Paul Beatty Literature

Tuff

Author: Beatty, Paul

Raised by a Marxist revolutionary, nineteen-year-old Winston "Tuffy" Foshay accepts a $20,000 bribe to run for city council and turns his world upside down in the political arena

Booklist Review: Beatty's second novel is peculiar, witty, and inspirational. The outlandish plot boasts a cast of zany characters: Tuffy, the 300-plus pound, streetwise young male seeking to "do something with his life"; Spencer, the African American rabbi and "big brother"; and Inez, a Japanese revolutionary and Tuffy's surrogate parent. The story is full of contradictions, which Beatty portrays as the basis of the realities of living in the inner city. Amidst this insanity, Tuffy sets out to run for city council. The story has hints of satire reminiscent of Eddie Murphy's Distinguished Gentlemen on one level and TV personality Judge Mathis on another, imparting a somewhat surreal quality about the work. Understandably, Tuffy's campaign is both unprecedented and inspiring. This tale will assuredly be recommended to inner-city males as a testimony to turning one's life around. ((Reviewed March 15, 2000)) -- Lillian Lewis

Library Journal Review: A follow-up to White Boy Shuffle, the fiction debut of New York Poetry Slam winner Beatty; young "Tuffy" is talked into running for city council. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews Beatty follows up the scorched-earth Afro-American satire of The White Boy Shuffle (1996) with an equally antic look at a brother from East Harlem who runs for City Council.
A tree grows in Brooklyn, but it's no place for Winston (Tuffy) Foshay, first glimpsed coming around from a fainting fit that providentially took him out of the line of fire that terminated both his employment and his employers in a drug den in The Other Borough. What Winston needs, he soon decides, is some comforts a little closer to home: the loving arms of his wife Yolanda, joined to him in holy matrimony via a dial-a-preacher conference call to his prison ward; the inarticulate embraces of his son Bryce Extraordinaire (Jordy) Foshay; the bemused guidance of his fledgling Big Brother, Rabbi Spencer Throckmorton; the usual round of good-natured tussling with the men and women of East 109th Street; and maybe a political fling. The mad idea is Winston's; the mad money behind it ($15,000, which he thinks of as three months of summer work at $5,000 a month) comes from aging Japanese activist Inez Nomura; but the waggish campaign slogans and strategies seem to sprout from every street corner in the 'hood. Billing himself as "ambivalent on drugs, guns, and alcohol in the community, against cats in the supermercados," and "anti-cop, anti-cop, anti-cop," Winston, who knows everyone in the district, doesn't seem to ignite much more fervor than Steve Forbes, his equally surreal real-life opposite. Even Beatty himself seems no better able than his short-attention-span hero to focus on the election, which keeps getting elbowed aside by rollicking riffs on three-card monte, tales of inner-city white ethnics and black transvestites, and a gorgeous black/Jewish insult match.
The flabby plot is encrusted with jewels on every page. And if the race for city council can barely hold the candidate's attention, that's the punch line of Beatty's richest joke. (First printing of 40,000)
(Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2000)

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0375401229
0385721110 : Paperback

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Novelist/EBSCO Publishing
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 014822

White boy shuffle, The

Author: Beatty, Paul

An awkward black surfer bum is moved from Santa Monica to West Los Angeles, where he begins to undergo a transformation from neighborhood outcast to basketball superstar, eventually becoming the reluctant hero of the neighborhood.

Booklist Review: Possessing a growing reputation as his generation's poetic spokesman, Beatty proves in his first novel that his talent is not limited to verse. In this somewhat autobiographical tale of two contrasting Southern California neighborhoods, Beatty's stand-in, Gunnar Kaufmann, is one of the few black children in a predominantly white suburb, then spends his teenage years in all black-Latino-Asian west Los Angeles. Kaufmann's wry observations on his neighbors, his own poetry, and the events that lead him to a Boston University basketball scholarship are hilarious and often very moving. Recent news events, such as the 1992 L.A. riots, play pivotal roles in the narrative as Kaufmann's experiences add distinctive twists to them. Beatty assists his hero's uniqueness of perception by providing him with a surreal family tree that, in itself, constitutes a terrific satire on American lineage. The ending is heavy-handed and strangely moralistic, yet Beatty undeniably proves his prowess at whatever literary game he chooses to play. ((Reviewed June 1 & 15, 1996)) -- Aaron Cohen

