The Brother from Another Planet

"and we the privileged few / from metal folding chairs in the dark / peep-a-show the world presents The Brother from Another Planet / you tell the white boy made it / the audacity / to think that / black people were universal slaves / when we are fucked on earth / thats all / just fucked up on earth"

~~ from "Princess Cruises" in Big Bank Take Little Bank by Paul Beatty

broken but unhealed

"white boys steady leanin in / truly believin this is the best movie theyve ever seen / but none of em asked josh gibson to slo-dance / across the color line that / falls in an iowa field / broken but unhealed"

~~ from "Daryl Strawberry Asleep In A Field of Dreams" in Big Bank Take Little Bank by Paul Beatty

Joker, Joker, Deuce

Only July 30, The novelist-in-residence at L.U.S.K. finished Paul Beatty's Joker, Joker, Deuce.

Booker Prize to Beatty

A few days ago, I recognized Paul Beatty's Man Booker Prize win for The Sellout with five fun tweets.



check your prose

This is a slightly modified version of a comment I never posted at The Chronicle of Higher Education after reading "Check Your History."

I wouldn't reduce Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind to the category of "memoirs of oppressed white men," and I'd also argue that Bloom and his text, and perhaps Saul Bellow's Ravelstein as a reader's companion to, are far more intriguing than Tal's tiny essay, even if I disagree with Bloom's political orientation as well as his hilarious, if minimizing, thoughts on Nietzsche and Mick Jagger.

Anyway, Fortgang is much more of a cliche than an interesting writer, and, yes, he's 18 or 19 and we're supposed to think of him as innocent or allowed to be naive or something like that. Still, it's rather disturbing that his "Checking My Privilege" is getting so much more attention than, say, chapter 5 of Fight for Your Long Day, "Check Your Package At The Door," which offers a fuller, richer, darker, and funnier look at the academy and what goes on between classes.

But back to Tal, this fine reminder that most of us "whites" have not been white for much more than a century, or even half of one, is my favorite essay response to the original, 

And here is two to twenty cents from The New Yorker.

I've also been getting into the anger and satire of Paul Beatty's first two novels and thinking of them within the context of the very recent Ta-Nehisi Coates article on reparations to African-Americans. I may write more on this later, and at the least, I'm hoping that Tal Fortgang reads it.

The B.K. Lounge

After finishing Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle, I've moved onto Tuff, wherein the main character is seized with love at first sight whilst staring at the fly fry girl at a Burger King. I turn to the internet, and the first story I find staring back is news that Burger King is changing its slogan of 40 years; the royal Whoppers are moving from "Have It Your Way" to "Be Your Way." No doubt the stress of such a transition will weigh down on most of us.

I suppose all roads lead back to De La Soul.

L. A. Books

I've recently been enjoying novels set mainly in Southern California such as The White Boy Shuffle and How To Get Into The Twin Palms. I've also been following So Cal fires and oil spills, and I'm even getting e-mail  on L.A. social-justice "gap year" programs.

So, naturally, I took it all as a sign that I was due to link and list:

Novels:

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty

Chump Change by Dan Fante

Ask the Dust by John Fante

Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante

The Road To Los Angeles by John Fante

Which Side Are You On? by Ryan Lee Wong

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

The Player by Michael Tolkien

How To Get Into the Twin Palms by Karolina Waclawiak

Memoir:

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski

Fante by Dan Fante

Splinters by Leslie Jamison

I'll add links and other books soon, but please feel free to note your own in a comment.