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Ashley Weaver
Professor Esdale
English 321
2 April 2015
Burned, Eroded, Erased
Percival Everett makes writing a novel look easy; for myself it surmounts to a “Luke
Skywalker entering the cave on Dagobah to face his worst fears” sort of experience, one I hope
to undertake. Everett is a role model for any author. God’s Country is the perfect balance of
social criticism and comedy; Erasure is both these things, but its focus on the publishing industry
makes it a more serious statement because it comes from a professional author. When an athlete
writes about his sports experience, we take it seriously, as a testimony about the career by a
professional. Erasure is (in part) that: a statement about the publishing business by a
professional. Everett’s novel warns of the power that publishers hold.
Everett uses many genres in Erasure: guides about woodworking or fishing,
conversations, novel brainstorms, etc. Many of these inserts are still an enigma to me. I know
that Everett would not put meaningless words in his novels, but I can’t decipher them all. The
meaning of the novel’s title, Erasure, lurks behind more than of a few of them. Klee and
Kollwitz discuss the burning of artwork, or Everett describes the erosion of natural river banks –
both “erasures” of a fashion.
The scene most obviously connected to the title happens to be my favorite: a conversation
between artists Rauschenberg and de Kooning. Rauschenberg asks de Kooning to draw him a
picture. Upon completion Rauschenberg irritatingly erases it and sells the erasing (227-28).
However, after watching a video on the transaction, I realized this is not how the real life
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collaboration between de Kooning and Rauschenberg played out. De Kooning was not actually
irritated, or at least not enough to keep him from willingly participating and adding his own
thoughts to the project. Everett twists the interaction, making de Kooning mad at Rauschenberg.
Why? In the video, de Kooning tells Rauschenberg that he must pick a drawing that he will miss
so Rauschenberg’s work will have more meaning; he is interested in the experiment. But in
Erasure, de Kooning asks, “You erased my picture?” and “You sold my picture?” (227-8). Why
did Everett change de Kooning’s attitude?
In real life, de Kooning understood Rauschenberg’s project. When you erase something
you love, or something that’s important to you, the absence itself is meaningful. You could turn
Rauschenberg’s “erasing” over and see remnants of de Kooning’s work; when a thing goes
missing or is destroyed, it leaves traces of previous existence. Everett’s fictional de Kooning
does not see that side of it. Instead he feels that he is the butt of Rauschenberg’s joke and that
Rauschenberg profited by wiping away his work. Monk Ellison’s alter-ego, Stagg R. Leigh,
erases Ellison’s identity in a similar way. Leigh’s book profits far more than any of Ellison’s,
overshadowing the work that truly represented Ellison’s personality.
Instead of going to de Kooning and politely asking for a drawing, as he did in real life,
the fictional Rauschenberg demands that de Kooning make him a drawing (227). Ellison did not
demand Juanita Mae Jenkins' novel, but he did profit from parodying it. But it was not Jenkins'
novel that was erased, it was Ellison himself. Ellison might have controlled Leigh, however it
was Leigh that erased Ellison by writing Fuck. Leigh demands Ellison’s life story and then
erases it, and we can still see the traces of Ellison. Ellison’s sister Lisa was killed in a shooting; it
wasn’t a stereotypical drive-by, but there are subtle similarities. Ellison’s father’s affair echoed
the stereotype that black men are unfaithful, but situations are never so unambiguous.
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You could say that a stereotype erases a real experience. The stereotype that black men
are unfaithful unfairly simplifies Benjamin’s affair. He and Elaine seemed to be truly in love, but
both were in complicated situations. You can’t read Erasure and automatically condemn
Ellison’s father for having an affair – he was a good man in most aspects of his life and nobody’s
perfect. But a stereotype erases that story. Fuck and We’s Lives in Da Ghetto erase real stories;
they are inauthentic yet taken as masterpieces. Neither Leigh nor Jenkins used their own life
experiences. They drew on a fabricated, stereotypical “ghetto” database. Fictional Rauschenberg
sells his work for “ten grand” (228). Both Leigh and Jenkins make large amounts of money
selling novels which destroy the stories of real people.
