Ep 743 - The Sellout, by Paul Beatty

Summary

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Overdue Ep 743 – The Sellout, by Paul Beatty (February 23, 2026)

Episode Overview

In this episode, hosts Craig and Andrew dive into Paul Beatty's 2015 satirical novel The Sellout, a Booker Prize-winning work provocatively dissecting race, identity, and community in America. Through Beatty’s absurdist, comic lens, the hosts untangle the dense, nonlinear structure of the novel—exploring its biting humor, challenging themes, and the ways in which it both satirizes and laments the myth of a "post-racial" United States.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background on Paul Beatty and the Book

• Awards & Recognitions: The Sellout is Beatty’s fourth novel and, as Andrew notes, his "most significant" (07:00). It won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and was the first US-authored book to win the Booker Prize after that award’s eligibility expanded.
• Beatty’s Career & Style:
  • Earlier works include The White Boy Shuffle (1996) and edited anthology Hokum: An Anthology of African American Humor (2006).
  • Beatty’s writing style is marked by sharp wit, riff-heavy absurdism, and an embrace of “the profane” (15:21).
  • He resists being labeled purely a satirist: “Everybody’s very comfortable with saying, oh, you’re a satirist… For personal freedom reasons, I say, no, that’s not me. I just write whatever it is, is what it is.” – Beatty via LitHub (15:21)

2. Tone, Structure, and Style

• Voice & Structure: The book is described as a “gonzo” but intentionally fragmented narrative with essay-like digressions and an “avalanche” of wit and satire (11:32; 13:44).
• Humor as Subversion: The hosts wrestle with delivering the humor: “It is a funny book. I will probably do a bad job of conveying the humor here on our podcast.” – Craig (11:22)
• Satire vs. Reality: Much of Beatty’s outlandish fiction is rooted in real social issues and experiences (“even some of the more ridiculous stuff… is sort of real or definitely based in something” – Andrew, 15:30).

3. Major Themes

• Race & Community: The book probes the erasure of Black communities and the complexity of Black identity, especially in its satirical presentation of “post-racial America” (34:14).
• Offense & Political Correctness: Beatty questions the nature of being “offended” and the purpose of political incorrectness: "He is definitely interested in writing, like, intentionally sort of provocative or taboo things in order to make whatever point it is that he is trying to make.” – Andrew (17:01)
• The Absurdity of Solutions: The plot’s wild premise—a Black man in LA reinstitutes slavery and segregation to “restore” his erased hometown—serves as a satire of both racial systems and expectations of “solutions” to systemic problems.

4. Plot Breakdown & Notable Characters

High-Concept Summary (22:00–23:55)

• "A man in LA whose father is shot by cops, becomes a slave owner and reinstitutes segregation as a way to save his town, and it takes him to the Supreme Court... all those things do happen in the book, but it implies such a clean A to B to C, sort of through line—it’s not what the book really does." – Craig (22:32)
• The town of Dickens is erased from official maps and consciousness—a satirical take on urban gentrification and cultural erasure.

Key Characters

• Bon Bon ("Me"): The unnamed narrator, given the nickname for his "lucky" reputation (35:41). His story is a quest for identity and place, performed through the lens of his relationship to his father's social experiments and to the town.
• The Father (F.K. Me): A social psychologist fixated on liberation psychology, famous for conducting bizarre experiments on his son meant to "toughen" him to the realities of Black life (36:24–40:11).
• Foy Cheshire: A self-aggrandizing, faux-intellectual who capitalizes on multiculturalism with works like The Pejorative-Free Adventures and Intellectual Spiritual Journeys of African American Jim and His Young Protegé, White Brother Huckleberry Finn (42:17). A persistent foil for the narrator’s more authentic struggles.
• Hominy Jenkins: An aging, fictional former Little Rascals cast member, whose nostalgia for overt racism leads him to voluntarily become Bon Bon’s "slave"—a darkly comic device used to explore generational trauma and cultural memory (44:11–49:16).

Plot Points & Absurdist Set Pieces

• Segregation Party Bus (52:36–54:38)
  • For Hominy’s birthday, the bus is decorated with racist signage as a bizarre homage, leading to a sense of community resilience: "The racism takes them back, makes them humble, makes them realize how far we’ve come and more important, how far we have to go. On that bus, it’s like the specter of segregation has brought Dickens together." – Craig quoting (55:13)
• The School "Segregation" Plot (57:21–59:11)
  • A fake, all-white charter school is staged as a "threat," spurring unity and improved performance among Dickens’s Black students.
• Supreme Court Showdown (61:13)
  • The book’s climax lampoons courtroom drama and race politics but intentionally ends without a verdict—reflecting the unresolved nature of the questions Beatty raises.

5. Evaluating the Satire: Reception & Critique

• Polarizing Tone: “I don’t recall reading a book which I loved so much in the beginning and was so fed up with in the end. It’s too much of too much. There are about zero normal sentences and that was very tiring.” – Goodreads reviewer Joachim (67:27)
• American Context Dependency: Several reviewers note the book's reliance on references and issues deeply embedded in the American context, making it sometimes opaque for international readers (67:46).
• No "Likable" Protagonist: Beatty intentionally frustrates readers' wishes for a sympathetic character; instead, Bon Bon exists as a "frustrating" cipher for bigger ideas. “If the book is doing something else that’s interesting, it doesn’t need to be, you don’t need like a likable protagonist.” – Andrew (68:48)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Satire and Offense:
  • "He is definitely interested in writing, like, intentionally sort of provocative or taboo things in order to make whatever point it is that he is trying to make." – Andrew (17:01)
• Describing the Novel’s Style:
  • "Describing it is like trying to shove a lemon tree into a shot glass." – quoting Dwight Garner on The Sellout (11:41)
• On Hominy’s Tragic Absurdity:
  • "Hominy has this whole vibe throughout the book where he, like, wants to exist in a more racist world because…it provides some kind of psychic stability." – Craig (46:18)
• On the Book’s End:
  • "It ends with Foy, whose career has fallen…driving around Dickens waving an American flag because the black dude got inaugurated. And our narrator is like, why are you so excited? And Foy’s like, you just don’t get it. And the narrator is like, yeah, I don’t know." – Craig (64:00)

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Memorable Segment Timestamps

• Background on the Booker Prize (06:51–09:19)
• Beatty’s views on satire and the real (15:21)
• The challenge of capturing the novel’s humor (11:22–13:35)
• Absurd summary vs. meandering reality (22:00–24:00)
• Father’s twisted psychology experiments (36:24–40:11)
• The party bus and community "bonding" via racism (52:36–55:54)
• School segregation scheme (57:21–60:11)
• Mixed critical and reader responses (67:05–70:12)
• End of book and lingering questions (63:59–65:01)

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Final Takeaways

• The Sellout is not a straightforward narrative but a jagged, polemical, comic takedown of American race relations—one that prioritizes voice, risk-taking, and satirical digressions over conventional character arcs or resolutions.
• Both hosts agree the novel’s humor and structure are divisive, but Beatty’s willingness to provoke and his ability to draw real, often uncomfortable truths from absurd premises make the book a unique, resonant read—especially for those steeped in American culture and history.

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Recommended for: Readers seeking challenging satire, explorations of race and community, and narratives that play fast and loose with linearity and likability.

Not recommended for: Those looking for an easy, straightforward plot or a clearly “good” protagonist to root for.

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End of summary.

