![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() But the riffs are so smart, so tough-minded and irreverent (“Other ethnicities have mottos. But it’s gloriously skeletal, sometimes misplaced and forgotten, and often there so that Beatty (and his narrator) have an excuse to riff on the things that matter most to them: race, politics, music, television, Los Angeles. And readers should be ecstatic he did.Īlthough readers should not go into this novel expecting plot, there is one (I’ve basically covered it above). But no one else could have written “The Sellout” but Paul Beatty. To put it another way: With every novel a writer should be asking him or herself this: If not me, then who? If the answer is, lots of people (and with lots of contemporary novels, including plenty of well-regarded ones, that is exactly the answer), well, then maybe the novelist should write something else. I know I’m making these novels sound idiosyncratic, and that’s fine, just as long as idiosyncrasy is seen not merely as whimsy or self-indulgence but rather as an essential element of any novel’s greatness. ![]()
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