The two interjections I mentioned earlier discuss destruction and erosion – both are
negative passages. The first is a conversation between two artists; Everett certainly knew his art
history. Kollwitz was a sculptor who used her work to highlight the tragedy of war. She says to
Klee: “They’ve established a new bureau. ... They’re selling our works to foreigners. They sold
them for nothing and burned the rest. I want the ashes of the bonfire to mix with my paints. ...
Imagine the smell of those ashes” (49). The “they” Kollwitz refers to are the Nazis. The Nazis
not only tried to wipe out Judaism, but they also sought to destroy all culture that conflicted with
their own. They were terrifyingly successful in their “erasings.” The paintings are sold for
“nothing” and burned, leaving nothing but ashes, a disturbing analogy to the human victims of
the Holocaust. Kollwitz focuses on those ashes, wondering how they must smell. And just like
Rauschenberg’s “Erased Drawing” left behind remnants of de Kooning’s marks, everything that
burned in WWII left ashes. Things and people that are destroyed leave intangible traces behind.
Kollwitz using the ashes of burned paintings acknowledges the loss by creating a visual
representation of what was lost. Those paintings were truths that the Nazis wanted destroyed, and
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Kollwitz sought to frame the erasing itself – remembering how they were destroyed carries on
the message we can no longer see on canvas. Does Everett seek to frame Leigh’s erasing of
Ellison as a reminder of the individuals that are destroyed by stereotypes? If Leigh and Jenkins
wrote stereotypical stories which masked true experiences, Everett’s Erasure mixes the ashes of
those true experiences with his words, remembering those erased by stereotypes.
Stereotypes are human constructions, we make them and then teach people to follow
them. The last section of Erasure that I’ll include is a seemingly-unrelated informational
paragraph about trout habitats:
Often humans will seek to improve the habitat of trout in a stream by providing
some kind of structure under the water. ... Generally fish prefer the smooth curves
of nature to the hard edges of humans. But more importantly, if the structure is
not proper and is not put in the right place in the stream, the flow of the current
might find an erodible bank and so cause more harm than good. (138)
If you equate the stream to the audience of popular fiction and the structure to a book that is
introduced to that audience, this passage fits our metaphor well. I do not want to call anyone a
fish; I mean that there is an obnoxious attitude about the way the humans interact with the fish,
just as the actions and opinions of the fictional National Book Association are obnoxious. The
humans wish to better the habitat for the fish, and the NBA wishes to better life for the
disenfranchised by presenting awards to books written about gritty, impoverished experiences.
Ailene Hoover of the NBA is shocked that Ellison doesn’t want Fuck to win such a prestigious
award: “I should think as an African American you’d be happy to see one of your own people get
an award like this” (261). The NBA choosing Fuck for their award is like the humans inserting
garbage into a stream: the NBA thinks they’re doing Ellison and “his people” a favor by
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choosing Fuck. What they really do is risk triggering an “erodible bank,” further damaging the
habitat of the trout. If the NBA condescendingly considers Fuck a novel that will uplift the poor
black masses, they might also naively suggest we view Van Gogh as a typical member of that
group.
Stereotypes like Jenkins’ and Leigh’s characters are dangerous when the popular fiction
audience views them as civil rights models. They create an atmosphere of condescension, and
they obliterate the real stories of people whom have been disenfranchised by our nation. They
burn the artworks that are those true experiences. Both the fictional de Kooning and Kollwitz are
angry with the destruction of artwork – the trout also get a raw deal. Yet the real de Kooning was
happy to go along with the project, but only because he knew Rauschenberg was glorifying his
work by erasing it. Everett’s Rauschenberg did not give de Kooning any such comfort; he plays
the villain in the conversation. Jenkins’ and Leigh’s works do not glorify anything. Like the false
structures in the stream, they threaten to erode progress. Everett’s Erasure stands like a memorial
to all the true stories swept away in the current.
