On Tuesday, at 4:50pm Eastern Standard Time, Paul Beatty, a California-born author, became the first American to win the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout.
In awarding the most prestigious award for fiction in the UK, the judges of the Man Booker chose a very specifically American novel. Beatty himself has made a career for himself by observing the beauty and horror of American life, and capturing it in his stories in a manner that is both deeply troubling and shockingly funny–and The Sellout is no exception. The book itself opens as our narrator, Bonbon, stands in front of the Supreme Court. A black man from a forgotten town near Los Angeles, Bonbon grew up with his father, a controversial sociologist, who used Bonbon as a subject in his racially-charged psychological studies. Bonbon has spent his life believing that his father’s long-promised memoir will justify all their struggles–but when his father is killed in a drive-by shooting, it is revealed that there is, and never was, a memoir. Lost, in despair, and determined to right what wrongs he can, Bonbon decides to find a way to put his tiny town on the map. The way he does this? By attempting to reinstate slavery and to segregate the local high school–the act that ultimately lands him in front of the Supreme Court.
A man who has built his career on challenging stereotypes, and questioning our inability to overcome the effects of history, The Sellout is Beatty’s fourth novel. His debut novel, The White Boy Shuffle, about a black surfer in Los Angeles, came out in 1996. He published two more novels, Tuff in 2000, and Slumberland in 2008, and edited an anthology of African-American comic writing. The Sellout met with rave reviews when it was released; the Wall Street Journal called it ““Swiftian satire of the highest order. Like someone shouting fire in a crowded theatre, Mr Beatty has whispered ‘Racism’ in a postracial world”. But it didn’t cause an enormous stir, perhaps, as The Guardian points out, because it is so different from the standard fare, and it’s humor is so risky. And even though the book won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award, it still has flown under a lot of readers’ radars–until now, of course.
Amanda Foreman, the Chair of the Judges’ Panel, said that Beatty’s victory was a unanimous decision, in part because of his willingness to write a book that challenges so many, and on so many levels. In her speech during the award ceremony, she noted, “It plunges into the heart of contemporary American society with absolutely savage wit of the kind I haven’t seen since Swift or Twain…It manages to eviscerate every social nuance, every sacred cow, while making us laugh and also making us wince … It is really a novel for our times.” As to the language (and delicate subject matter) in the book, Foreman noted “Paul Beatty has said being offended is not an emotion. That’s his answer to the reader”, emphasizing the critical role of satire to comment on modern-day issues.
The win is also a coup for Oneworld, Beatty’s publisher, who also published last year’s Man Booker Prize winner, Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings.
If you’d like to hear Beatty’s talk after his award about race and America and stories, check out the video below–and be sure to check out The Sellout soon!
http://youtu.be/U6ycBUNBFnU