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Paul Beatty

Autor(a) de The Sellout

11+ Works 4,625 Membros 165 Críticas 11 Favorited

About the Author

Paul Beatty was born in Los Angeles, California in 1962. He received an MFA in creative writing from Brooklyn College and an MA in psychology from Boston University. In 1990, he became the first Grand Poetry Slam Champion of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. One of the prizes for winning was the book deal, mostrar mais which resulted in his first collection of poetry, Big Bank Takes Little Bank. His novels include The White Boy Shuffle, Tuff, and Slumberland. The Sellout won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and the 2016 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Image credit: www.dentontaylor.com Brooklyn Lit Festival 2008

Obras por Paul Beatty

The Sellout (2015) 3,252 exemplares
The White Boy Shuffle (1996) 720 exemplares
Tuff (2000) 243 exemplares
Slumberland (2009) 225 exemplares
Joker, Joker, Deuce (1994) 69 exemplares
Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor (2006) — Editor — 65 exemplares
Heron Fleet (2013) 3 exemplares
Children of Fire (2017) 1 exemplar

Associated Works

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (2020) — Contribuidor — 169 exemplares
Granta 53: News (1996) — Contribuidor — 124 exemplares
A Way Out of No Way: Writing about Growing Up Black in America (1996) — Contribuidor — 33 exemplares
California Uncovered: Stories For The 21st Century (2005) — Contribuidor — 31 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Membros

Críticas

It's a smart book, but novel-length satire just isn't my bag. You know, it's enough already.
 
Assinalado
lelandleslie | 130 outras críticas | Feb 24, 2024 |
This is a tragicomic tour-de-force.
 
Assinalado
ben_r47 | 130 outras críticas | Feb 22, 2024 |
The opening of Paul Beatty's "The Sellout" could be the most shocking beginning for a novel I have ever read, or am likely to read. I started laughing -- out-loud --from the get-go and didn't finish until 288 pages later. He gives me passages as funny as some of the best in John Barth's "The Sot-Weed Factor," Sterne's "Tristram Shandy," "Candide," "The Yawning Heights" by Alexander Zinoviev, even the greatest of them all, Cervantes' "Don Quixote."

It is so shocking partially because of the language, as bald and brash as the toughest rap, and flying across conventions of polite society like black fly season in Northern Ontario. It stings and it really hurts.

Beatty's anti-hero, variously called Bon-Bon, Me, and "The Sellout" is like a blackface Thomas Jefferson in modern-day Los Angeles: a farmer, a slave-owner, and an erudite provocateur. A true Californian proud of his sweet fruit. And hilariously proud of his genetically-modified watermellons. I told you it stings!

Angry that the County of Los Angeles has amalgamated his neighbourhood, Dickens, he sets on a path of renewal by reintroducing segregation into the American way of life. Really apartheid. And his plans succeed when poor black youth show growing school test scores and neighbourhood institutions show a revival.

I can tell you from first hand experience that Americans do not like to think of their great political experiment as a failure. Beatty shoves it in their faces.

Given the current turn of events in the US Government, Beatty's contention that integration doesn't work, that white Americans don't like Mexicans, Asians, Aboriginal Americans any more than black Americans rings true. Especially that so many white Americans count themselves at the bottom of the body politic.

Integration never sufficiently answered the biggest questions asked of a contemporary black American: who am I? How do I become myself?

Not just questions for black Americans, or Angelenos. Great questions for us all.

If a certain sadness pervades the novel, it could almost be read as a requiem for the Obama years where so much anticipation was built up only to be deflated by an intransigent Republican Congress.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
MylesKesten | 130 outras críticas | Jan 23, 2024 |
OK, but didn't finish in three week loan period and was unable to get again.
 
Assinalado
jsolar | 130 outras críticas | Jan 22, 2024 |

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Erez Volk Translator

Estatísticas

Obras
11
Also by
4
Membros
4,625
Popularidade
#5,445
Avaliação
3.8
Críticas
165
ISBN
107
Línguas
12
Marcado como favorito
11

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