Transcript

[Andrew]

This is a Headgun podcast.

[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Andrew]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Well, let me first remind you that our relationship to food changes constantly. We are all evolving, Andrew and Marley Spoon is evolving with you like a little pocket monster. A pocket monster hungry to help you enjoy food and be efficient with your time. I started taking cooking more seriously a few years ago and Marley Spoon was a huge part of that. They've got a wide range of recipes and prepared meals that help you evolve into a more adventurous foodie and chef. I recently made a delicious caprese chicken and faro bowl for me and my wife a couple of years ago. I'm not sure I knew what Pharaoh was and here I am making a tasty bowl full of it. Thanks Marley Spoon.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is Crucial to enjoying any well told tale. They will not shy away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary. Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Hey everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew.

[Craig]

Andrew, is the record company gonna give you lots of money?

[Andrew]

Because I'm. Because I'm sanding down all of my tunes to make them more radio friendly.

[Craig]

Everything's gonna be all right. No more flipping bur putting on my silly hat. We're selling out here on Overdue this week.

[Andrew]

I think you're referencing a specific song that I do not know the lyrics.

[Craig]

It is. It is called Sellout by Real big Fish. They spelled real.

[Andrew]

They can't be tamed by record company executives.

[Craig]

Were you taken in by keeping it real by the ska, whatever wave of ska or whatever that was, but the boss tones that capture you the way it captured me, I was not captured by it.

[Andrew]

I was aware of it. I looked at it kind of from afar, but I was not. I was not captured by it.

[Craig]

I was taken in. I played the trumpet. So any band that had trumpets in it, I was so excited to hear them.

[Andrew]

That's. That's the. The Leo DiCaprio pointing guy.

[Craig]

It truly.

[Andrew]

Hey, that's my instrument.

[Craig]

It's mine on the radio every week.

[Andrew]

Speaking of selling out, every week one of us reads a book that we've never read before and we tell you about it. We tell the other person about it and we all have a good time. Time is had by all this week. Craig read the book and is going to tell me about it. Craig, what did you read and who was it by?

[Craig]

I read the Sellout by Paul Beatty. It's a 2015 novel. I think it's his fourth.

[Andrew]

His fourth novel, probably his most significant. It did. It won the 2015 National Books Critics Circle Award for fiction then it was the first book from a US author to win the Booker Prize, which was then called the Man Booker Prize, which is not about men. It's just about like the company that like administered it.

[Craig]

Also only the third year of eligibility for.

[Andrew]

It used to be. It used to be a literary prize awards of books published in the UK and Ireland. And then there was a rules change in 2013 that I think went into effect in 2014 that allowed books by authors from anywhere to be considered as long as they were published in English in the UK and Ireland.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

I feel like the.

[Craig]

We've talked about this prize. I don't think we've talked about this specific wrinkle of the prize.

[Andrew]

No, I was just. The only reason I dug into it this time is because I saw that it was a pr. Like even the, the Wikipedia thing of it still says at the top level that it's awarded to books published in the UK and Ireland. And I was like, oh, Paul Beatty must have lived in the uk, sure, or something at some point. And then I was like, well, it doesn't look like he did. So what's the deal with this prize? And you have to dig kind of deep to fig to figure out what happened. Samantha Harvey's Orbital also won the prize in 2024. We read that for the show a while back. I was just tickled by the description of it as not just the shortest book to win it, but the first book set in space to win it.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Which is getting specific in a way that feels like it tickles your baseball brain.

[Craig]

Yeah. Set in space, I suppose like a Star wars book has never been a long listed for the Booker Prize, you

[Andrew]

know, I bet not. I bet not. I bet there's been a lot of pressure to kind of to let that

[Craig]

stuff in, but don't let Kathleen Kennedy on your. Well, I mean, who knows anymore? But anyway.

[Andrew]

But Paul Beatty is born in 1962. He's an American author and professor. He's born in LA, goes to Boston University for undergrad and graduate school, graduates with an MA in psychology, later gets a creative writing MFA from Brooklyn College. His first published book was not a novel. It's a book of poetry called Big Bank Take Little bank, which is published in 1991. And it's a. The publication of the book was a prize that he won for a poetry slam competition.

[Craig]

Sure. Yeah.

[Andrew]

He wrote another book of poetry, Joker Joker deuce followed in 1994. Would have been a much funnier name for the second Joker movie, his first novel and probably his other most noteworthy book is the White Boy Shuffle, which is published in 1996.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And it is nearly impossible to summarize briefly.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

It's basically as I understand it, about a mixed race black man who becomes a quote unquote messiah for his people. Oh, and like the sellout. I think it does a lot of like satire and social commentary and. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, it's. It's funny, I think. I don't know that like you would call it a comedy, but it is funny. Sure way that satire can be funny. Other novels that he wrote are tough tuff. In 2000 and slumberland and. Which is not in 2015. I. That's my note, I think. 2008.

[Craig]

Yep. That's what I had in Columbia.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Yeah. And he edited a collection called Hokum, an Anthology of African American humor in 2006. This is a thing with him is. And we can talk about the role that humor plays in this book, but I think sometimes he. He finds that black authors talking about the black experience in America are. I don't know, they're under too much, like, pressure from themselves or from. I don't. From the community to, like, be. To be serious and.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

You know, to be. To be talking about things in a serious way. And he. And he said in. There was a long interview he did with Lit Hub, I think, about the, like, attached to the Booker Prize thing that he won.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And just talking about, like. Yeah, people feel like there's a lot of other stuff that needs to be gotten to before we can get to comedy. But, like, he is. He is interested in talking about it in, like, a funny way. And so that comes through in his work, but also in the. In the anthology that he edited. I only. I bring it up because a couple of the reviewers who liked this book also brought up this, like, Hokum being. Oh, neat things that he was involved in that they liked the most. So. Sure.

[Craig]

Okay. Yeah. It is a funny book. I will probably do a bad job of conveying the humor here on our podcast.

[Andrew]

Let me just take it. Take a guess as to why I was looking at the New York Times review by Dwight Garner.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

So much happens in the sellout that describing it is like trying to shove a lemon tree into a shot glass. It's also hard to describe without quoting the nimble ways Mr. Beatty deals out the N word. The novel's best lines, the ones that either puncture or tattoo your heart, are mostly not quotable here.

[Craig]

No.

[Andrew]

That is also the case on our White Boy hosted podcast.

[Craig]

Yeah. We will do the White Boy shuffle away from those quotes. We will not read them. But no. And the. There are turns of phrase I found, like, enjoyable and impressive. It is like, gonzo is not the right word. There is stuff.

[Andrew]

Is there enough, like, not enough chicken romance?

[Craig]

Not enough that, you know, there are. You think.

[Andrew]

Were you thinking about the Muppet or were you thinking about journalism? I didn't know what you meant by

[Craig]

when I said it. I meant journalism. And then I acknowledged your Muppet.

[Andrew]

I know I made a joke, but then I was like, wait, it was, am I making a Joke, or am I. Am I putting in. Putting a emphasis on the point that you were trying to make?

[Craig]

Well, that's a lot of the experience of reading this book, I think, actually. And there's a lot of absurdism, but it's not quite. I have a few passages we'll read that are minor examples of this, but he will use kind of a hyperbolic voice at times to describe things. There's also a. Interesting to think about him as a poet and a curator of humor, likely essays. Because there is a component to this book that just feels like riffing. And I don't mean that pejoratively, but that, like, I think he's aware of it because there's something at the end of the book that basically checks. Like he names it. That is he gets on a topic and he's just gonna go for three pages. And that topic may not relate to the plot.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

But it's in the voice of the main character. And so it is thus, like, you know, it's in the soup. It's in the. Whatever he is saying is the book.

