The Sellout by Paul Beatty

My reading of the 2016 Booker winner is rather overdue mainly because I have been patiently waiting for the copy in my local library to become available. Of note, this winner was Paul Beatty who is an American, and won the first year that the Booker prize allowed entries from any book written in English published in the UK and Ireland. This is considered controversial by many but I think it does make sense to me, as before the geographical limitations seemed slightly arbitrary.

So I think I should probably start this review with a disclaimer: I am not a fan of satire as I find it difficult to laugh about challenging subjects no matter how skillfully explored. ‘The Sellout’ is a satire and the book cover is plastered with reviews about how hilarious it is with people apparently laughing out loud at its brilliance. Well, suffice to say I did not laugh and I didn’t find it amusing. In fact I sometimes struggled to make sense of it. I didn’t get many of the references. Now this may well be because I am not American, and crucially I am not African-American, and therefore, I may have missed the cultural contexts. Also, I approach topics about race and racism with respect and some trepidation as I am aware as a white person that I come from a privileged perspective. I think it is important to listen to the voices affected by these issues with an open mind, to learn and understand their experience. So for me, this is what made this satirical approach so difficult to process.

Saying that, it was bold and distinctive in its style and it did introduce me to a part of the world that I don’t know much about, as most of my experience of America is through mainstream media. As highlighted in this book, this leads to an incomplete view of the people in the US and so it was a welcome insight. The premise is surprising if not shocking, a black man being questioned by the Supreme Court for ‘owning’ a slave and instigating the introduction of reverse-segregation in his home-town. It’s a very provoking basis for a book and lead to a number of interesting reflections about modern society. Also, I found the references to Psychology interesting especially because I am embarking upon a career in this area. Although clearly the application of the various techniques to raising a child (the protagonist) was very troubling.

So I suppose that if this book’s purpose was to make people feel uncomfortable and challenge their stereotyped views about race and society then it was a success. However, overall I felt that it did so in a muddling kind of a way. I came away from it thinking that it was an interesting approach but how it slightly missed the mark for me, but then maybe that’s satire – and I just don’t get it.