Erasure: A Novel
Oct 2011 · Sold by Graywolf Press
4.1star
19 reviews
Ebook
272
Pages
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Eligible
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About this ebook
Percival Everett's blistering satire about race and publishing, now adapted for the screen as the Academy Award-winning AMERICAN FICTION, directed by Cord Jefferson and starring Jeffrey Wright
Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies—his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer's, and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father's suicide seven years before.
In his rage and despair, Monk dashes off a novel meant to be an indictment of Juanita Mae Jenkins's bestseller. He doesn't intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is—under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh—and soon it becomes the Next Big Thing. How Monk deals with the personal and professional fallout galvanizes this audacious, hysterical, and quietly devastating novel.
Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies—his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer's, and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father's suicide seven years before.
In his rage and despair, Monk dashes off a novel meant to be an indictment of Juanita Mae Jenkins's bestseller. He doesn't intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is—under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh—and soon it becomes the Next Big Thing. How Monk deals with the personal and professional fallout galvanizes this audacious, hysterical, and quietly devastating novel.
Ratings and reviews
4.1
19 reviews
Richard Walker
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August 29, 2024
I know, after reading, why I should care about the experience had. As I read on, (I brought plan to finish the book), this rating could be revised upward.
Andrea Marbury
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April 30, 2014
So laugh out loud and shamefully funny. Beware
2 people found this review helpful
About the author
Percival Everett is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of seventeen novels, including I Am Not Sidney Poitier, The Water Cure, Wounded, and Glyph.
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