Inspiring Older Readers
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
Being the first novel by a US author to win the Booker Prize was always likely to be a mixed blessing for the writer. At one level it affords the book a visibility it was very unlikely to have achieved otherwise but at another it also means it gets a sort of critical scrutiny that barely any book could survive with its dignity intact.
Both of these things are true for The Sellout which has garnered both lavish praise and, I think, its fair share of misplaced criticism and peculiar interpretation. The word that seems to be most popular amongst the critics is ‘satire’ – although very few of the reviews that use this word go on to explain why they think it’s a satire and what is being satirised. Clearly Beatty is writing about race and racism and he’s certainly interested in using humour to analyse both contemporary and historical attitudes towards these issues but I’m not sure I’d be rushing to use the word satire about the book. In fact, to me it felt much more like an absurdist fable – fluctuating between dark humour and outright farce, during the course of which everyone, black or white, are lampooned for their attitudes, opinions and actions.
Seemingly oblivious to the notion that his language or the views that his characters express might be found offensive, Beatty pushes and pushes the boundaries of ‘taste’ or ‘political correctness’ in order to underline or magnify the stupidity of human behaviour – and by direct extension one of the most stupid and damaging follies of all, racism.
The book opens with the protagonist, ‘Bonbon’ Me ( his father dropped the second ‘e’ from their surname) in the Supreme Court awaiting his trial for being the man who tried to bring back racial segregation and slavery to the US. The rest of the book unfolds the story of how a black man came to find himself in this situation and why he came to believe this was the way forward.
But it’s not the ‘plot’ that counts here – it’s the ideas and opinions of Bonbon that we are invited to surf along with as he narrates us through the story. And it’s a remarkable and surreal story that unfolds – a childhood with a father who inflicts socio-psychological experiments on the young Bonbon, a bizarre relationship with an aging black television actor who made a reputation playing stereotypical black characters for comedy purposes and a confusing sexual liaison with a domineering female bus driver.
Along the way Beatty considers some of the most disturbing and deep questions about slavery and about what slavery did to both the slaves and those who enslaved others. He asks the difficult question – if we live in a fundamentally racist society where the white majority dominates and has all the power, isn’t servitude the safest condition for a black person to aspire to?
Beatty was initially a poet and it’s easy to see his intoxication with words. Bonbon Me’s narration and internal monologues provide the most extraordinary flights of linguistic pyrotechnics - and all to an inaudible but all-pervasive rhythm that reminded me of some of Gil Scott-Heron’s more flowing free-association song lyrics – if you know his work think ‘B-Movie’ or even ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’.
A lot has been claimed for this novel and I think quite a lot of it might puzzle Beatty – he has been explicit in saying that he doesn’t want to be anyone’s ‘representative’ nor does he want to write ‘worthy’ books. He writes what he sees not from an immersive position as the black man struggling with racism but with a degree of distance that allows him to see and consider the absurdity of what humanity has created. Maybe this ability to look down from a semi-detached vantage point is the thing that most links a master of satire like Jonathan Swift to a practitioner of the absurd like Beatty – and this may account for why the word ‘satire’ has been so often misapplied to this very fine and impressive achievement.
Terry Potter
December 2016