N.T. McQueen
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Percival Everett's Erasure

2/19/2016

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During my undergrad and grad programs, a staple of nearly every literature class I took was Percival Everett's novel Erasure. I must have read this book 3 times in 3 different classes. Which is a testament to why I still found it worthy to put on my website.

The genius of Everett (even for a post-modernist) is his ability to be inventive, satirical, political and pithy all in one novel. The plight of the central character, Thelonius "Monk" Ellison, is a comic, depressing and illuminating critique of race relations within American culture. Not to mention it makes a mockery of literary snobbery and publishing in general.

From the bastardized remake of Wright's Native Son (here retitled as My Pafology) to white, academic culture claiming Ellison's joke of a plagiarized novel as "real" to the African-American experience, Erasure is a comical, witty and startling look at where we are as a culture and how far we truly have to go in terms of racial understanding.
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         Writing is important to me and, coincidentally, reading is just important. In order to excel as a writer, you have to read and examine how authors do what they do. The books on this page, some new and others old, all have impacted me in unimaginable ways both as a person and as a writer.

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