The Fairfax Library
Book Discussion Group will meet Thursday, February 9th at 7 p.m. to discuss our
February book, The Sellout by Paul Beatty.
Discussion questions are
below.
Here are some links
for additional background and information:
Short clip of the Little Rascals
On Oct. 26, 1965,
James Baldwin and William F. Buckley debated at the Cambridge Union (Cambridge
University) debating society for and against the following motion: “The American Dream is at the
Expense of the American Negro.”
Here is an
interesting commentary on that debate which James Baldwin won by a
landslide.
“It is a terrible thing for an entire people to
surrender to the notion that one-ninth of its population is beneath them. Until
the moment comes when we, the Americans, are able to accept the fact that my
ancestors are both black and white, that on that continent we are trying to
forge a new identity, that we need each other, that I am not a ward of America,
I am not an object of missionary charity, I am one of the people who built the
country--until this moment comes there is scarcely any hope for the American
dream. If the people are denied participation in it, by their very presence
they will wreck it. And if that happens it is a very grave moment for the
West.” ~ James Baldwin
Coming up, we have the
following book to look forward to reading:
Thurs. March. 9 The
Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
(One Book/One Marin selection)
Thanks for reading
with us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.
Beth Bailey-Gates
Friends of the Fairfax
Library
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
1. If you were a Supreme Court justice hearing the case of Me
v. The United States of America, how
would you rule? What does Hampton Fiske, the narrator’s attorney (“Don’t say
shit! Don’t run! Don’t resist arrest!”), ultimately prove about America’s
attempts to legislate life?
2. Did you laugh or cry (or
both) at the experiments run by F. K. Me, the narrator’s psychologist/social
scientist dad? Does your experience of the world support his three-stage Theory
of Quintessential Blackness, summarized in Fiske’s closing monologue?
3. Does the concept of a
ledger, designed to keep track of who owes a debt and who is entitled to
receive a payment, accurately reflect the history of humanity in America? When
Foy Cheshire calls the narrator a sellout on page 98, what is he saying was
sold? Who were the buyers?
4. Marpessa calls the
narrator Bonbon, a lightweight nickname that emerged when he was competing in a
spelling bee at age 11 (page 124). Is she tougher than he is? Besides the bus,
what else does she control? Would THE SELLOUT be very different if it were
narrated by a black woman?
5. On page 138, after
Marpessa dismantles the car industry’s fantasyland ads featuring affluent black
men, Laura Jane tells Marpessa she’s “far too smart not to know that it isn’t
race that’s the problem but class.” Is Laura Jane right?
6. How does the cover art (an
illustration of a lawn jockey) summarize the narrator’s core conflict?
7. How did you react when the
narrator created Dickens’s boundary lines (page 99), and Marpessa ejected
strangers from the bus (page 134, taking her cue from George Wallace’s
“Segregation Now” gubernatorial inauguration speech)?
8. Why does Hominy want to be
the narrator’s slave? Even though he calls Bonbon “massa,” is Hominy ultimately
his own master now that he has been emancipated by the entertainment industry?
9. Paul Beatty has said that
he isn’t comfortable with labeling THE SELLOUT a satire; many of the novel’s
cartoonish elements are steeped in realism (for example, Beatty’s inspiration
for the Dickens charter was a list of actual deed restrictions from the
Richland Farms section of Compton, which was zoned for agriculture). How does
Beatty use tragicomedy to bring reality and absurdity into focus?
10. On page 274, the beautiful
Supreme Court Justice from the Upper West Side asks her colleagues to consider
what the words “separate,” “equal” and “black” really mean. How would you
answer her? Do your answers explain the shooting of Bonbon’s father?
11. Paul Beatty is the first
American to win the Man Booker Prize (which in 2014 was opened to any book
written in English and published by a British publisher). Affirmed by a panel
of British judges, does the novel deliver a universal message? Or is it exclusively
a book about American strife?
12. Most canonical novels that
explore race in America are either set in the South or in New York City. How
does THE SELLOUT’s backdrop of Los Angeles change the conversation?
13. What’s so smart about the
Dum Dum Donut club? When the narrator ponders “What exactly is our thing?”
(page 288), what is he simultaneously asking about who has the power to create
a cultural identity, who has the right to appropriate it, and who has the right
to erase it?
14. From Beatty’s reinvention of Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light
Brigade” (“The Charge of the Light-Skinned Spade,” page 38) to hisThe Pejorative-Free Adventures (of Huckleberry Finn and Jim, page
95), which of the riffs in the book will stay in your mind the longest?
15. In the closing chapter,
appropriately titled “Closure,” as Foy and the narrator debate whether the U.S.
finally paid off its debts when “the black dude was inaugurated,” why isn’t Foy
able to consider the plight of other non-white populations? Will it ever be
possible for race to not matter in America?
16. In Paul Beatty’s previous
novels and poetry, what is unique about the way he sees the world, and the
words he uses to draw us in?
17. Why is the prologue of
the book written in a different style?
18. Were you ever
uncomfortable with the language used by the author as you read the book? Why or
why not?
