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'American Fiction': Asked To Be More Authentic, Author Fakes His Way To Success In A Black Comedy

Friday, December 22, 2023

Cord Jefferson works warmth and humor into this satire of race and identity based on Percival Everett's 2001 novel "Erasure." The film centers on African American writer Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) who, much like Nicolas Cage's academic in "Dream Scenario," can no longer conjure up a note of relevance. No one wants to publish his latest, and instead implore him for something more "authentic." The more concrete reality facing Monk is that his father has just died and his mother (played by the great Leslie Uggams) is struggling with memory challenges and needs full-time care, so after the ashes are spread seaside and mom has been situated, Monk holes up in the family harborside cottage just south of Boston (it's not named, but Scituate) and out of an act of anger, pens a jokey "street lit" novel called "My Pafology." The book becomes an instant hit – mostly with white audiences, which is a deft skewering throughout. As Monk's agent (John Ortiz, working the part with the perfect balance of smarm and charm) puts it, "White people think they want the truth, but they just want to feel absolved."

To seal the deal – and get the big bucks – Monk reluctantly takes on the nom de plume of Stagg R. Leigh, a made-up name for a dreamed-up street persona, who, as an on-the-fly bio has it, did time, is evading authorities and needs to maintain faceless anonymity because of alleged other transgressions against society. Many assume murder and more. With pained disdain Monk rolls his eyes whenever having to do such performative street-talk (think a watered down Mr. T), and bristles when another Black author (Issa Rae), who pulled a similar stunt with her smash success "We's Lives in Da Ghetto," endorses the book not knowing Monk is the author. The lawyer across the street (Erika Alexander, warm and resolute) with whom Monk has begun a simmering romance, not knowing he's the pen behind the prose, defends the book when he challenges her on the notion that such books do nothing but pigeonhole and restrain Black people and the Black experience.

Ultimately Hollywood comes a knocking, the fourth wall gets shifted and the delicate, darkly funny tenor of the farce gets turned up a few too many notches for its own good. "American Fiction" marks Jefferson's directorial debut after producing and writing for the hit series "Master of None" and the acrid HBO fantasy tasking the mainstream on race, "Watchmen." His true asset here is the ever dutiful Wright ("Shaft," "The French Dispatch") who effortlessly shifts emotive states while maintaining an overriding pallor of weariness. He carries the film as much as his character carries his family and the bigger struggle to break racial barriers. The rest of the ensemble is equally on point, including Ortiz, Uggums and Sterling K. Brown, fiery and scene-stealing as Monk's less dutiful, self-centered brother who's just come out, not only adding to Monk's burdens by not helping with the logistics of family transitions but by saddling him with the realities of "how it is" and dishing unnerving reveals about dad. "American Fiction" is a humorous and powerful pontification on race, reckoning and perceived reality – a hook with a barb that could have been plunged a little deeper.

Cambridge writer Tom Meek's reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in WBUR's The ARTery, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.

Biblioracle: My Favorite Nonfiction Of 2023 Includes Some Old Friends And My Pick For Best Book Of The Year

Hannah Pittard's "We Are Too Many: A Memoir (Kind Of)," "World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music" by Jeff Tweedy and "The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight" by Andrew Leland were among my favorite nonfiction books of 2023. (Henry Holt and Co. / Dutton / Penguin Press)

Somehow, we have reached (almost) the end of another year, which means it's time for my annual Biblioracle Book Awards, an entirely idiosyncratic exercise meant to highlight some of the most interesting and memorable books I read this year that were published 2023.

Are these the "best" books of the year? Let me put it this way, they were the best for me in the award categories I assign to each book. If those categories sound good, they may be the best for you too.

This week, I'll tackle nonfiction. Next week, fiction. After that, it's on to 2024.

Best Blend of Memoir, History, and Cultural Commentary Book of the Year: "The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight" by Andrew Leland is centered on the story of Leland's progressive loss of his eyesight to a degenerative disease, but Leland uses his experience as a jumping-off point for ranging explorations of what it means to be both sighted and blind in the world. You'll never see things quite the same way after reading this book. (Pun intended.)

