In Cord Jefferson’s idea-dense “American Fiction,” no one wants to publish literary professor Thelonious Ellison’s latest novel. Thelonious — or “Monk” to his friends — has delivered a modern rewor…
,” no one wants to publish literary professor Thelonious Ellison’s latest novel. Thelonious — or “Monk” to his friends — has delivered a modern reworking of Aeschylus’ “The Persians” , but all the industry can see is the color of his skin. The editors compliment his prose, but want to know what this manuscript “has to do with the Black experience.
The bestseller du jour, celebrated by white critics with words like “real” and “raw,” is a book called “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto” by Sintara Golden , who reads an excerpt in Ebonics, while Monk stands in the back looking exasperated. Later in the film, he finds himself confronting the author directly: “Books like this are not real. They flatten our lives,” he says. Monk isn’t against success; what he’s really fighting against is selling out.
“White people think they want the truth,” says Monk’s agent . “They just want to feel absolved.” Perhaps, but doesn’t the kind of portrayal Monk wants to put out there — a safe, “The Cosby Show” world where race has been erased from the picture — mean the same kind of compromise?
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