[Andrew]

I ran a bunch of times into people saying, including. I mean, this is include. Including the New York Times review, but also a lot of other. Other places, Goodreads and other professional reviewers that the first, like, third of it is extremely fun, and the second two thirds of it are like, what? So. So now. Now what are we doing?

[Craig]

It's.

[Andrew]

It.

[Craig]

It's. It's an interesting book. I think I. Overall, I will probably keep thinking about it more than as I was reading it, going like, yeah, this rocks. You know, because I was trying to pin it down as I was reading it.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Which is also part of the, like, reading it for the show.

[Andrew]

But yeah. And he, like many authors. So just in terms of what, you know, where this book came from. He says he wrote it because he, quote, was broke.

[Craig]

Yeah, I saw that Rolling Stone classic,

[Andrew]

classic example of someone doing work in exchange for financial compensation. And he says, he said in that same Lit Hub interview I quoted before, he's one of those authors who is associated with, like, a genre or style and is like, well, I don't think of myself as being associated with that. He says everybody's very comfortable with saying, oh, you're a satirist, you're this, you're that, and all this other kind of stuff. For personal freedom reasons, I say, no, that's not me. I just write whatever it is, is what it is. I guess people don't often think about what satire really is, but for you to talk about how real it is is a comfort to me. The interviewer just said, you know, this is. This is satire, but also there's a bunch of stuff in it that clearly happened, is clearly being drawn from reality.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

But for you to talk about how real it is is a comfort to me because even some of the more ridiculous stuff in there that you would think is obvious satire is sort of real or definitely based in something.

[Craig]

Okay, sure. Yeah. He said there was a Rolling Stone interview by Darren Reedy in 2015. So more in the kind of run up to publication or just afterwards, I think, where he says similar quote about writing it because he was broke. He says, the I got this grant. I had to make up something for it. I had these vague ideas in my head, the same crap I've been thinking about. And they, like, try to get him to unpack what that means. And he says he's interested in books that embrace the profane. He talks about another book that he read, the Nazi and the Barber, which was banned in Germany for a period of time. And he says the book, quote, the book just sat on my chest like an older sibling pinning you to the living room floor and popping you upside the head repeatedly. And he wants book. He wanted to write a book that, like, produced that feeling, maybe even in himself as he was writing it.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I think it's interesting. And again, this is another. There's more food for. More grist for discussion later, I guess. But the blurb on White Boy Shuffle mentions that politically correct people shouldn't read it. And then several reviews of the sellout mention how unconcerned the book is with being offensive.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

A lot of people talk about the book being offensive. I don't know if you found it that way, but I do think he is. He is definitely interested in writing, like, intentionally sort of provocative or taboo things in order to make whatever point it is that he is trying to make.

[Craig]

Yeah. And there is also, like, there are parts of the book where a character will riff on, like, what is it to be offended? And what is. Can you actually. Is that a feeling? It's like a whole riff that the narrator goes on. He's like, I know what it is to feel sad or upset or hurt. What is it? What am I feeling when I'm feeling offended?

[Andrew]

Yeah. One of those debates that has been sadly diluted by people using it in bad faith. Like, it's not. It's not possible to. Or it's very difficult to have a good faith discussion of people. People having Thin skins. Because that has just taken over the entire. I don't know, it's everywhere. And everybody uses it to get whatever they want, whether they actually are offended by something or not.

[Craig]

And there's even a bit in that Rolling Stone interview where the interviewer is like, you don't seem really too concerned with being politically correct. He's like, I mean, what do you mean by politically correct? Do you mean that like there should be multiculturalism in schools? Yes, I think that's good. But if you mean being too worried about offending people, I don't know what that means. And I'm not gonna engage with it. Like, I'm just gonna shuffle on over here and. And do my thing.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

So yeah, it. I think the main thing that I just had to put in my brain as I was reading it is that it is. It comes out in 2015.

[Andrew]

Comes out in 2015. There are bunches up. Yeah. A lot in reviews of it that were, that came out at the time.

[Craig]

Yeah. There are references to the black dudes inauguration. And so reading it here in 2026, I had to like keep remembering that the last 10 years hadn't happened when this book came out and that.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's the NPR interview review by Michael Schwab and a little bit in the New York Times review. But you keep seeing references to. Everybody wants to use the death of the post racial America idea as framing for what this book is. So it's coming out in 2015. This is after the killing of Michael Brown in 2014, which set off a lot of the protests and like the Black Lives Matter movement and that kind of stuff. And it's, it's before Trump comes down the escalator. It's obviously before he gets a nomination, before he becomes president. But like it's very hard not to see this book as being like a long.

[Craig]

Yep. Uh huh.

[Andrew]

It's. It's definitely exactly what you said. Like it is now we know where everything was going and I think maybe Beatty also sees where things are going.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

In a way that, that probably feels prescient given how old it is. I don't know.

[Craig]

Yeah. And it feels like there's stuff he. I had to keep reminding myself about things he was not going to talk about or like, you know, there's a riff on white male privilege that we'll talk about at one point and there's been a whole decade of extra digging into that.

[Andrew]

Yeah, baby. Might not be, he might not be up on the current meta of these, of these discussions.

[Craig]

Yeah. And that's okay because it is a prescient book in some ways, too. So, yeah, let's take a quick break, and I will do my best to. What was that metaphor? Jam Lemonade.

[Andrew]

A lemon tree into a shot glass.

[Craig]

Yeah. Okay. See you on the other side.

[Andrew]

That's called Limoncello, everybody. Craig, where to begin? Because I. There is a. There is a. A couple of prominent characters who I think there's a lot to say about. There's a. There's, like, what the. There's the high concept pitch of just, like, what the book is doing. Like, what the plot is about.

[Craig]

Yeah. Can I.

[Andrew]

And then there's all the other stuff that's happening. So, like, where should we. Where should we get going?

[Craig]

Let's start with the pitch. Because I had read the pitch, I think I had found the book in the first place. Probably actually scanning through Booker winners. I. I did that at some point in the last few months as I was looking to program the show.

[Andrew]

It's a good list. That's how I found Orbital when I found it. Yeah.

[Craig]

And the only one set in space. And the only one set in space.

[Andrew]

And the shortest one so far.

[Craig]

What if. What if the longest winner winds up also being set in space at some point? That would be interesting.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Think about it.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And. And I was like, okay, let's dig in. What is the premise for this book? And it's like the. The elevator pitch that you get depending on where you're, you know, buying the book or whatever is like, a man in LA whose father is shot by cops, becomes a slave owner and reinstitutes segregation as a way to save his town, and it takes him to the Supreme Court. And, like, all those things do happen

[Andrew]

in the book, but it implies such a. Such a clean A to B to C, sort of through lines, not to be what the book is really does.

