The Sellout

by Paul Beatty

A Book of the Decade, 2010-2020 (Independent)

'Outrageous, hilarious and profound.' Simon Schama, Financial Times
'The longer you stare at Beatty's pages, the smarter you'll get.' Guardian
'The most badass first 100 pages of an American novel I've read.' New York Times

A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game.

Born in Dickens on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout spent his childhood as the subject in his father's racially charged psychological studies. He is told that his father's work will lead to a memoir that will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed in a drive-by shooting, he discovers there never was a memoir. All that's left is a bill for a drive-through funeral.

What's more, Dickens has literally been wiped off the map to save California from further embarrassment. Fuelled by despair, the narrator sets out to right this wrong with the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

In his trademark absurdist style, which has the uncanny ability to make readers want to both laugh and cry, The Sellout is an outrageous and outrageously entertaining indictment of our time.

• ISBN10: 0374260508
• ISBN13: 9780374260507
• Publish Date: 3 March 2015
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 31 August 2021
• Imprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English

Reviews

[gmcgregor]

I'm not sure if it was that this was the second satire I read in a row, or that I didn't connect with the subject at hand, or if it was just not my thing, but The Sellout just never quite clicked for me. This story opens up with our unnamed narrator (we get the last name, Me, but unless I missed something we never got a first name) watching his case go through oral argument at the Supreme Court. His case? He owns a slave and has re-segregated the school in his outlying Los Angeles community of Dickens, which has recently literally been taken off the map. Did I mention our protagonist is black?

We go back in time to get Me's whole story, from being homeschooled by his father, who uses him as a subject in various psychological/sociological experiments in the oddball agricultural community of Dickens, to his childhood friendship with Hominy, a cast member of the Little Rascals (who later pledges himself to Me as a slave after Me saves his life, much to Me's chagrin), to his long-running crush on his beautiful neighbor Marpessa, who drives a city bus, to his eventual decision to pretend there's an all-white charter magnet school going in across the street from the local school that's overwhelmingly attended by students of color, which winds up with him in front of the Supreme Court.

This was a book I read for my book club, and I was surprised to find I was one of the few for whom it didn't especially resonate. But as I listened to the others talk about how they found the satire refreshing for its bluntness and outrageous honesty about the state of race relations in America, I think maybe one of the reasons it fell a little flatter for me is that I'm on the younger side in that group and being more immersed in an internet culture where these issues are more on the forefront maybe made the punches land less hard, since they were more expected. In a world where Get Out was an enormously popular, Oscar-winning movie (and a good, interesting one that I personally really enjoyed), The Sellout's transgressive satire seems almost tame even though it's only a few years old.

To be sure, there are some brilliantly inspired moments (that opening Supreme Court scene, the Dum-Dum Intellectuals, the "sanitized" versions of racially-problematic novels), and if you're looking for a book that will be very up-front and sometimes uncomfortable (so many n-bombs!) about race in America, this is a very good book. Chattel slavery, and the institutionalized racism that persists to this day, is something that we're still struggling with. This book was written during the Obama era, when everyone was busily congratulating each other on living in a post-racial society, and the way it refuses to play along and pretend that was true feels eerily prescient given the election of Donald Trump. This book is smart, funny, and pulls zero punches (though those punches might not land quite as hard as they did even a few years ago, depending on what the dialogue you engage in looks like). It didn't quite ensnare me, but it's definitely worth reading.

[Heather]

Have you ever read a book and thought the whole time, "I am way too white to be able to review this book" while laughing out loud at the story?

In a forgotten agriculturally zoned area of Los Angeles, Mr. Me as gotten himself a slave.  He doesn't want one but Hominy Jenkins grew up as a child actor playing the most racist roles imaginable and thinks that being a slave won't that much of a change.  Me isn't sure about this since Hominy is only willing to work a few hours a day and is fairly useless at best.  He's also wracking up bills at the local S & M dungeon because Hominy insists on being beaten and Me won't do it himself.  The beatings have to happen though because anytime Hominy decides he isn't being treated badly enough he stands on a box in the front yard and tries to sell himself to passersby.

Me was homeschooled by his sociologist father, who had a lot of very bizarre theories on child rearing.  He was also known locally as the "n----- whisperer" for his ability to talk black people out of suicide or acts of violence.  His other claim to fame is starting a philosophical society at the donut shop that continues after his death.

This book is proudly not politically correct.  It discusses "weren-----" - black people who visit poor black neighborhoods occasionally to bump up their credibility and then flee back to their suburban homes.  It maintains that every Californian since the first Native Americans who heard missionaries ringing bells early on Sunday morning, agrees that there are too many Mexicans.  If you are the type of reader to be offended by things like this, avoid this book.  Otherwise, read it and let it sink in.  This is one that you read more for the insights you gain as you read instead of reading for the overall plot.

 This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story