Hello Old Friend Book of the Year: OK, Jeff Tweedy and I are not friends, but having now read his third work of nonfiction, "World Within a Song: Music That Changed My Life and Life That Changed My Music" following reading his previous two books (a memoir and 2020′s "How to Write One Song") I feel like we are, because as usual he writes with a winning casualness and intimacy, and it feels like hanging out with a friend. In this book, he walks us through the most meaningful songs in his life. Make sure to read with headphones and your streaming service handy.

Hello Older Friends Book of the Year: I was not friends with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert either, but growing up in Chicago and seeing them on my screen every week since my childhood always made me feel like they were my guys, even as they became international sensations. Matt Singer's "Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel and Ebert Changed Movies Forever" is an enjoyable romp through the shared history and influence of two legendary Chicagoans.

Huh, I Hadn't Thought of it That Way Book of the Year: I like to think that I'm something of a comedy aficionado, but I've got nothing on Jesse David Fox, author of "Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture — and the Magic That Makes It Work." The book works as both a chronicle, moving from Seinfeld forward through time, and a critical study of comedy that reveals the way comedy is a reflection of its times, and what we see when we look closely at that reflection.

Indulging my Education Nerd Side Book of the Year: I don't teach regularly anymore, but I still keep abreast of what's going on for the sake of my own writing on education, and this year, the most intriguing book was "Off the Mark: How Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (but Don't Have To)" by Jack Schneider and Ethan Hutt. I knew firsthand that the system of grades wasn't doing my students any favors if the goal was maximizing learning. Schneider and Hutt, two professors of education, go deep on the history and practice of grading to try to find a way through that helps students without being too disruptive.

Just Read This Already Book of the Year: At my free newsletter, The Biblioracle Recommends (biblioracle.Substack.Com) I went ahead and called Hannah Pittard's "We Are Too Many: A Memoir (Kind Of)" the best book of the year. I won't repeat myself other than to say I meant it.

John Warner is the author of "Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities."

Twitter @biblioracle

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you've read.

1. "Grief Is the Thing with Feathers" by Max Porter

2. "Tender Is the Flesh" by Agustina Bazterrica

3. "Lust & Wonder" Augusten Burroughs

4. "A Calling for Charlie Barnes" by Joshua Ferris

5. "I Suck at Girls" by Justin Halpern

— Rich Trout, Hobbs, New Mexico

Since Rich is a fan of the humorous personal narrative, I'm recommending a writer whose work I recently reconnected with who I'm not going to forget again, "Foreskin's Lament" by Shalom Auslander.

1. "The Running Grave" by Robert Galbraith

2. "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig

3. "Romantic Comedy" by Curtis Sittenfeld

4. "Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing" by Matthew Perry

5. "All the Dangerous Things" by Stacy Willingham

— Bob L., Cape Cod, Massachusetts

For Bob, I'm feeling a nice Anne Tyler breath of air. Let's go with "A Spool of Blue Thread."

1. "The Covenant of Water" by Abraham Verghese

2. "The Marriage Portrait" by Maggie O'Farrell

3. "Ordinary Grace" by William Kent Krueger

4. "Bitter Orange" by Claire Fuller

5. "The Salt Path" by Raynor Winn

— Kathleen F., Michiana Shores, Indiana

I think Ruth Ozeki's "A Tale for the Time Being" has both the scope and intimacy that works well for Kathleen.

Get a reading from the Biblioracle

Send a list of the last five books you've read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.Com.

What Is Comedy? And Can A Comedy Journalist Tell You In A Book?

Seinfeld cast members (from left) Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jerry Seinfeld and Michael Richards pose together backstage at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles after they won Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Saturday, Feb. 22, 1997.

Chris Pizzello/AP

In 1989, the same year Seinfeld premiered, no comedian had ever headlined at Madison Square Garden. Since then, nearly 20 comedians have done so. Comedy is changing, and its icons have permeated culture in a way that it would take several comedy books to chronicle, if anyone wanted a Comedy History Reference volume set. Nobody does, so instead, we now have Comedy Book, a light look from Vulture writer Jesse David Fox at how comedy works and why its position in American cultural life is now, despite many claims to the contrary, higher than it has ever been.

