Neil opened
by explaining that his choice had been driven by an interest in reading the
Booker prize winner most years, by his daughter’s recommendation, it having
been one of the few books she has read recently, and the intriguing write-up
that clearly suggested this was something a little out of the ordinary. Overall Neil found it challenging but
interesting and felt that the author rather let himself down with a terrible
Prologue that really wasn’t the best possible introduction to the book despite
the superb opening lines and the occasionally clever idea such as the idea of
setting up a Tattoo service specialising in Latin text. Indeed this often seemed to be the case that
there were brilliant comic ideas in the novel, but that sometimes they didn’t
always hang together neatly in a typical novel narrative. Nevertheless, once the main story started,
Neil found this quite entertaining.
Some of
Neil’s favourite bits of humour included the way Me got Hominy’s slave beatings
contracted out to a BDSM prostitute, the bull castration at the school job
demonstration day and the day in the park when all the gangs got on because
they were so stoned on his special marijuana and enjoying his watermelon too
much. At the same time, behind the
humour the author had, in Neil’s opinion, managed to communicate some very
important themes and messages, including the complete failure of de-segregation
for many schools in America and the fact that racial segregation as a whole
seems to be something that has happened anyway in America and will continue to
without positive action taken to generate true equality. These factors compensated Neil for the
sometimes difficult language, absurdist storytelling and the heavily US context
that sometimes required further investigation in order to understand their
validity, such as the existence of the real Our Gang/Little Rascal films which had indeed been a source of racial
controversy for many years.
Chris W had
also found the first 30 or 40 pages rather nonsensical, but admitted that once
the main story started, he really enjoyed it. Although he felt that perhaps it
was less a story as a theme and series of ideas. Chris was surprised to find
that he found the book more interesting in many ways than something like Sunset
Song because it was so contemporary and relevant. He was one of two or three of us who had just
been watching Miriam Margolyes’ new series on TV following her travels through
the US and encountering people and places who might have come straight out of
the book. It certainly stirred up lots
of reflective thoughts for Chris about the US and its issues.
Mark W had
just finished the book and started by making it clear that he is no fan of the
US in general as a country, race or culture which was therefore perhaps not the
best starting point from which to be approaching the book. He also found that reading it over the
Christmas break maybe contributed to him finding it a hard, if worthy,
book. Mark is not bothered about the
Booker prize, didn’t enjoy the narrative and didn’t identify with the
characters. He was perhaps most irritated
by the stereotypical portrayal of black culture and doesn’t like the way the
English language is subverted with all the swearing in the dialogue. He found one redeeming feature in a little
bit of irony at the end of the book as he feels this is something Americans don’t
generally do.
Chris B
found this harder to read than the Scottish book, of which he has just finished
the complete trilogy. He too was
irritated by it. There were too many
references for him to localised things that he knew nothing about and couldn’t
relate to. He hadn’t finished the book
(due to the Scottish trilogy being so enthralling) and was only just beginning
to appreciate some of The Sellout as he got further into it. He agreed with the “worthy” tag and
acknowledged that there were some good pieces of writing when taken in
isolation.
Steve
thought this was an American book meant for Americans and wondered if authors
ever thought about who would end up reading their work and modifying it
accordingly. Anyway, Steve found this
rather alienating and the book as a whole somewhat “relentless”. He pointed out
that sometimes sentences were more than half a page long and contained so many
things that you could easily skip parts and not miss anything. He did quite like the central character and
his self-deprecation, such as the admission that he was “a shockingly poor
lover”. He admitted that the book was at
times clever and thought-provoking, but he found it hard to have any affinity
with.
Mark T
found this easier to read that Sunset Song with its archaic Scottish and he too
liked the main character. He also hadn’t
finished the book yet but was finding it quite accessible whilst not
necessarily enjoying it. He liked some of the comic ideas, such as Foy
re-writing Mark Twain to be less racist.
However, overall he thought it intriguing but hard-going in what he had
read so far.
Richard
emailed in to say that he had found the book distinctly underwhelming and that
while the author was clearly knowledgeable and erudite, to him it felt as if he
were listening to a very long rap song…not itself necessarily an issue, but a
book-long rap song is too long for anyone.
He found the book to add up to less than the sum of its parts, even
though some of the writing was quite lyrical. It took Richard ages to get into
the book, let alone understand what it was all about. He definitely didn’t find it laugh out loud
funny, nor hilarious or profound. A
clever author perhaps who has written a no-doubt clever book, but Richard can
read clever for work, he’d rather not for pleasure.
