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A review by moonpix
Erasure by Percival Everett
5.0
Usually I find satires kind of tiresome, but to market this novel under any one genre label would be to sell it short. And of course the desire of the publishing industry (and wider society) to simplify everything down to easily understood categories is also part of the critique here: this book is not just a parody of racist, sensationalist, commercialized fiction, it is also a family drama and a psychological portrait of an artist deeply alienated by what mainstream culture deems authentic. The structure of the novel is similarly layered, along with its primary narrative there are imaginary asides from artists and historical figures, passages detailing woodworking and fishing practices, and a long unbroken section of the parody novel the main character Monk writes relayed in full. Its intertextuality is both destabilizing and engaging, and it never looses its deep seated cynicism for both the “ghetto novels” that are directly parodied and the “high art” Monk dedicates his life to.
The complexity of this novel stands in stark contrast to the proliferation of simplistic art that coninues to be framed as positive representation. I’m already looking forward to doing a reread someday, both to deepen my understanding of it as a work of fiction and to help me continue to think through the fraught contemporary relationship between art, society, and capitalism.
“I considered my woodworking and why I did it. In my writing my instinct was to defy form, but I very much sought in defying it to affirm it, an irony that was difficult enough to articulate, much less defend. But the wood, the feel of it, the smell of it, the weight of it. It was so much more real than words. The wood was so simple. Dammit, a table was a table was a table.”
The complexity of this novel stands in stark contrast to the proliferation of simplistic art that coninues to be framed as positive representation. I’m already looking forward to doing a reread someday, both to deepen my understanding of it as a work of fiction and to help me continue to think through the fraught contemporary relationship between art, society, and capitalism.
“I considered my woodworking and why I did it. In my writing my instinct was to defy form, but I very much sought in defying it to affirm it, an irony that was difficult enough to articulate, much less defend. But the wood, the feel of it, the smell of it, the weight of it. It was so much more real than words. The wood was so simple. Dammit, a table was a table was a table.”