Percival Everett - Erasure

willy

stick

dick

doink

rod

pecker

poker

member

prick

putz

schmuck

tallywhacker

johnson

thing

little friend

and now had to pay the price. I had to rescue myself, find myself and that meant, it was ever so clear for a very brief moment, losing myself.

Another list of keywords (phrases):

echoes

dead

clock

thunder

obstupefactus

poached eyes

arabesque

nightmaze

et tu Bruno?

species

nocturnal

cad

C 5H 14N 2

moral cement

London Bridge’s Fallin’ Down

Maybe it’s the heat

dancing doll

lynch

Hahal shalal hashbaz

I had the strangest of thoughts. I reasoned, for lack of a better word, but perhaps no word is better, that if I were to go out into the streets of Washington, say around 14th Street and T, I might find an individual who by all measure was Stagg Leigh and then I could kill him, perhaps bring him home first for a meal, but kill him after all. But there was no such person and yet there was and he was me. I had not only made him, but I had made him well enough that he created a work of so-called art. I felt like god considering Hitler or any number of terrorists or Congressmen. I resolved that I could not let the committee select Fuck as the winner of the most prestigious book award in the nation. I had to defeat myself to save my self, my own identity. I had to toss a spear through the mouth of my own creation, silence him forever, kill him, press him down a dark hole and have the world admit that he never existed.

Christmas and New Year’s passed the way I had always wanted them to, without note. In the middle of January Fuck was number one on the New York Times bestseller list, had been picked up by two more book clubs.

I sat up all night for several nights, pretending to look over my notes for a real novel.

When I was near delirium, I recalled the Icarus myth and pointed out to myself that whereas Icarus did plummet to earth, Daedalus in fact flew. I decided that Zeno was too slow getting to his point and that Thales’ theory didn’t hold water. I also determined that there is no alternative to madness, that if you take all the blue out of purple, you aren’t really left with red; it just looks that way.

New York Times 17 January

Fuck

by Stagg R. Leigh

Random House. 110 pp. $23.95

by Wayne WaxenThere is so much excitement over this new novel by unknown Leigh that it is difficult to write a review which approaches objectivity. But that is the point. This novel is so honest, so raw, so down-and-dirty-gritty, so real, that talk of objectivity is out of place. To address the book on that level would be the same as comparing the medicine beliefs of Amazon Indians to our advanced biomedical science. This novel must be taken on its own terms; it’s a black thang. The life of Van Go Jenkins is one of sheer animal existence, one that we can all recognize. Our young protagonist has no father, is ghetto tough and resists education and reason like the plague. It is natural, right for him to do so. He is hard, cruel, lost and we are afraid of him; that much is clear. But he is so real that we must offer him pity. He is the hood whom Dirty Harry blows away and we say, “Good, you got him,” then feel the loss, at least of our own innocence.Van Go has fo babies by four different mothers. He pays no child support, has no job, and no ambition except that he is on the verge of becoming a criminal. His mother, whom he stabs in the novel’s opening dream sequence, arranges employment for him. He goes to work for a wealthy black family with a beautiful daughter who soon becomes the target of Van Go’s burgeoning criminality.The characters are so well drawn that often one forgets that Fuck is a novel. It is more like the evening news. The ghetto comes to life in these pages and for this glimpse of hood existence we owe the author a tremendous debt. The writing is dazzling, the dialogue as true as dialogue gets and it is simply honest. Fuck is a must read for every sensitive person who has ever seen these people on the street and asked, “What’s up with him?”

Call it expediently located irony, or convenient rationalization, but I was keeping the money.

New York. Lunch with my fellow judges was had in a little, but expensive, Italian restaurant not far from the hotel where the awards ceremony would be held later that evening. I hardly ate, having left my appetite behind some months earlier, but the others seemed particularly grateful for free meal and drink. We made small talk and I came to understand that they all had been accompanied to the event by their wives, girlfriend and husband and so I felt even more conspicuously alone.

I listened at first rather patiently to their dismissal of the four finalists that were not Fuck. I became more disheartened as it became clear that their pathetic discussion was ranking that most disgusting of novels as clearly superior to its opponents. I began by mentioning the strength of one or another of the other books, but soon I had turned to a pointed attack against Fuck.

“It’s not that it’s a bad novel,” I said, sipping wine, then placing down my glass. “It’s no novel at all. It is a failed conception, an unformed fetus, seed cast into the sand, a hand without fingers, a word with no vowels. It is offensive, poorly written, racist and mindless.”

Wilson Harnet, Ailene Hoover, Thomas Tomad and Jon Paul Sigmarsen just looked at me, none of them speaking.

“It’s not art,” I said.

Ailene Hoover said, “I should think as an African American you’d be happy to see one of your own people get an award like this.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Are you nuts?”

“I don’t think we have to resort to name calling,” Wilson Harnet said.

“I would think you’d be happy to have the story of your people so vividly portrayed,” Hoover said.

“These are no more my people than Abbot and Costello are your people,” I said, considering that I had perhaps offered a flawed analogy.

“I learned a lot reading that book,” Jon Paul Sigmarsen said. “I haven’t had a lot of experience with color — black people — and so Fuck was a great thing for me.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” I said. “People will read this shit and believe that there is truth to it.”

Thomas Tomad laughed. “This is the truest novel I’ve ever read. It could only have been written by someone who has done hard time. It’s the real thing.”

“I agree,” said Harnet.

“Oh, my god,” I said. I leaned back and looked out at the day.

“I say we vote,” Sigmarsen said.

“I second,” from Hoover.

“I don’t want to vote,” I said.

“I’m afraid we have a second,” Harnet said. “All in favor of Fuck as our winner for this year’s Book Award, raise a hand.”