Erasure - by Percival Everett (Paperback)

About the Book

"Thelonius "Monk" Ellison is an erudite, accomplished but seldom-read author who insists on writing obscure literary papers rather than the so-called "ghetto prose" that would make him a commercial success. He finally succumbs to temptation after seeing the Oberlin-educated author of We's Lives in da Ghetto during her appearance on a talk show, firing back with a parody called My Pafology, which he submits to his startled agent under the gangsta pseudonym of Stagg R. Leigh. Ellison quickly finds himself with a six-figure advance from a major house, a multimillion-dollar offer for the movie rights and a monster bestseller on his hands. The money helps with a family crisis, allowing Ellison to care for his widowed mother as she drifts into the fog of Alzheimer's, but it doesn't ease the pain after his sister, a physician, is shot by right-wing fanatics for performing abortions. The dark side of wealth surfaces when both the movie mogul and talk-show host demand to meet the nonexistent Leigh, forcing Ellison to don a disguise and invent a sullen, enigmatic character to meet the demands of the market. The final indignity occurs when Ellison becomes a judge for a major book award and My Pafology (title changed to Fuck) gets nominated, forcing the author to come to terms with his perverse literary joke."--Publisher's description.

Book Synopsis

Percival Everett's blistering satire about race and publishing, now adapted for the screen as AMERICAN FICTION, directed by Cord Jefferson and starring Jeffrey Wright and Tracee Ellis Ross

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.

Review Quotes

**A New York Times Book Review "100 Best Books of the 21st Century"**
**One of The Atlantic's "Great American Novels"**

"Erasure is as watertight and hilarious a satire as, say, [Evelyn Waugh's] Scoop . . . [Everett] is a first-rate word wrangler." --Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian

"With equal measures of sympathy and satire, [Erasure] craftily addresses the highly charged issue of being 'black enough' in America." --Jenifer Berman, The New York Times Book Review

"An over-the-top masterpiece. . . . Percival's talent is multifaceted, sparked by a satiric brilliance that could place him alongside Wright and Ellison as he skewers the conventions of racial and political correctness." --Publishers Weekly

"A scathingly funny look at racism and the book business: editors, publishers, readers, and writers alike." --Booklist

"More genuine and tender than much of Everett's previous work, but no less impressive intellectually: a high point in an already substantial literary career." --Kirkus Reviews

"The sharp satire on American publishers and American readers that Everett puts forward is delicious, though it won't win him many friends among the sentimental educated class who want to read something serious about black inner-city life without disturbing any of their stereotypes." --Chicago Tribune

"Few works dismantle liberal pieties about racial politics as deftly and thoroughly as Everett's Erasure. . . . The aesthetically layered masterpiece offers a scathing critique of American racism even as it dramatizes, through Monk's extended reflections on the purpose of art, the absurdity of the idea that Black artists must always write about race." --Meghan O'Rourke, The Atlantic's "Great American Novels"

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.