Rating: 2.5* of fiveThe Publisher Says: 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 re...

This is the story of a black author, artist and intellectual who is greatly respected in small circles, yet has not (and does not seek) fame for his talents. On a lark he writes a ridiculously over-the-top racist “pop” novel of massively stereotyped “ghetto” and submits it anonymously. To his great chagrin it becomes a best seller and he becomes wealthy overnight. The story weaves his youth as a black man in America with his professional family in a most skilful and interesting way. The struggle...

This was a brilliant, funny, idiosyncratic novel which combines the realistic and the metafictional in the mind and work of a literature professor Thelonius Ellison. Ellison, known as 'Monk' is a prickly academic thinks about texts and semiotics in almost mathematical terms, writes abstruse, difficult novels which have been selling less and less well, is embroiled in academic feuds about issues made purposely arcane and, to the outsider's view, as funny-vicious Nabokovian examples of academic in...

If Erasure is about anything, it’s about identity. Ones we invent for ourselves, ones we invent for others, ones that are forced on us, and ones that we lose. From the first page, the novel’s protagonist, Thelonius “Monk” Ellison, tries to establish his:I have dark brown skin, curly hair, a broad nose, some of my ancestors were slaves and I have been detained by pasty white policemen in New Hampshire, Arizona and Georgia and so the society in which I live tells me I am black; that is my race. Th...

The satire here is in your face - (a novel within the novel, and the within novel written in stereotypical dialect) - but it is also subtle, with artistic and musical allusions and wordplay. The dialogue simmers but is nuanced. We see words heard differently. As the within protagonist ponders while listening to the rich dude's daughter: She say that last part real slow and it make me nervous, wondering what she be meanin, cause I know she be signifyin. I could have told him: women always be sign...

This is the second novel I've read by Percival Everett and I've decided after reading this one that I'm going to continue and read another one. Everett's novels are challenging because the reader has to do more work than usual to read and understand. His books could be described as experimental. They often contain what I would call commercial breaks - passages or dialogue that interrupt the story but that put emphasis on various themes that are part of the novel or not. In Erasure the main chara...

On Not Fitting In Racism is, of course, one of a large family of cultural behaviours which includes misogyny, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, among many others. We are told by sociologists that these behaviours are in some sense ‘normal’ because we have a natural human preference for those who are like ourselves. Folk have a right to value what they know and feel familiar with, politicians say. Because such preferences are instinctive, there is really no way to inhibit them, lawyer

"I feel generally out of place," says the protagonist Thelonious "Monk" Ellison near the end of this astounding book. Me too. And perhaps that's why this book hits me so personally that I almost can't see straight.Funny, moving, and—as with the seven other Percival Everett books I've read—unexpected and unpredictable, the paperback of Erasure is printed in a tiny font, and I was glad because I didn't want it to end. I often stopped reading in order to prolong the pleasure.Without ruining your sw...

Thus my P.E. obsession loses its vestigial tail and sprouts wings . . .Initially, I wanted to read through a few reviews to see how anyone really had the ballsgumptioncojonesintestinal fortitudeaudacityinsipidnessignoranceloveto write a review. My favorite artist is Basquiat. "Is" because although he is dead, he lives on through the massiveness of his art. Anyone who has seen his art in the flesh (and they do seem to be breathing, layers upon layers of thoughts like skin whispering to be peeled

The protagonist of Erasure, a novelist named Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, is having trouble getting his most recent work published when he comes across the work of an "authentic" black novelist whose book "We's Lives in Da Ghetto" is a runaway bestseller. Horrified by the stereotypes and the dialect in it, he sets out (angrily) to write a book just as horrible and titles it "My Pafology" (later changing the name to something that the publisher suggests he spells 'Phuck' so as not to alienate more

This conversation between the artists de Kooning and Rauschenbergappears in the middle of Percival Everett’s Erasure. Apparently something like this actually happened, but never mind. Everett’s version is at the heart of the title and spirit of the novel. Rauschenberg exchanges a roof repair job for one of de Kooning’s drawings. Four weeks later: Rauschenberg: Well, it took me forty erasers, but I did it. de Kooning: Did what? R: Erased it. The picture you drew for me. K: You erased my picture?

A strange blend of family drama and razor-sharp satire. Thelonious Ellison is an academic writer in the mould of Barthes or Derrida, whose unreadable novels upset and alienate colleagues and readers. Riled by the rise of cheap and racist "ghetto-lit," he pens a satire against the genre, which becomes unbearably popular.Despite this mouthwatering premise, however, most of Erasure is about Ellison's relationship with his mother, a passionate woman succumbing to Alzhemier's. The story is a touching...

All right, so, admittedly, this is not a perfect book. It's not. The parody inset arguably goes on too long (though actually I could be convinced on that). I was much more interested in the publishing and soi-disant avant-gardist parts than the family drama parts (though there again, I suspect the family drama may be part of the point, both about form and about the 'easy lives' of those who aren't 'black enough'). But none of that stops this from being one fucking hell of a great book, or Everet...

Welcome y’oll to the experiment of intellectual prostitution. Please take a sit and remain quiet during the performance. The nerves of the players have been stretched just enough that they are on the verge of a breakdown from any minute now. How do you call a book that gives voice to fears so inherent to what you are that it takes time to pinpoint them and then, present them as not being a part of yourself and hence, you should not trip over your own feet?free therapy? It could not have been a b...

Well - This was an extrememly thought provoking book and I would have given it five stars had it not been so thought provoking at times that I had some difficulty following where the author wanted me to go. I felt the work dense -- and unfortunately I don't know Latin beyond the rudimentary and it was hard at the end to make sense of the big picture that Everett wqas painting.But I do understand what he meant by alienation. What happens when you don't belong anywhere? And the issues he speaks to...

ERASURE was published eight years ago, in 2001, before the J.T. Leroy hoax was outed and before the eerily echoing current debate over the film PRECIOUS. it's hard to discuss the novel without talking about its elaborate plot and book-within-a-book structure. here's PW's gloss: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 succu...

How do you review a book about race? You don’t talk about it God, writing about race as a white liberal is hard work. I just wish someone could put it all together for me in a nice readable narrative package so I can consume it and make the right evaluative noises and ultimately approve of the heinous effects of racism on us as humans. And I wish I could get a laugh at the same time, ironic, of course.Race is re-ignited whenever someone has enough anger to either fight for it or against it. I, b...

It's not exactly a secret that black writers are often lauded for creating works that feature characters who play into stereotypes of hopelessness and deprivation. Meanwhile, black writers who create books about characters who're are just people that happen to be black are often ignored. That's the underlying idea behind this amazingly thoughtful and unique book. The plot? A professor specializes in Greek literary theory, among other obscure topics. Yet, his books are placed in the black section...

Funny, cutting, true - what more do you want?

Everett is brilliant and willing to take big risks. He̕s part storyteller (typical realistic family relationships, with deaths and memories, etc), part parodist (there̕s a long section of the novel that̕s an over-the-top gritty black novel in lingo), part satirist (of academia, writers, marketing writers, news media), part Vonnegutesque spinner of short pieces of wisdom peppered throughout. The main point of the novel is to satirize the stereotype of black writers and how much it holds back blac...