The Sellout by Paul Beatty
I bought this book as an emergency purchase at Sydney airport while waiting to board my plane to Hanoi. This turned out to be a good call by my travelling companion. I had inadvertently booked us on a discount flight with no in flight entertainment.
Far from been the expected trash that you find at the airport I knew that there was going to be something good about this book. I knew this because I had bought a copy of it for my little brother not long before. I had bought it because it had won the Man Booker. I’m a huge fan of the prize and am yet to be disappointed by any novel that has won the prestigious award.
Not your normal novel
As I began reading I knew that I had picked up a novel that you don’t read every day. I stared in shock and laughed out loud at the description of self-pleasure that the Narrator gives us in the first paragraph of the book.
As people in the departure lounge stole furtive glances at me I knew two things: I was likely going to love this book; many people would be offended by it. As satire, this meant that the book had hit its mark.
The story is super inappropriate throughout. Through the narrator’s ability to say what you are not allowed to say Beatty is able to raise some very thought provoking ideas.
Laugh out Loud!
It’s laugh out loud funny. But you can’t tell anyone what you’re laughing at, because if you do then they’ll think you’re crazy or a sicko. I think that this sums up the writing style perfectly – it isn’t what is said, it’s how it is told.
As a reader what you relate about the story pales in comparison to Beatty’s words. Not only does it pale it loses all meaning. It got to the point as I giggled away to myself on the flight that I just had to keep telling my travelling companion that I couldn’t explain why it was so funny.
Beatty is a master of satire. He takes the realness of a thing and interrogates it from a completely unexpected angle. This serves the dual purpose of making the process and outcome hilarious as well as making us think about an idea in a new way – or analyze something that we take for granted
What are the themes?
The story looks at many concepts and ideas but the main theme that carries through the novel is that of race in modern America. It casts its light on this topic that people don’t want to talk about or they don’t feel that they are allowed to talk about. Beatty throws the closet door open and drags the issue, bleary eyed, out into the daylight.
If you can get past the vulgarity and inappropriateness of the material and the way in which it is presented you will find that this is one of the best and well crafted novels you have ever read.
