Erasure by Percival Everett

 I'm not sure what to make of this novel. I liked the premise--that an author of very literary (and little-read) books would write a piece of trashy literature under a pseudonym only to see it become a NY Times bestseller, then have it turned into a movie. I know this is supposed to be a satire but I didn't quite get most of the humor. I kind of felt bad for Monk Ellison. The books he loves to write are not selling. HIs sister gets murdered (then we never find out if they caught the killer). HIs brother stops answering his calls and we don't know what happened to him. And his mother is developing dementia. And with his sister gone, he's the only one left to hold it all together, which he's not doing a very good job of.

I liked the basic story. But there are a lot of scenes that just pop up with no explanation--about a man on a gameshow, and two artists talking about Hitler, etc--that I'm not sure what to make of. And there is a large portion of the book devoted to parts of his trashy novel. Then there's the rather hallucinogenic ending, where I wondered if Monk was having a nervous breakdown. But the book just abruptly ends, so I guess we'll never know. I'd kind of like to see the movie American Fiction because I can't imagine how they made a movie out of this unless they cut a lot out.