (they are about ancient mythology), and they are just there because he is black, despite the fact that he does not even actually believe in race.
What irks him most is that as a black man, he’s lived a privileged life. His father was a doctor, they were never short on money, and he’s never had any dealings with the kinds of black people being portrayed in film and literature. He feels the whole thing just flattens them and turns them into stereotypes.
The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it. I don’t believe in race. I believe there are people who will shoot me or hang me or cheat me and try to stop me because they do believe in race, because of my brown skin, curly hair, wide nose and slave ancestors. But that’s just the way it is.
Finally at the end of his rope following the twin events of his sister’s untimely death alongside his latest rejection, feeling both angry and dejected, one night he starts typing. This new novel will be called “My Pathology.” No, wait, that isn’t right. It will be called “My Pafology,” yes, that’s better, and it starts like this—
Mama look at me and Tardreece and she call us “human slough.” That how it start up. “Human slough,” she say, “You lil’ muthafuckers ain’t nuffin but human slough.” I looks at her and I’m wonderin what “slough” means and I don’t like the look on her face and so I get up from the chair I been sittin in and I walk across the kitchen and grab a big knife from the counter. She say, “And what you gone do wif that, human slough?” And I stab Mama. I put the knife in her stomach and pull it out red and she look at me like to say why you stab me? And I stab Mama again. Blood be all on the floor and on the table, drip drip drippin down her legs and my baby sister starts screamin and I says, “Why you be screamin, Baby Girl?” and she look at me and say it because I be stabbin on Mama. I look at my hands and they all covered wif blood and I realize I don’t know what goin on. So, I stab Mama again. I stab her cause I scared. I stab Mama cause I love her. Cause I hate her. Cause I ain’t got no daddy. Then I walk out the kitchen and stand outside, leavin Mama crawlin round on the linoleum tryin to hold in her guts. I stands out on the sidewalk just drippin blood like a muthafucka. I look up at the sky and I try to see Jesus, but I cain’t. Then I wonder which one of my fo’ babies I’m gone go see.
If you just can’t wait to see how all that turns out, you’re in luck, because the entirety of the novel is snuggled tightly within the one about its writer. Of course, he’s not about to put his name on it. So he uses a pseudonym, Stagg R. Leigh, and sends it to his agent, who’s first question is can he at least call it performance art when he sends it out? No! says Monk. Send it out straight.
Lo and behold the rich white publishers are so taken by this novel of gritty realism that they offer him a million dollar advance, alongside movie rights. Completely unaware the whole thing was a joke. Monk can’t believe it, and finds the novel to be an embarrassment, so to further troll the publisher he calls them up and tells them he wants to change the title to “Fuck.” And if they don’t like it, he’ll take his book elsewhere. They aren’t about to tell him no, and so agree.
It becomes wildly successful, of course, and even wins an aptly titled “Literary Award.”
The satire in both the book and movie is on point. Some of the novel’s dialogue was so perfect I think an entire class could be taught on it alone. And it raises some interesting questions, questions which I won’t pretend to know the answers to.
Such as what is a writer’s responsibility to his own work? Is the writer’s identity as important as the work, maybe even more important? How much of a book contract is selling the author rather than his book? And has this changed? It’s mentioned in the movie that readers were drawn to Bukowski because of his portrayal of the downtrodden, and his own place as the protagonist in his stories. But, it is then pointed out, no one reads Bukowski thinking his writing encompasses the whole of the white experience. Would readers have still gravitated to Bukowski if his same stories were written by someone like, say, John Updike? Or Philip Roth? Was Bukowski part of the package that was being sold? Or again, take Roth and Updike, a couple rather stuffy fiction writers—for them it really was likely their books that the publishers got behind, not their biographies.
Or maybe it’s as Rick Rubin said, that audiences don’t actually know what they want, they only know what they liked that came before. The arts are a fickle business, after all.
Great analysis of the book and movie.
I had my moment https://jtolbertjr.substack.com/p/this-movie-may-give-me-ptsd