Hey, quick edit here. I’ve been bad at promoting since my kid was born this week. On The Line Break<\/em> this week, Bob and I talked about my book, then read poems that reminded us of each other. Apple<\/a> | Spotify<\/a> | Soundcloud<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n On The Lazy & Entitled Podcast<\/em>, I was so happy to be able to sit down with a person I am lucky to call my friend, Kansas City Poet Laureate Melissa Ferrer Civil. You wanna talk about radical poetics? Melissa’s yr woman. Apple<\/a> | Spotify<\/a> | SoundCloud <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n What I’ve Been Reading This Week<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A book that made me want to put more effort into writing. A book that is so much more than what’s on the back cover. A book that I felt like I had to read before I could honestly consider myself a fan of this author\u2014it’s mentioned everywhere, it’s the one that got made into a movie, etc. A book that absolutely lived up to the hype! In no way disappointed. It’s also a gorgeous new (recent?) edition from Graywolf, man, Graywolf makes beautiful books. I’m talking, of course, about Erasure<\/em> by Percival Everett. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Erasure<\/em> by Percival Everett: <\/strong>the plot hook is that a moderately successful but obscure Black novelist, Thelonius \u201cMonk\u201d Ellison, writes a sellout novel (\u201cMy Pafology,\u201d later renamed \u201cFUCK\u201d) as a joke and accidentally becomes a huge success. Monk\u2019s writing in response to new novelist Juanita Mae Jenkins\u2019 runaway success, We\u2019s All Lives In Da Ghetto<\/em>, which Monk abhors. The term \u201cminstrel show\u201d is not used once in the novel, but. Sometimes it\u2019s more about the words we don\u2019t say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, there are around 60 pages devoted to reproducing My Pafology as a novel within a novel. Monk also presents a paper at a conference, and that\u2019s in the novel in its entirety. Some sections are told in script-like dialogue, one section is all letters. Formal experimentation is happening here, which is a way of saying that this is not simply a novel dramatizing why Ralph Ellison hated Native Son<\/em>. This is a novel about identity\u2014Monk\u2019s mother is slipping into the throes of Alzheimer\u2019s, his brother comes out as gay and his wife and kids leave him, Monk learns something unsettling about his late father, the family housekeeper gets married and leaves the house at age 70 or whatever she is. It’s a novel that says, over and over, that who we are is changeable<\/em>. Sometimes without our consent. Who we think other people are often isn’t the full picture. People can change, as Tim Robinson taught us. Is this a novel about identity? Maybe it\u2019s more accurate to say that it\u2019s about metamorphosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Mother Night<\/em>, Kurt Vonnegut cautions \u201cwe are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be.\u201d That\u2019s not quite a theme of this book, though it certainly applies to Monk and the trash novel he publishes under a pseudonym. Monk\u2019s mother cannot pretend away Alzheimer\u2019s. Monk\u2019s brother can\u2019t pretend away the gay. Monk\u2019s sister, an abortion doctor murdered by right wing freaks, doesn\u2019t have a choice about her metamorphosis into a dead person. Yet the novel isn\u2019t as fatalistic as, say, Native Son<\/em>. Action and agency matter, but some things are just gonna happen. It reminded me a good deal of Everett\u2019s Telephone<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I recognize I\u2019m going long, and I\u2019m struggling to find a way to wrap this up. There\u2019s stuff I\u2019m leaving out. Monk is an accomplished wood worker and trout fisherman, two qualities that don\u2019t fit into what it takes to be a Black bestselling author, apparently. This novel resists having itself filed down into a single point. It demands we account for complexity in identity. It\u2019s finely crafted, and I believe it will reward multiple re-reads. Which, like. All I wanna do is read Percival Everett novels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Something to listen to while you browse? I’m going through an Ann Peebles phase right now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-17.png\")
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