What, the reader wonders, could a weed-smoking, black manual worker from one of the roughest neighbourhoods in the US have done to wind up in front of the Supreme Court? Those tempted to follow the stereotypes will be disappointed to find that Bonbon is not standing on a drug charge, or a murder, or even petty gangland violence.
Never snuck into the movies or failed to give back the extra change to a drugstore cashier indifferent to the ways of mercantilism and minimum-wage expectations…” The story opens with Bonbon sitting in front of the Supreme Court, defending himself in the aptly named case Me v The United States of America: “This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I’ve never stolen anything. The novel’s narrator, Bonbon Me (aka The Sellout), is a black farmer from a small town south of Los Angeles called Dickens. And what a pity that would have been because The Sellout is one of the funniest books, one of the most sophisticated and satisfying comedies, I have read in a very long time.
Paul Beatty’s brilliant satire of Blackness in a small Los Angeles suburb would probably have passed most British readers by had it not been given the prestigious award recently. Winning the Booker Prize isn’t always a sign of a book’s quality but it always ensures a dramatic spike in sales.
0 kommentar(er)
