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| | Paula Woods' Review of ERASURE |
 | | It is a question that haunts the dreams and reality of Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, protagonist of Percival Everett's satiric novel, "Erasure." Monk is a professor at an unnamed Southern California university and the youngest son of an emotionally distant Washington, D.C., family. |
 | | Reprinted in its entirety in "Erasure," "My Pafology," which concerns a disaffected young man who fathers four children by four women, is a wicked sendup of every ghetto-focused "I'se been 'buked and I'se been scorned" novel praised in the press as powerful or naturalistic, replete with allusions to Richard Wright's "Native Son," among others. |
 | | Successful on the level of fl comedy, "Erasure" is also possessed of a moral ambiguity and increasingly surreal settings that recall Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man." But, unlike Ellison, Everett takes numerous detours in his narrative, presented in the form of Monk's diary, which, while fascinating, undercut the narrative thrust. |
| www.woodsontheweb.com /Bio/review_of_erasure.htm (738 words) |
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