Slumberland: A Novel by Paul Beatty
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“Slumberland is laugh-out-loud funny and its wit and satire can be
burning…There are incredible moments of tenderness…Beatty is a kind of
symphonic W. E. B. Du Bois.”—Los Angeles Times
Ferocious, bombastic, and hilarious, Slumberland is vintage Paul Beatty
and belongs on the shelf next to Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, and
Junot Diaz. In this widely praised novel of race, identity, and underground
music, DJ Darky has created the perfect beat. Now, he must seek out
Charles Stone, a little known avant-garde jazzman, who can help bring his
sonic masterpiece to fruition.
Personal Review: Slumberland: A Novel by Paul Beatty
As a German living in Los Angeles (well Pasadena, but you know what I
am saying) I just couldn't put down Slumberland. There were a couple of
unfortunate mistakes in the German expressions used in the book but I
have rarely seen any American, or any writer at all, display a better insight

into the schizophrenia of a person's struggle between identity, purpose,
and projection. We all are constantly trying to define our identity between
our own delusion, heteronomy, and reality. As this might be read as a text
on racism, I would argue it simply addresses identity issues at large. That
racism, "white man's burden", colonialism, and slavery still linger through
the ages, is a given, but it is the individual's struggle to find his or her place
in the world tat really matters. Funny enough white man travel to Asia and
indulge into the illusion of "yellow fever" while white women seek the holy
grail of sexual nirvana in Africa - but what does it really say about human
nature? It is the other, eternally defined as something unattainable, the
promise of a better tomorrow that, let's be honest, will never come. But
that is not the point of this novel that deals with a fish-out-of-water turning
from a seeker to a seer: It is the jazzy and irreverent prose that takes us
down the rabbit hole of a "former" fascist society struggling with the
contradiction of its failure to implement the bizarre nightmares of racism
and its inability to make amends that transcend the narrow horizon of its
overcast sky, while seeking definite absolution for the holocaust - but it
does not matter if the final solution is worse than slavery - in the end it is
that we are all human besides our divisive, and absurd, ideas about what
constitute the other and ourselves. Music will slave us to a common beat
with all our foibles and fears... I was blown away by this work and its style.
I like to see this adopted into a movie. Paul let me know if you are
interested...
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