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:
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