[Craig]

And, like, I even went to a couple different places to find some summaries just to help me hash out, like, exact orders of events. And I was finding disagreements, and I was, like, kind of leafing through the book to be like, why. Why did this happen in that moment? And I. There is a. The, like, capital S. Satire voice of the book, I think, does lend itself to a little bit of. Wait, what is going on? Because sometimes a turn of phrase will be very hyperbolic or kind of over the top, and it might distract you from the actual, like, bit of plot that has happened in that scene or maybe overshadow your sense of what is actually going on. And yeah, that actual, that logline summary does elide a lot of what other characters are doing in the book and how they move on the narrator in interesting ways. So I kept like trying to square the book with the summary I'd heard coming in, which is a, which is a dizzying thing to try and do with this novel.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

It takes place in the town of Dickens, which is a community outside of, you know, downtown LA that a lot

[Andrew]

of Beatty's books written about or centered in or like spiritually about la.

[Craig]

Yes, it is, you know, a predominantly black community that by the time the book is taking place, there's a larger Latino population than there had been, larger Asian population there had been. But it is kind of a left behind community in many ways. And I thought there was a law

[Andrew]

about that, that there was a law about. There was not doing that to anybody.

[Craig]

All the children? No, none of the children. Well, shame on you. I guess.

[Andrew]

Fool me once, you won't get fooled again.

[Craig]

But not. There's like a whole opening section with the narrator that I'll come back to. But the like real kickoff of the book is the death of the narrator's father. Kind of an arbitrary police shooting that the book handles with like both the gravity of the grief, but the kind of, oh, I guess that happened of the shooting that's like literally just his dad drives past cops who are already harassing an unhoused person and when they threaten to give him a ticket, he's like, give me the lecture, give me the ticket. Don't try to do both. And they, the cops pull out guns and they shoot him while he runs away.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

And the narrator does wind up getting a two million dollar wrongful death settlement I think a few years later. But it is incredibly just like, well, I guess that awful thing happened. Yeah, it's not even part of a larger plot or anything like that when that happens. Also not related in a cosmic sense, but not related in a plot sense. The town of Dickens is erased from maps. It is gentrif, not quite gentrified out of existence, but like, because no gentrification is happening.

[Andrew]

It's just like getting absorbed into other communities.

[Craig]

Its borders cease, kind of cease to exist. It's unclear if it ever had like a government in the same way. There's not like a mayor or anything that I could discern.

[Andrew]

But you know, I don't know that Beatty is like the most interested in being like, here's what the governance structure is like in the, in the town.

[Craig]

But he is very interested in a Sense of place. And so, like, yeah, sure, what starts happening is.

[Andrew]

And also in, like, a lot of other political things, like.

[Craig]

Yeah, so what's happening is all of these signs that reference the town of Dickens start getting taken down. And other thing, it makes me think of. Andrew, you lived in this part of Philly. Kind of the point breeze versus New bold discussion here in Philly to this day.

[Andrew]

And even having lived there, I do not remember which one was the outgoing one that was getting erased and which one was the. Like, the gentrifier incoming one that everybody who lived there hated.

[Craig]

I think the gentrifyer one was new bold, and everybody was trying to make it happen.

[Andrew]

I don't think anybody made it happen.

[Craig]

I don't think so. Point three is cooler anyway. Newbold sounds cooler, but there's also. There's other parts of a bad.

[Andrew]

It sounds like a bad pen. Like, you try to reformulate your pen and you call it New Bowl.

[Craig]

It's a bad spot.

[Andrew]

Everybody hates it. And then you bring back the old pen, and everyone's like, oof. Thank goodness.

[Craig]

There's like, Dickinson Narrows is not a real thing. But, like, people.

[Andrew]

That sounds like a font people.

[Craig]

Yeah, it does, actually. People building condos tried to, you know, make it happen, that sort of thing. And so that's been happening around Dickens, which is then, like, leading to Dickens itself being erased. And from there, the main character is like, I will do what I can somehow to restore this place. And there are a couple of different things that feed into that that I want to go back to. But, like, the overall arc of the book is like, okay, how can he put. Can he restore Dickens to a place that people, like, recognize as existing in? Whatever that means.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And that. That gives Beatty leeway in a couple spots to go on riffs about what happens when the place you're living it, like, you become disconnected from the place you're living in, either because the place you're living in has been erased or you. There's like, a whole scene late in the book where he's talking about, like, what's called Hood Day, where all the different gangs get together and fight, usually, or party or whatever.

[Andrew]

And a. I've read Akira. I know, I know. Sure. I know what happens.

[Craig]

And a couple of the big gangs, like, don't actually rumble anymore because they've all been displaced too far away from their turf by gentrification. And so they actually do what Beatty refers to as, like, civil war reenactments of their previous big battles because they can't actually have them anymore.

[Andrew]

That is kind of funny, actually.

[Craig]

And so he's like, he looks for every little different version of, oh, the place. The place you lived is no longer there. And it was either taken from you or things like that. Yeah, there's a whole sister cities riff that, you know, the concept of sister cities.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Where, like, your town has a town somewhere else in the world and their friends.

[Andrew]

Yes, I know about it. And you don't need to keep explaining. Keep explaining it to me.

[Craig]

And that is an emblematic passage in the book where the. The narrator becomes concerned with it for about five pages. It feels like a. It's not a McSweeney's essay, but it does feel like a comic, bloggy essay. That is interesting because he, like, gets rejected by Juarez, Chernobyl, and Kinshasa and then comes up with reasons why each of these, you know, places would look down on Dickens. Juarez, the city that never stops bleeding, he calls it. Or Chernobyl. That isn't even really a place. It's just a nuclear zone.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

None of them want to be associated with this town. And he comes up with three place, what he calls three real places that disappeared under dubious circumstances. Thebes. But not the real city. The city from the movie the Ten Commandments. Dollar shime. The Austrian village that was rumored to be where Hitler's, you know, unfounded but rumored Jewish grandfather was from. And the lost city of white male privilege, a controversial municipality whose very existence is often denied by many mostly privileged white males. And those are the three sister cities of Dickens. And, like, okay, that doesn't matter to the plot, but he's just writing a fun little essay about how terrible his home is and how it relates to other terrible homes that have been erased by history. So, like, I share all of that because it's kind of emblematic of the structure of the book. This kind of. If you. If he was willing to embrace his, like, satirist label, it might be because he's acknowledging how much of this book is, as he writes later in the book, essays, pretending to be fiction. Yeah, but that. That is kind of sep. It's not separate from. But it is a little in parallel to the plot of the book.

[Andrew]

Did you ever. I mean, I know you're not like, Mr. Technology. That's me. I miss.

[Craig]

No, that's actually you. I benefit from knowing you, Mr. Technology on the regular.

[Andrew]

You ever. You ever sit and Watch, like, the Windows 98 defragmenter move the little squares around? Defragment. Your.

[Craig]

That green. That green Thing.

[Andrew]

Yeah. So it would, it would.

[Craig]

Well, oh no, I'm thinking of the memory usage, but no, I'm thinking of

[Andrew]

all the, I'm thinking of all the little, like you'd have all these white gaps on your.

[Craig]

Yeah, okay.

[Andrew]

Move all the little squares and it'd be like, all right now these squares are all blue. And it make you feel really good because it was defragmenting your, your hard disk, which is not a thing that needs to happen anymore. But I do miss the visualization of it.

[Craig]

Was that because it was before solid state drives?

[Andrew]

It was before solid state drives. So like having stuff like physically, sequentially next to each other on disk helped performance because you need to wait for the disk to rotate fewer times before you could read all the data. Anyway. Sometimes with some of these big books, I feel like our, our role is to kind of defragment them a little bit and to present them in sort of a linear order that the author wasn't interested in interfacing with. And I don't mean that, I don't mean that in a pejorative way. Trying to ask you to pull. And the people who are, you know, the people who wrote the synopsis that you read that make you want to, made you want to read the book in the first place were doing this, doing the same work.

