Erasure (novel)

Erasure is a 2001 novel by American writer Percival Everett. It was originally published by the University Press of New England. The novel reacts against the dominant strains of discussion related to the publication and criticism of African-American literature, and was later adapted by Cord Jefferson into a film titled American Fiction, starring Jeffrey Wright.

Upon its release, the novel was widely praised by critics.

Plot
Erasure's protagonist, Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a professor of English literature and novelist, is in a rut. He writes novels that are highly academic, and philosophical, often with reference to Greek mythology and literary theory. The book establishes itself during a trip to DC, where Ellison presents a paper to a literary society. During the visit, he witnesses his aging mother, now cared for full-time by his sister, suffering from declining memory and health issues.

Ellison struggles to get his books published because, as his agent repeatedly explains to him, publishing houses do not believe his writing to be "black enough". Ellison is also confronted with the success of a novel called We's Lives In Da Ghetto, by first-time writer Juanita Mae Jenkins; despite Ellison finding the book full of cliches and lazy stereotypes, it becomes a best seller and makes Jenkins an instant critical darling. Ellison's sister dies unexpectedly, and he moves to DC to replace her as his mother's caregiver.

Frustrated with his job prospects in DC, Ellison sits down to write a "black" novel that will be palatable to the publishers. Using the assumed identity of a black convict, Monk quickly composes a satirical response to Jenkins' text, based in part on Richard Wright's Native Son (1940) and Sapphire's Push (1996). He calls his own novel My Pafology, before changing its title to simply Fuck.

My Pafology is written in ten chapters, as a novel within a novel. The plot is an exaggerated story of a young black man who has several babies by different women whom he abuses as he falls into a life of crime and delinquency with his friends. The dialogue is deliberately written in a style that relies heavily on African-American English and phonetic spellings that reflect that variety of English.

To Ellison's shock, his agent is able to quickly get a publishing deal for My Pafology, earning him half a million-dollars in advance fees. The work quickly becomes his best-selling work to date and gets optioned by a film producer. Throughout the process of selling and optioning the film, Ellison fashions a persona as the convicted "author" in order to maintain his credibility.

In his personal life, his mother's mental health goes downhill. They take a "last vacation" to their weekend home on the Chesapeake, where Ellison briefly strikes up a relationship with a local woman. At the end of the novel, Ellison wins a major publishing award for the success of My Pafology, but is shown to already be suffering from a similar mental decline as his mother.

Structure
The Guardian review described the book as a "skillful, extended parody of ghetto novels such as Sapphire's Push."

Reception
The novel was well received. Darryl Pinckney's review in The Guardian focused on the dark comedy that Erasure represents, describing it as moving towards "bleakest comedy" and "sly work." Ready Steady Book focused on the novel being "full of anger" about the African-American literary establishment and said that the most redeeming elements of the plot come from a "moving portrait of a son coming to terms with his mother's life."

Erasure won the inaugural Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in 2002.

In 2024, was listed on The Atlantic's The Great American Novels list. The New York Times in the same year named it the 20th best book of the 21st century.

Film adaptation
After receiving literary praise for the novel, Everett was initially reluctant to license the novel for adaptation. American filmmaker Cord Jefferson however, presented a compelling case for an adaptation and the changes to the plot and story in the script satisfied Everett.

After several years of production, the film adaption was released in 2023 under the film titled American Fiction, written and directed by Jefferson and starring Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Erika Alexander, Sterling K. Brown, and Leslie Uggams. The film won the Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival that year. The film received five nominations at the 96th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and won Best Adapted Screenplay.