'The Sellout' a Must Buy

After finding success with volumes of poetry, Paul Beatty found attention as a fiction author in 1996 with his debut novel, "The White Boy Shuffle," which tells the story of a young black man’s upbringing in Santa Monica and his unlikely rise to stardom in Los Angeles. "The Sellout" riffs on similar themes, chronicling key events in the coming-of-age of its unnamed narrator and exploring notions of race, class, and inequality with a sharp edge. Beatty’s is an excoriating satire that manages to address contemporary issues with a fascinating blend of recklessness, sensitivity, tenderness, and humor—an appropriately complex mélange of sentiments and tones, given the novel’s relentlessly complex subject matter.

By Courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux

It is set in the fictional locale of Dickens, Calif.—a so-called "agrarian ghetto" so inundated with ignorance, violence, and poverty that, near the start of the novel, the state decides to disown the town, refusing to acknowledge its existence altogether. Responses to this turn of events vary—some people are left feeling disenfranchised, others relieved that the shameful city has gotten its just desserts. Still others, like the narrator and eponymous "sellout" feel compelled to take action to revitalize the town. He settles on an unconventional action: the reestablishment of racial segregation in Dickens. From this provocative premise, Beatty’s novel launches into an irreverent examination of the present age of race and its discontents.

The vicinity of Dickens is inhabited by such idiosyncratic residents as the narrator’s father, a social theorist who constantly uses his son in psychological experiments aimed at investigating the dynamics of race in America; Hominy Jenkins, an aging, former child star known for his demeaning slapstick roles in the "Little Rascals" shorts; Marpessa, the protagonist’s childhood friend and on-again-off-again romantic interest who becomes a co-conspirator in his schemes; and Foy Cheshire, an imperious intellectual rival to the protagonist’s father and a staunch opponent to the protagonist’s efforts to revive Dickens. Such characters and their various interactions provide Beatty with rich opportunities to satirize the ways in which a variety of different types of personalities react to the travails of modern life.

The vision of the modern world portrayed by "The Sellout" is a bleak one, to be sure, and the narrator’s often cynical perspective on the events around him seems a natural consequence of his experiences there. It is a world in which there exists a rural community whose continued presence is so ignominious that California feels most comfortable literally taking it off the map. It is a world in which the last of the once-beloved Little Rascals of yore is now a widely reviled figure, possessed of a servility and self-loathing so intense as to approach suicidal.

In the case of the narrator’s father, it is also a world where a man respected and renowned for his effectiveness as a crisis negotiator in standoffs between the law enforcement and the denizens of Dickens can himself be fatally shot in a confrontation with police, in an incident that seems as completely avoidable as it is tragic. Details like this are an important part of what gives "The Sellout" its pathos. As absurd as some of the circumstances in "The Sellout" may seem, others are painfully true-to-life, and remind the audience that cruel absurdities—not unlike those depicted in the novel—are elements found in reality as well.

It is a testament to the author’s writing skill that, despite its nearly incessant gloom, the novel remains captivating. Beatty’s prose crackles with wit and relatability throughout the story. The author deftly utilizes evocative similes and clever allusions to illustrate his points, as when he describes the public opinion of Hominy Jenkins as that of "a mark of shame on the African-American legacy, something to be eradicated, stricken from the racial record, like the hambone, Amos ’n’ Andy, Dave Chappelle’s meltdown, and people who say ‘Valentime’s Day.’" Erudite scholars of history and the ardent devotees of popular culture alike may find references to appreciate in the text.

It is worth noting that "The Sellout" is not a book that shies away from incorporating coarse or derogatory language in its dialogue or narration. Characters in this novel sling the word "nigger" around with a frequency and casualty that could cause "Django Unchained’s" hellfire criers to blush. Beatty consistently spells the epithet with the "-er" ending rather than using the variant "nigga"—a phrase that some might deem friendlier and potentially more palatable—in a decision that seems calculated to make the discourse presented by the novel seem more frank and unequivocal. If readers can slough off their potential discomfort with this phenomenon, they are likely to find that this, too, strengthens the narrative.

At the end of the "The Sellout," after countless pastiches, critiques, and indictments of Black America, White America, and America in general, it may be difficult to imagine the book ending on an even remotely hopeful note. But to its credit, it does so gracefully, and transitions in its final pages away from its relentless mode of cynicism and towards a quiet, more ponderous mood. After all the hijinks and antics that filled the previous pages, this is a significant shift, yet it feels like an appropriate denouement to the outrageous events, and affords the reader a chance to meditate on the story without forcing the book to summarize its main drives in a way that feels jarringly didactic out of place. This is the final success of Paul Beatty’s work: It does not attempt to forcibly impress its purpose or identity on readers, but instead allows them a latitude to make of it what they will.

—Staff writer C. E. Chiemeka Ezie can be reached at claude-michael.ezie@thecrimson.com.