Comedy Book takes the reader on a journey through comedic history to prove its thesis about the cultural ascendancy of comedy. With a bullet list of comedic categories, Fox guides the reader through the world of comedy to show you that there is an "us" for every one of us out there. The how of it is answered and extended upon later by another question, "What is comedy?" — the whole time hoping you'll ask if it's art, making light and brief mention of the fact that comedy suffers from artistic imposter syndrome brought on by a lack of seriousness inherent in the act of making others laugh. The fact that comedy is, as defined by the author, "the art of taking serious things not seriously" does nothing to help its argument. But it does make you wonder: Where would we be without it?

A MISERABLE JOURNEY THROUGH THE HISTORY OF POETRY WITH JEREMY CORBYN, EUROPE'S MOST SUCCESSFUL RACIST POLITICIAN Through a series of comedic cultural references, we're reminded of how Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, and Seinfeld have each permeated our minds and lexicons and often dictated the directions of our laughs. Along the way, the case is made for how each one represents some level of intellectual superiority. Fox describes how Harvard writers, hailing from the legendary campus Lampoon, make up one easily comprehensible path to popular success in telling the jokes that make American comedy the way(s) it is, representing the minds behind the magic in some of the strangest of writing rooms. He describes the lackadaisical nature of the Seinfeld ethos, which took everyday nuance and translated it onto the screen the way, in art history, realists put pictures of plain people doing plain things on the walls of museums. Or take SNL, which isn't only a part of culture but also a constant reflection of contemporary comedy viewers everywhere each week for the last 49 seasons, with more or less success.

One of the curious features of the history of the rise and rise of comedy is that it has now been declared dead and, in fact, has always been being declared dead. Whether the declarations have any truth to them depends entirely on how you look at them. Fox looks, for example, at the prime-time TV comedy show, noting it has been dying a slow death since its apex with Seinfeld, when 76 million of America's then-276 million people were tuned in to the same thing at the same time, for the last time. Part of why there is no current equivalent of Seinfeld has less to do with comedy and more to do with television overall. Game of Thrones had only 20 million viewers on the night of its finale. Yet despite the (relative) downfall of the sitcom, stand-up itself has grown like no other. One way of looking at this for a comedy votary is gloomy, but another is to be happy that consumers now want their stuff pure and uncut.

Stand-up sits in a complicated space that makes it the inheritor of the tradition of the great orators, our Ciceros, yet also of jesters and freaks. In stand-up, comedy and fame react on one another. Comedy makes fame, and fame makes comedy. As Fox makes his case for comedy conquering culture, it becomes obvious that certain stand-up comedians have killed with certain crowds long enough to call them captured. Recognizing the range of comedic spectrums, there is an argument for a world of comedians separated by the likes of Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chappelle, an inoffensive comedic terminator creating generationally loved comedy contrasting with an outrageous one who doesn't believe in safe spaces and intentionally pushes the bounds. These stand-up titans can do what they do because they have done what they have done, but nobody who isn't already famous could get away with their acts — they'd be considered either too boring or too edgy. Or both.

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Comedy did not conquer culture. Comedy reflects some version of culture. And we live in an age in which every thought is captured. It's the world that is more connected, and laughter is the easiest thing to bring us all together. While the songs of the past were five-minute marvels enjoyed in only immediate company, the new generation seeks connection in seven seconds of crowd work from a shaky camera, shared among millions online, only roughly at the same time.

So, the internet, the character necessarily lurking in the background of every scene of this book. Any book named Comedy Book purporting to give a history of the evolution and cultural purchase of the thing is going to have to reckon with it, and Fox tries. Memes are funny, he ventures, but they're not actually comedy by his high-flown definition of the art form. He goes on to ask, "Why does comedy exist?"

The answers to this question can be found where distinct realities come into conflict. One reality is that comedy is there to make us laugh. But by the standards of other realities, it's enough just to be a part of an art, recognized or not, that relieves tension — to take the serious unseriously, as the author states. The author calls it valuable but not funny. Which, aside from a few purposefully inserted jokes from some of the greats, is exactly what this book is.

Patrick DiMarchi is the author of Chasing The Mic: A Story of Self-Censorship & American Counterculture in a time when NOTHING is funny.

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