[Craig]

But that's true.

[Andrew]

Sort of asking you to tell me what a book is about when the fact that it's only about something in a super roundabout way is like part of the point of the book.

[Craig]

Yeah. It's about place and it's about being black. Those are like the two things that it is mostly about. And the stuff about. And I will, I promise we'll do, we'll try our best to get through the plot of this book because there

[Andrew]

is stuff, I mean, listen, you do as much or as little as you want to.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

If you get sidetracked in a five minute essay about something else that feels true to the spirit of the work.

[Craig]

But yeah, it is, it is. I've talked a lot about kind of some easy examples of how it is about place and we can, we'll probably bump into some more, but it does what you brought up about its position to the end of the Obama presidency and the myths a lot of us were telling ourselves or not or just hearing about a post racial America.

[Andrew]

To be clear, I think a lot of that had died down by 2014, 2015.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

If you think about like 2009, 2010, there was a lot of it still.

[Craig]

And this book Is it's about a guy, the narrator. We can call him Bon Bon or we can call him the Narrator.

[Andrew]

His name is Me, though.

[Craig]

Well, his last name is me because it used to be me. And somebody in his family, when they moved from the south, dropped the E at one point. It's implied. I think his Dad's initials are F.K. and his last name is me.

[Andrew]

That's funny.

[Craig]

It is pretty funny. But he. I call him the narrator, or Bon Bon because his nickname is Bon Bon because he's a very lucky guy. And he's like, never. Never gets into the scrapes that, you know, might stereotypically befall a black guy living in la. And he always, like, you know, everybody's joking, like they want him to have their lottery ticket and whatever. He gets entered into a spelling bee. And the. His opponent gets, like, a very challenging word. I'm full of omphaloskepsis. And his word was Bon Bon. And it's just kind of a like, okay, you've. You've got a little charmed life thing going on. Bon.

[Andrew]

I think grammatically it's funnier if you have to call him me the whole time, but we can call him Bon Bon if you. If you prefer that.

[Craig]

I will get confused if we have to call him me.

[Andrew]

I just want to hear you sound like Cookie Monster trying to talk about himself.

[Craig]

I also think it's a trap that the book is springing on me. A white man trying to talk about it. If I have to refer to the narrator as me, that's probably on purpose.

[Andrew]

Me, me, me, me, me.

[Craig]

Me, too. And he is a guy. Me is a guy. Me is a guy.

[Andrew]

See, that's.

[Craig]

That's what you wanted.

[Andrew]

Just that little taste of it is enough. Is fine. Thank you.

[Craig]

Who. Just a treat for Andrew. He's stupid. He is, like, over the course of the book, kind of wrestling with his relationship to blackness. He's like the two fig. He's got a couple of adult figures. Not adult. He's an adult. But we spent a lot of time with him as, like, a teenager. But like his dad, this guy Foy Cheshire and this guy Harmony are like the three black men of the generation above him that he kind of has to tangle with. And his dad is a social psychologist or sociologist, I don't remember which. And he is doing something he calls, like, liberation psychology, where he is engaging in all sorts of kind of outlandish, what he believes to be social experiments, usually using his son as the, you know, unwilling or willing participant.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

He teaches at Like a community college where he is actually, I guess, a psychology professor. But then at home, he is homeschooling his son on this farm in. In an urban farm in Dickens. We're doing things like, you know, giving him a. A shock treatment in response to different. I think it's like news stories and popular music. He does a Kitty Genovese bystander effect study where he gives his son a bunch of very overt, like, money and gold chains and then pushes him out in the street and starts mugging him under the belief that other black people might come to his rescue because they are community that takes care of their own. And instead a bunch of other people come out and assist in the mugging to get the money. There's a part.

[Andrew]

It's just nice to have something that brings people together in these trouble, in these troubled times, in this divide, in this divided environment.

[Craig]

There's a scene later in the book where his dad takes him to when he, like, as a teenager, says to his dad that he thinks racism is over. And his dad's like, listen, we're driving to Mississippi. Three days later, they go and engage in what his dad calls reckless looking. Reckless. Reckless eyeballing, he calls it. And basically he makes his son try to wolf. Wolf whistle at a white woman in rural Mississippi. His son does not know how to whistle, and he's busy eating, like, saltines, so he just makes weird noises. And then his dad goes off with the white lady anyway. And the three white guys they expected to, like, try to kill them are just like, well, I mean, she likes what she likes. That's okay. And then the actual conflict of that scene is that the black gas station where they stopped now won't let the kid use their toilet because he bought food from the white people. And you're like, okay, what a weird experiment. Thanks, dad. And some of it is, like, the electric shock treatment stuff. Some of it is, like. It's verging on cartoonishly violent, like Looney Tunes type violence. But it is also, like, grounded in decades of, you know, scholarship at the same time. Like, that is a place that Beatty feels very comfortable being silly to prove a point. Right. His dad also has a reputation as being a word I won't use. Whisperer in town.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

Basically an unofficial crisis worker who, whenever somebody is having a really tough time, that becomes a public incident, he shows up and helps talk them down. And when his dad is killed, Bon Bon kind of is forced into that role. He's not as good at it, but he does try it. As best he can. And he ultimately, I think when he starts trying to save Dickens, that's him. Like, I got to do something bigger sort of thing.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

This guy, Foy Cheshire, is a Charlotte.

[Andrew]

He is

[Craig]

a man who became friends with the narrator's father. He is more. He's not a. The narrator's father is this kind of, like, ahead of his time intellectual figure who's like, you know, toiling away in his basement torturing his son and, like, teaching community college psychology. Yeah. But also, like, if he could get his thoughts in order, could maybe publish something interesting on race relations or, you know, social psychology.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

Foy is like, I'm going to go on TV and I'm going to interview dealer celebrities, and then I'm going to take the ideas that this other guy has and turn them into a cartoon that gets syndicated, and I'm gonna make a bunch of money and I'm gonna try to rewrite classic texts to make them black. And, like, you know, Uncle Tom's Condo and the Wide Receiver in the Rye or what? Like, it's just, like, weird, goofy stuff, I feel.

[Andrew]

Not that specific thing, but that kind of thing is an established, like a well established genre of. Of book.

[Craig]

There's a scene all about Huckleberry Finn, and I was thinking of the novel James.

[Andrew]

Do you have the name. Do you have the name to hand of what they suggest changing the name. Do this. This is Beatty, I think, taking shots at, quote, unquote, politically correct.

[Craig]

I don't know what he calls Huckleberry. Oh, I think I have it. Oh, here it is. Retitled as if my app will work. The pejorative free adventures and intellectual spiritual journeys of African American Jim and his young protege, white brother Huckleberry Finn, as they go in search of the lost black family unit. So, yeah, that is what. That's what Beatty's working on there.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah.

[Craig]

And treasures stuff later in the book when there's, like, a reverse Brown v. Board situation happening with the local school. Tell you about that in a second.

[Andrew]

Board v. Brown?

[Craig]

Yeah. Was it not Brown v. Board?

[Andrew]

No, you said reverse Brown.

[Craig]

Jesus. Me too busy eating cookies to understand. He. He has, like, the. The. They make mention of, like, white school boards and things. Like, eager to, you know, like, buy this kind of junk because it is, like, purveyed by this, you know, pseudo intellectual black man who is, like, espousing a form of multiculturalism that the book is. Is telling you is hollow. Right.

