Hell of a Book
I consider it an act of grace when an author gives you a reprieve from his pain by letting you laugh, allowing you to escape for a moment by distracting you with madcap adventures and hilarious observations. Disappearance, deflection, dissociation, denial––these are all themes explored in 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬, which is about a nameless Black author who goes on the road to promote his first book, 𝘏𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬.
As he begins his tour, he learns a young Black boy has been shot by the police. He receives unsolicited—and in some cases, mandated––advice from media trainers, handlers, agents, and limo drivers about how to address the situation: Some think he has an obligation to write about “the Black condition.” Others say to keep things “as light as possible” and “MLK-adjacent.” (The media trainer’s hyper-hyphenated description of a post-racial America is not to be missed.)
Meanwhile, the author is frequently visited by a young Black boy called The Kid, who may be imaginary because of the author’s “condition,” which he says some call a disorder but he calls daydreaming because he’s a “glass-half-full kind of guy.” The author tells The Kid there’s a good chance he’s not real, but The Kid insists on being seen: “I just wanted you to see me. That’s all.”
And while The Kid wants to be seen, another young Black boy called Soot has been perfecting his powers of disappearing as a way to stay safe. The author does his own disappearing acts, avoiding intimacy by adopting the hard-boiled detective vernacular (“Nice set of pillars you’re standing on, dollface”) he learned from watching old movies with his father. He constantly avoids questions about his book, demurring and deflecting, refusing to discuss the events that led up to its writing.
But as his real and imaginary worlds begin to collide, the pulp-fiction patter gives way to a soaring rhetoric both Biblical and lyrical; epic and elegiac; the anguish of 400 years echoing in a succession of statements at once declarative and imperative, as if by repeating the words he can will a new world into being. And with writing his book, perhaps he has.
