If you’ve been following my writing at all, then you know I was excited to see American Fiction, the newly released film adaptation of Percival Everett’s Erasure. I saw it, and wrote about it for JSTOR Daily. I hope that this is the first of many opportunities to talk about this amazing film and Percival Everett’s work.
The Indelible Lessons of Erasure
The trailer for American Fiction has dropped.
News about Cord Jefferson’s adaptation of Percival Everett’s Erasure has been circulating around for months now. Back when I was using Twitter regularly (sigh) I saw that Jefferson himself posted that the film was complete and they were looking to put it out soon. Since then, it’s garnered advance praise, and looks like it’s being pushed into the mix for major awards. Certainly, the cast looks incredible. Jeffrey Wright is a perfect choice for Thelonious “Monk” Ellison.
As I wrote in The Blackademic Life, Angela Bassett held the rights to the movie for several years, and was working on an adaptation under the title “Book of the Year.” An imdb page for it popped up, and a brief snippet about it appeared on the blog Shadow and Act, but that project never materialized.
These are exciting times for those of us who have been reading and writing about Percival Everett’s work. I’m curious to see how much more interest in his work will come out of this. I’m curious to see how he responds to the attention since he’s a notoriously reclusive writer. Every time I’ve seen him do public events he’s warm and gracious, but he just doesn’t do a lot of them, and has expressed his contempt for that side of the publishing game. Hell, Erasure itself is a commentary on how much he dislikes the commercial, promotional side of publishing. So we’ll see how he handles being in the spotlight. But just as a fan, it’s exciting and gratifying that more people will discover his writing now.
If you are interested in reading more about Erasure and its place in black literary history, I recommend the section “Real Compared to What?” in Chapter Five of The Blackademic Life: Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual. I will have more to say about Erasure and American Fiction soon, and I’m looking forward to seeing the film as soon as I can.
For further reading on Everett, check out these two pieces I wrote on his work for The New Inquiry:
Walt Whitman was born on 31 May 1819. It’s been four years since I published “Should Walt Whitman be #Cancelled?” to coincide with the 200th anniversary of his birth. That article turns out to be one of my most widely read pieces of writing. It’s been cited numerous times, and has led to many interesting conversations and opportunities, including supervising a dissertation on Whitman. On Sunday June 4,, 2023, I’ll be reading in the online “Song of Myself” marathon hosted by the Walt Whitman Initiative. (Joining the board of the WWI was another byproduct of that article.) It should be an interesting event, which can be easily viewed online at the Walt Whitman Initiative website.
Watching De La Soul perform “Stakes is High” with The Roots on Jimmy Fallon was a great way to start my morning. Black Thought was a perfect stand-in for Dave, and the tribute at the end nearly broke me. #DeLaSoul Forever. #ThankYouDave
https://pitchfork.com/news/de-la-soul-honor-trugoy-chat-and-perform-with-the-roots-on-fallon-watch/
Lately I’ve been thinking that in order to get more reading done, I am going to have to push myself to get up earlier and work in the quiet overnight hours. Easier said than done. Even these hours are difficult on some mornings when the kid is sick, restless, or just up in the middle of the night for whatever reason. But tonight seems like one of those nights where he might sleep for a while. Exhausted after a long day, I conked out around 11pm, after D. finally coaxed him to sleep.
There are several things on my mind this morning. Last night we got an email from his daycare informing us that the children will be doing a “shelter in place drill” next week. This is the going euphemism for “active shooter drill” these days. My two-and-a-half year old will have to participate in his first active shooter drill. Given the direction of this country and its stupid, destructive obsession with guns, it will be the first of many. At best, we can only hope that he will only experience the drills and not the genuine article. That’s the kind of fucked up world that we brought this kid into and it’s hard not to feel many feelings about that. Sadness, guilt, anger, despair, among them.
Wayne Shorter died yesterday at age 89. As fucked up as this world can be, it is one in which Wayne Shorter existed and made beautiful music. WKCR announced that they are pre-empting all programming for the next two days and playing Shorter’s music. I listened to some of the broadcast yesterday afternoon, as I sat at my desk doing some work in the hour before I had to go pick up the boy from daycare. They were playing Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way album.
I woke up this morning to De La Soul’s catalog waiting for me on my Tidal app. I was looking forward to this day. I expected it to be a joyous day on Black Twitter, with people sharing and discussing De La Soul’s music. But Trugoy passed away last month. And Twitter is a Nazi shithole now. I saw that the remaining members of De La Soul had an event last night celebrating the release and honoring Dave. When I woke up, I turned on my phone to quickly listen to a couple of tracks before getting up. “Stakes Is High” has been on my mind lately, so I started there. The following track “Sunshine” pulled me in. I had heard it before, but didn’t know it well. The song filled me with nostalgia for those innocent days in my life when this music was first out. I hopped over to 3 Feet High and Rising to listen to “Eye Know.” I want to start with the early albums and move my way through. I’m looking forward to AOI: Bionix, an under-appreciated album that I loved, which helped me through a difficult phase in my life. I found myself longing to have a De La Soul listening party with some friends. Let’s just hang out, blaze up, and listen to all these albums one by one until we get through as many as we can. Alas, that’s just not possible right now. All I have is this quiet morning, as I sit at the dining table, quietly typing at my laptop, and listening along to De La Soul, and Wayne Shorter, in these wee small hours of the morning.
THE BLACKADEMIC LIFE: THE BLOG 