[Andrew]

Yeah, sure.

[Craig]

And so it's both critiquing him and critiquing the people who are gobbling it up. And that is kind of a counterpoint to the narrator's father. And Foy is. He's not a. He's not a malignant antagonist in the book. But you always. There is never like a moment of redemption for him. There is at best a like, yeah, we can see how that guy got that way kind of thing. And then there is Harmony. Oh, Hominy.

[Andrew]

My understanding of Hominy. My favorite thing I've learned about Hominy is that Hominy is not a real person, but in this book, in the continuity of this book, he is a real member of the Little Rascals.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

Which is, of course, the colloquial title for what was originally released as our gang between 1922 and 1944 by Hal Roach. Those Little Rascals were big in our house because I think the series was being released to vhs.

[Craig]

Was never Little Rascals Guy.

[Andrew]

Yeah. But I like, we had like a half dozen Little Rascals tapes, which is a bunch of episodes on them. So we watched a lot of Little Rascals and then the. The 90s Little Rascals movie was big.

[Craig]

I do remember when that was.

[Andrew]

That. Did it have Rosie o' Donnell in it? Had Whoopi in it for sure.

[Craig]

Sure. I don't know. I don't know if I saw it. I recognize the dog.

[Andrew]

That's just one of those things where it's like, yeah, these 100 year old short subjects definitely traffic heavily in racial stereotypes. But, like, also, they are quietly progressive for their time because they show black and white children interacting as social equals.

[Craig]

Yep. And that is, I. That is a core interest of this book is.

[Andrew]

I assume that's. That's a reason. The reason to make this person a fake member of our gang.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

In the first place. But I don't know.

[Craig]

So Harmony in the book, as I recall, is he starts out as Buckwheat's understudy, but then they like, like him enough that they put him in. There are Harmonies on this kind of quest to find several shorts that he can't track down that either have him in. Like, there may be some of them are outtakes that are extra super racist.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Or. And Harmony has.

[Andrew]

I think so. I think some of it also, like, as kids aged out of being in our gang, like, oh, sure, there was a Three Stooges situation where you're like, well, somebody has to be the curly. We got to put somebody in the Curly. The curly spot.

[Craig]

Yes. And Harmony has This whole vibe throughout the book where he, like, wants to exist in a more racist world because it, like, the structure of it provides some sort of, like, kind of psychic stability to him.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

He. We first meet.

[Andrew]

Not sure. Yeah, okay, I acknowledge that. That's a thing that you said.

[Craig]

We first meet him. He has tried to take his own life in a kind of comically unsuccessful way, as depicted in the book, because the Dickens has been erased from the map, and he is now concerned that no one can find him. This is, I guess, five years pushing five years after the main character's father's death, and no one can find him. And so he is, like, you know, becoming detached from reality and he will never be remembered, and he's despairing at that. So part of our narrator's quest is not just, oh, my home has been erased. I need to save it. It is. Well, we had this old guy in our town who I spent a lot of time at his house because he wanted all the kids to watch the Our Gang videos he was in, and he did, like, help raise me, and now he's in really bad straits because of this. I guess I should help him. And so what actually happens is that Harmony is like, make Dickens come back. And until you do, I will be your slave. I will be your slave. I will call you master. You will own me now. And our main character doesn't. He, like, tries to say no and then ultimately just gives in. It is not a book about that. Like, it is a book in which this happens and it is comical. It is played for laughs at times, which, you know, that's the vibe the book is on you, you know? But the. It's like, he. He's like, you need to whip me. And he says it so many times that the main character actually calls off and does it. And then for the rest of the book, it is understood that he is just paying a sex worker at a BDSM club to actually do the whipping for him. And also, Harmony is a bad. Like, he doesn't. He's not good at farming. He's not. Like, he just sits around. He's an old man. What is he actually doing? So he is, as depicted in the book, he is not living through slavery as we know it as an ill.

[Andrew]

Right.

[Craig]

And.

[Andrew]

But, like, on paper. On paper, he's a slave.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

To make a point.

[Craig]

To make a point to, like, he's. There's. This. Is. This is when I'm like, is this what the synopsis of the book was? Because then, like, so Harmony Is like, you, I will be your slave. You have to own me. And he's like, okay. And I guess the, the, the humanizing element of harmony that I was very impressed with is that, like, here's, here's this paragraph. He had the misfortune of being born in Dickens, California, and in America. Hominy is no source of pride. He's a living national embarrassment, a mark of shame on the African American legacy. Something to be eradicated, stricken from the racial record. Like the ham bone, Amos and Andy, Dave Chappelle's meltdown. And people who say Valentine's Day. Like, this is a, as you said there, you know, progressive for its time sort of thing. Right. But also terrible in its way. And, but here's a human who was part of that, who was just a kid. And what else does he know? And it's his legacy. How do we wrestle with that? How do we, like, take care of this person? While I guess we. There was those, like, 18 months when Disney had the, like, this is from a racist. A racist time in front of some of their cartoons on Disney Plus.

[Andrew]

I think they're still.

[Craig]

Are they still doing that?

[Andrew]

I mean, I don't, I don't know about the, the message. I haven't tried to watch anything that. That would have it in front of.

[Craig]

You're not firing up Song of the South.

[Andrew]

No, but, but like we did when Henry and I watched Toy Story 2 because, sure, having this big snowstorm, he's just going to be home forever. He's never going to go back to school ever again.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And it's going great. Everything's going great. Thank everybody for asking. And there's a scene at the end of that where Stinky Pete, as played by Kelsey Grammer, TV's Frazier.

[Craig]

Oh, sure.

[Andrew]

Is talking to some Barbie dolls and telling them that he could get them cast in Toy Story 3. And that's not, that's not that. That fake little outtake with that joke in it is not part of the movie anymore.

[Craig]

Okay, sure.

[Andrew]

So, like, there's still definitely some stuff happening.

[Craig]

Sure. But so, yeah, there is this, like, he was basically a minstrel performer who enjoyed what it gave him for what that's worth, and is willing or interested to experience the indignity that goes along with it. And yet he's also a valued member of the community. So, like, how do we take care of this guy? Right. The segregationist part of the book starts good when it is Harmony's birthday. He's very down on his, on his, you know, he's in the dumps. And our narrator gets his on again, off again girlfriend, Marpessa, who drives a bus to deck out her bus as a party bus for him, which involves putting some racism on the bus. Because what Harmony used to do for his birthday was everybody in town would knock on his door and then throw eggs or pie at him because of Little Rascals. And he would, you know, be excited about it. And he said, just get me some racism and I'll be straight. That's what he says for his birthday.

[Andrew]

Just a little as a treat.

[Craig]

So they put signs on the bus that say in. In where there would normally be signs that say priority seating for seniors and the disabled. And it says, priority scene for seniors and the disabled and whites. And when everybody's getting on the bus, they're like, wait a second. What? Wait, what? And then eventually, like, the way it's delivered in the book is, like, everybody getting on is more. They're not even upset. They're just surprised it hadn't happened yet. Like, it.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And then Harmony is stoked about it because he's, like, really excited for a racism to happen. And then a white woman that the narrator did hire to come on the bus does get on the bus, and Harmony gives up his seat for her. And there's, like, some really interesting writing about it being this example of all of the other ways that black people experience racism, big and small, and how they have to suffer through it and whatever. There's a lot on, like, the face that Harmony makes as he gives up his seat being a mask that a lot of them have worn at various times in their life. That sort of thing.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

But then that whole chapter is like. And then it became a party bus. We went to a fast food restaurant and we ordered 50 tacos. And everybody who worked at the restaurant got on the bus and came with us to the beach and, like, partied on the beach. And then there's like, a kind of really?