Publishers Weekly Review: Poet Beatty's (Big Bank Take Little Bank) first novel is a kaleidoscopic literary situation comedy about one unusual African American's search for identity within a wickedly caricatured American cultural and ethnic landscape. The protagonist, narrator Gunnar Kaufman, is the latest in a long and hilarious family line of groveling Uncle Toms and accommodating fools who must nevertheless confront racism with whatever talents or hustles they happen to have. The Kaufman family's "long cowardly queue of coons" began in the 18th century with Euripides Kaufman (who purchased his freedom by charging people "to rub me head for good luck"); continued with Franz Von Kaufman ("exceedingly bootlicking even for a slave"); and included Gunnar's own despised and self-despising father, Rolf, a member of the LAPD noted for laughing uproariously at his white colleague's racist jokes. Though Beatty's exuberantly outrageous satire often veers into slapstick, he shows himself as an astute observer of the ubiquitous power of cultural stereotype and of the elasticity of identity and community. Alternately blocked by racist assumptions and a cultivated black insularity, Kaufman's passage to self-knowledge takes him from a childhood in affluent, mostly white Santa Monica (he was the cool black guy) to a sudden relocation to the pitiless black inner-city culture in L.A.'s gangbanging Hillside neighborhood and on to ever more absurd acclaim as a basketball prodigy and street-bred poet. Beatty has a gift for hyperbolic cartoon-like characterizations and poetic parody and a sharp ear for the vivid spoken-word poetry of hip hop and urban black slang. And although he's never met a corny joke he won't force on a reader, his language and outlandish characters combine to produce an extravagantly comic vision of the American cultural moment. Author tour. (June)

Library Journal Review: Stylistically, this first novel is a tribute to one of Beatty's teachers, Allen Ginsberg. An author of two volumes of verse who has often been proclaimed the poet laureate of Generation X, Beatty effectively uses the Beat influence to amplify the voice of the hip-hop generation. Gunnar Kaufman, the protagonist of this coming-of-age story, earned his streetwise education in West Los Angeles, not unlike the author. Gunnar is just trying to be Gunnar--an intelligent, sensitive young African American who survives great tribulations while sparing no one his enormous wit. He is clearly a product of our times, and many readers will enjoy his piercing, often hilarious observations on contemporary society. It will be interesting to see what else this talented writer produces in the ensuing years. Meanwhile, this work will ring especially true to those under 35. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/96.]--Susan M. Olcott, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., Ohio

Kirkus Reviews Hip-hop poet Beatty delivers a first novel that almost lives up to its hype. His manic energy and nothing-sacred sensibility add up to some inspired irreverence in a book mocking every sacred cow of Afro-American history. Beatty smartly mythologizes street culture even as he demythologizes so much of official black experience. His narrator, Gunnar Kaufmann, a self-described demagogue and messiah, preaches a nihilistic credo of mass suicide for blacks, an "Emancipation Disintegration." The novel is Gunnar's Monty Pythonish rewrite of Afro-American history, including tales of ancestors who escaped into slavery and leading up to the relative who set up Malcolm X. Gunnar's early years in Santa Monica are a p.e. joke, with everyone massaging his "tragic negro" status. When his mom decides to move him to the 'hood, the street-stupid Gunnar learns how to talk black and get down with the homeys. In high school, he becomes a basketball superstar and an aspiring poet with his own posse of like-minded ghetto geeks, including Nicholas Scoby, a fellow basketball star and ace student. When these bros' get down, it means a drive-by arrow-shooting with an operatic soundtrack. Eventually, Nick and Gunnar land scholarships to Boston University, where Gunnar publishes his first book, Watermelanin, which sells millions of copies and makes Gunnar a reluctant spokesman for black America. His message, though, is a Mishimainspired call for mass suicide and an end to all African-Americans. Along the way in this crazy romp, Beatty mocks Afrocentrism, concerned white liberals, the idea of black leadership, the poetry scene in America, and every iconic figure of Black History month. A wildly inventive debut that veers between spirited brilliance and Def Comedy Jam vulgarity.
(Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 1996)

ISBNs Associated with this Title:
0395742803
031228019X : Paperback

Credits:
• Hennepin County Public Library
• Baker & Taylor
• Booklist, published by the American Library Association
• Publishers Weekly, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Library Journal, A Reed Elsevier Business Information Publication
• Copyright 2005, VNU Business Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved
• Added to NoveList: 20010101
• TID: 014823