If you are a connoisseur of American fiction and try to keep up with the latest books on the best-seller list, especially those with an African-American perspective, I would urge you to see the movie American Fiction – the directorial debut of Cord Jefferson, starring Jeffrey Wright.
Based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett, the movie tells the story of a Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, who is Black. Raised in Boston and a graduate of an Ivy League school, Monk, as he is referred to in the movie, is the scion of a well-to-do and highly educated Black family with a summer house on Cape Cod. His late father was a doctor, as are his brother and sister. His life experience is as far removed as it comes from an underprivileged person living in the inner city of Cleveland, New York or Chicago.
Monk has chosen literature as his field of study and has a PhD. He is a professor at a college in California and has published several books, none of which have made the big time. His latest submission to his publisher was rejected as “not Black enough.”
As the movie opens, Monk has run afoul of the administration at the university where he teaches over the use of the N-word in the title of a short story by acclaimed southern novelist Flannery O’Conner. A white student was offended, and Monk refuses to back down from the use of the literary work, which he feels has literary and cultural value.
As a result of the hearing, the university puts him on leave and suggests he attend a literary seminar in Boston which will also allow him to spend some time with his family. This proves timely since his elderly mother is facing dementia and needs additional care, but not good for his pocketbook and his career.
While attending the seminar, a best-selling novel entitled We’s Lives in Da Ghetto is discussed. Monk is critical of the book which he feels panders to black stereotypes and leaves him in disgust. To prove his point, he writes his own satirical novel set in the ghetto with all the stereotypical images of Black people, such as deadbeat dads, gang violence, drugs, guns and incarceration. The book is written under the pen name “Stagg R. Leigh,” who is described as an ex-con and fugitive who has warrants for his arrest so he can’t identify himself publicly.
The novel’s original title was My Pafology. When the publishers respond to the novel with rave reviews, Monk attempts to sabotage the book by insisting that the title of the book be changed to Fuck, a name that he assumes will never fly. But to his chagrin the publisher caves into his demands. Monk must ghettoize his voice when speaking to the publishers — which I found one of the most comic parts of the movie. The irony of the movie is that the literary elite takes the work as serious literature.
Monk’s character is trying to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the literary world. All Black people do not live in the ghetto; do not speak in the dialect of the ghetto; and do not live as the characters portrayed in his satire. But no one wants to listen. By the movie’s end Fuck has become a best seller and Monk is offered millions for the movie rights.
As a prolific reader who tries to keep up with the latest books on the best-seller list, especially by Black authors, the movie really struck a chord with me. Contemporaneous with seeing the movie I was in the process of plowing my way through a historical novel by a well-known African-Caribbean author. I won’t mention her name, but her books have been widely acclaimed in literary circles. Several years ago, I tackled one of her works and gave up. When her most recent book came out, I was determined to read it, because of the rave reviews — even a recommendation in the New Yorker magazine. When I got a used copy at the library for $1.50, I thought I struck pay dirt.
After reading three reviews and a summary, I managed to make it through 150 pages before I decided that I was getting nothing out of the book, did not understand the plot and was totally confused. I was mildly disgusted with a subplot that involved the main character who had sex with the man she worked for who happened to be her cousin and her pining over the same cousin’s dead wife, whom she also had an affair with — all of which I only figured out from reading the reviews and the summary.
Another case in point is Colson Whitehead’s 2016 historical novel The Underground Railroad. President Barack Obama put it on this favorite book list. The book got a Pulitzer Prize. Of course, I ran out and got a copy — fortunately from the library.
With a decent knowledge of the underground railroad, I expected a lot. However, I did not expect a science fiction account of some slaves boarding an actual train that they discovered in an underground passage which transported them forward in time or was it backward. I don’t remember.
I’m a pretty good reader, but the story made no sense and was hard to follow. I also gave up on watching the made-for-TV series based on the book after the first 20 minutes or so. While Whitehead’s 2019 book, The Nickel Boys, about Black youths in a Florida reform school/penal institution, was very good, his 2021 book Harlem Shuffle left me confused and frustrated and made me very glad that I got it out of the library. But Whitehead makes millions, so what can I say.
As frequent readers of CoolCleveland and the staff at the Beachwood Branch of the Cuyahoga County Library are aware, I’m a prolific reader. I have a circle of friends who read and with whom I compare and share books and participate in several book clubs. But it’s amazing how many times people in my circle — well-read folks with graduate degrees, a couple of whom are college professors — read some of these acclaimed books and end up saying the same thing as I do — if I can be so vulgar — WTF. Sometimes I wonder if I read the same book that critics and reviewers label as works.
I read close to 80 books last year. Some I liked. Some I disliked. I admit to being a curmudgeon who grew up in a different era. But I also know that when I read a book and don’t understand it, there are a lot of people less educated than I am who must be struggling to figure out the author’s message or lying about reading and/or understanding the book.
Sometimes I wonder if some of these books are like the emperor’s new clothes. That’s the not-so-subtle message of American Fiction. If you are a reader of contemporary African-American literature, I think that you will agree with me. Even if you are not, I strongly recommend the movie. It has a message well worth hearing.
C. Ellen Connally is a retired judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court. From 2010 to 2014 she served as the President of the Cuyahoga County Council. An avid reader and student of American history, she is a former member of the Board of the Ohio History Connection, and past president of the Cleveland Civil War Round Table, and is currently vice president of the Cuyahoga County Soldiers and Sailors Monument Commission. She holds degrees from BGSU, CSU and is all but dissertation for a PhD from the University of Akron.