[Andrew]

Why did it become a party bus, though?

[Craig]

It was always a party bus in a way. It wasn't just.

[Andrew]

What does that mean?

[Craig]

Well, it was a part. It was a birthday party bus for Harmony. And so she just, like, took her bus off. Off sequence and just decided to drive to the beach.

[Andrew]

Okay, so they do, like, a Rosa Parks reenactment. Yeah. To this fake Little Rascal.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then they all just have a nice time together.

[Craig]

Yeah. Okay.

[Andrew]

I guess.

[Craig]

And then later on, you learn from the bus driver, I don't remember any

[Andrew]

of this from any of the summaries of the book that I read.

[Craig]

Exactly.

[Andrew]

I don't remember any of this.

[Craig]

You learn from the bus driver that now, like, in the face of racism, the community of Dickens is, like, treating itself better. Like, people getting on the bus are encountering a little Susan of racism as they get on the bus. And then they are now kind of more bonded together as a community because of what is the. I have the quote. It's very like, what are we doing here?

[Andrew]

Oh, have you found a quote from this book that you can read in full without?

[Craig]

It's the sign a slur. People grouse at first, but the racism takes them back, makes them humble, makes them realize how far we've come and more important, how far we have to go on that bus. It's like the specter of segregation has brought Dickens together. I must say, this is absurd, but it is also a book in which a lot of absurd stuff happens all the time. And so it doesn't feel like this is, as you said, kind of a capital S. Serious book where we have to believe somehow that this would make logical sense. And instead it can kind of coast on this. Wouldn't it be crazy if this is what happened? Energy.

[Andrew]

Also, I feel like it's poking a little bit at, like, the whole genre of, like, movies and TV and books where, yeah, it's really racist. And then, like, white people came along and. And isn't it. Isn't it nice how far we've come?

[Craig]

Yes, stuff is happening.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And that. And that makes people feel good.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And mirroring that.

[Craig]

So there's this whole thing where, like, now he's like, okay, so the segregation worked like it is. But is it also segregation? Like, it's like it's making Dickens stronger. There's barely any white people in this town anyway. But it is like reminding people that they can do something in the face of it. I guess that is like, ultimately what starts to happen is it is not, oh, we're in this town that's been erased and we don't have it. Like, we are completely under resourced and left. You know, we are left behind, but we don't have what. What are we gonna do about it? And this is like, in the way that this works. The overt racism spurs people to act and, like, kind of actually take more control and fight for their community in some interesting ways, which is the book knows that that's a little much, I think, but is also kind of interested in a. In a powerful what if? So the next step is that he's Gonna segregate the school.

[Andrew]

I think. You see, I. You definitely lose me when you're like, okay, let's scale this up.

[Craig]

Uh huh.

[Andrew]

This thing that only worked the way it did because it was some weird one off bizarro thing. Let's keep doing it. So again, one time kind of.

[Craig]

This is where pithy summaries of the book do not do it justice because it is not the, like the organized plan of the narrator to level up this segregation. The first thing he actually did, which I skipped over, is he just like repainted he with big spray paint, painted the original matte borders of Dickens on the ground. Like it's a big rectangle.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

And it gives everybody this kind of powerful reminder that like, no, this is our community. They tried to get rid of it. He's making his own diy, like street signs and stuff like that. The reason he does the school thing is. And again, it's this kind of silly notion of what segregation is. But anyway, he does the bus stuff and then the after, there's like a whole scene at career day at the school where as a farmer, he castrates a cow. A bunch in front of a bunch of kids. Very silly stuff. So funny. It's a very silly scene. But then the teacher's like, all the kids do their homework on the bus because it's so safe and so calm. It's really working out. And he's like, I need to do something for the school. And so what he does is he prints out a big poster, okay. That is actually a watercolor artist's rendition of a marine center for a college in Maine.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

He puts it on a big poster, puts it in front of a vacant lot across the street from the school and says it's going to be like a arts and sciences rich charter school coming soon.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

And so all the families are like, well, what's the deal with that school? How do we get our kids in there? And the principal who's in on it is like, you gotta be white. That's that you gotta be white to get in that school. And then over the next few months, everybody at the school has banded together. All the kids are doing better. And again, it's this like, in the face of the specter of segregation is like spurring people to do better. And there's like riffs from the narrator on like, how this is reflective of other behavior that he sees in the black community and things like that. But it is like he is not going into the school and then like moving kids apart yeah. Which is what you think of when you're like, oh, there's a book where he segregated a school.

[Andrew]

Yeah, exactly.

[Craig]

It is. Actually. No, they. They came up with a threat of, like, a rich white school that was gonna upend this community. And instead all of the kids are now actually, like, working to, you know, take advantage of the school that they have instead.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

There's. There's a whole detour to this scene with Harmony at the LA Festival of forbidden cinema and unabashedly racist animation.

[Andrew]

Do the. Do this one. Do this one detour. And then I challenge you to wrap up the episode of the podcast.

[Craig]

I was going to skip. I was going to skip over that. I was just going to tell you that that happens.

[Andrew]

All right, great.

[Craig]

And it, it comes down to a. There's like a, A little mini riff on a hospital, which he's kind of nervous about because, like, people are going to find out about it because it's a hospital. But then there's a New Republic article that comes out about the school segregation, that the school is not allowing white kids.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

And so now the. The. The article is something like, has public education clipped the wings of the white child? And he's like, okay, well, no, it hasn't, but whatever. And of course, Foy Cheshire shows up as an instrument of the other side and is now trying to march five little white kids into this school. And it is a, as you said, Board v. Brown situation, which then culminates in a very over the top standoff with Foy brandishing a gun, threatening to take his own life, dousing himself in a literal bucket of whitewash, and then shooting our narrator, which then gets the cops involved, which then lets everybody know what's been going on. And then ultimately he. He gets tossed up to the Supreme Court for everything that's been happening.

[Andrew]

Sure. My understanding is that the real man, Real man Clarence Thomas appears in this book.

[Craig]

He's referred to as the Black Justice.

[Andrew]

Okay. We're doing an Olivia Nutzy kind of.

[Craig]

There's a little bit of that. There's also some in the little, like, intellectual club that Foy Cheshire and the narrator's dad founded in the Dum Dum Donuts. The Dum Dum Intellectuals Club.

[Andrew]

Mm.

[Craig]

There's a scene where prominent black conservatives. Or just prominent. Yeah, two black. Two prominent black conservatives and one prominent terrible person are in the scene. But their names are, like, written like a game of Hangman. Like, you only get some of the letters.

[Andrew]

Oh, yes, sure. Okay.

[Craig]

I mean, I could tell you who they Are. But part of the like voice of the book is figuring is that you have to figure it out each time as you're reading it. Condoleezza Rice is one of them, you know, okay, that's.

[Andrew]

Sure, sure.

[Craig]

And they're like, even the Supreme Court section has this kind of essay energy where the lawyer that's representing him starts talking about different levels of blackness. And the narrator who sneaks out the side door to smoke a joint, he thinks that there should be a fourth level called unmitigated blackness. In that is where he actually says that is essays passing for fiction. But then he also says sometimes it's the nihilism that makes life worth living. The book doesn't really render a verdict on what happens to him at the Supreme Court. He does get to go home. They mention Dickens in a weather report, which makes him, you know, very excited.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

And then it ends with Foy, who has come. His career has fallen significantly. He has nothing left. But he is driving around Dickens waving an American flag because the black dude got inaugurated. And. And our narrator is like, why are you so excited? And Foy's like, you just don't get it. And the narrator is like, yeah, I don't. And that's the end of the book. Okay, so to your point about, like, what is this book's thought on where the country is going after Obama? It ends with an image of the character we know to be a mess, celebrating something that the. Our narrator, who is also a mess, but I guess we supposed to, you know, align with his worldview a bit more closely, maybe is like, yeah, I don't know. It's a weird book.

[Andrew]

Sounds like a book.

[Craig]

It's a.

[Andrew]

It's.

[Craig]

It's strange. I. What I will say is because it is not trying to be serious. It does get away with.

[Andrew]

Or it. Or it comes off as not trying to be serious.

[Craig]

Yeah. It is willing to be silly, let's say, feel like everything needs to be

[Andrew]

read through this layer of like, possible irony or something.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yes. Well, it. It allows Beatty the. The room to do things like in that story where his dad takes him reckless eyeballing and like, it still ends with the son getting treated like garbage, but it's not in the way that you expect. And it teaches you and him a different lesson whilst also feeling over the top while still feeling emotionally true. Like, that's. That's kind of the mode he's operating in for most of the book where it's like, okay, the. The three white guys who are all wearing racist Signifiers are not going to be nice to him, but they're instead going to debate what bisexuality is. And then the black people across the street are also going to be mean to him for reasons that you hadn't predicted. And so he is like, it's a real. There's like no quarter for anyone in this book, I suppose, is one way to think about it. There's like a little love story with him and Marpessa that is interesting though, I think. Not the focus of the book and largely under baked. Or at least not. Not even under baked. It is just not the focus of the book. Sure, but. And I can see people who bounce out of the Voice early because it is pretty over the top. I could also see people who kind of get to the bus ride and then are like, wait, what's happening? Where is this book going? And like, have I gotten the point already? I never There is Sounds like you're gearing up from for some reviews, Andrew.

[Andrew]

This is not gearing up for anything. I just wanted to like to give you a couple of things that other people said to like help.

[Craig]

All right, let's do that. Because I think maybe what I'm about to say might come up.

[Andrew]

So yeah, I think. I think, I think it will. Which is why. Which is why I grabbed the git box. I'm going to do some three star Goodreads review. Yoakim on Goodreads Joaquim no.

[Craig]

Oh sir. Okay.

[Andrew]

I don't worry. I think the Booker prize of it all got some international attention on that. It might not have gotten otherwise because there are there are quite a few, honestly, people in the three star Goodreads reviews saying, I do think you need to be American to understand all the context of where this book is coming from.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

But he says, I don't recall reading a book which I love so much in the beginning and was so fed up with in the end. It's too much of too much. There are about zero normal sentences and that was very tiring. I couldn't keep up with avalanches and avalanches of wit and satire. It's a shame because I laughed out loud at the first chapters and then Brown girl reading says she says excellent satiric writing on race in America. Despite its rough in your face style, all Americans should be able to get into it. However, not so sure that those who haven't experienced the US up close and personal will get all the references that Beatty makes. First person voice is somehow close to you and snarky as heck. But not overbearing. I felt just enough detached to stay interested, even though the main character is not very likable. That's the whole, like, brown girl, brown girl. Reading did not care. But a lot of people saying, I don't have anybody to cheer for in this thing. And I'm bouncing off. Off of it for that reason.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah, that's.

[Andrew]

I know we've dealt with that question a lot. And I think we. We mostly. We are of the opinion that if the book is doing something else that's interesting, it doesn't need to be. You don't need, like, a likable protagonist.

[Craig]

But yeah. And this protagonist is set up to introduce us to other interesting people. And I think that works throughout the book. There's all. There's like at least another half dozen characters I haven't mentioned that maybe get one scene that is kind of neat or get like, they're a way to say something that the narrator doesn't have access to. And it works because the narrator is a little like, I don't feel comfortable with any of this. He doesn't feel comfortable. Like, his father's last dying words to the cops are like, you don't know who my son is, implying that his son is going to be somebody great. And the two questions that his dad always asks people when he is whispering them to keep them calm or that he has challenged his son with, are you. You have to ask yourself two questions. Who am I? And how may I become myself? That is the quest of the narrator of the book, which is a very frustrating place for a main character to be because it is hard to, like, get with them on that when he is doing such outlandish things. So anything else in the reviews that jumped out to you?

[Andrew]

No. Those are two big threads. Just like, where's the. I need a. I need a protagonist to latch on who I. Yeah. And the outside of America thing. I don't recall that being as prominent a threat in other Goodreads stuff.

[Craig]

It can be. It is not a long book. It can be very verbose. And at times I think that verbosity lends itself to some good funny writing. Other times it does, like, as I said earlier, can confuse a little bit where you're like, is he making a joke? Or am I supposed to know that this was literally happening sort of thing? That. That will happen occasionally. But I will say it. I would totally. I did not find that it ran out of its voices steam the same way that first reader did. I'm just. It's not a one to one comparison at all. I'm just thinking about our thoughts on American Psycho. Andrew. Since that's like the most.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah.

[Craig]

The biggest example we've had recently where it's like I get it. After 100 pages I didn't find. That was not my experience of the book. But I could see how somebody gets there.

[Andrew]

So.

[Craig]

And it's not actually that long. So maybe you just keep pushing.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

So the sellout.

[Andrew]

The sellout.

[Craig]

Thanks for sell Beatty with me. Oh yeah.

[Andrew]

Love selling out with you if you get that. Good, good like mid size podcast money.

[Craig]

Yeah. One day. One day we will be a man with a booker and a prize. All those, those three things can happen to us. Send us an email overdue podmail.com if you have read this book and have thoughts or want to know more about it, I could try to answer your questions. You can find us. That's overdue podmail.com find us on social media at Overdue Pod. Our theme song is composed by Nick Lauren. Just Andrew. If folks want to know more about the show, where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue Podcast.com is the Internet website that we are located at. Up there we have the schedule for the books that we're going to read. Craig out. I'll let you read the march schedule here in a minute. We've also got a lot of links up there. One of them is to our Patreon page. Patreon.com overdue pod up there we've got. You can give us. You can give us money is the thing about Patreon. And we give you stuff back in return, like ad free feed of the show, our newsletter, dusty bookshelves, our current long read project about Akira, the manga and so much more. Access to our Discord community. Many other things. Patreon.com overdue pod you make the show possible, literally in a very, very literal sense. You make it possible even when our kids can't go to school for days at a time. Patreon makes the show possible. Craig, what are we doing? What are we doing in March?

[Craig]

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu Tuesdays with Maury by Mitch Albom 13 Ways to Kill Lulibelle Rock by Maude Wolf Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Ultimate Collection Volume 1 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird Mash A novel about three army doctors by Richard Hooker and more. Akira. Check it out on patreon.com overduepod all

[Andrew]

right everybody, thank you so much for listening to our podcast for another week and until we talk to you next time, please try to be happy. That was a Headgum podcast.