![]() ![]() I remember feeling that wash of recognition and estrangement that certain books conjure-I was surprised by the familiarity of the voice, and thrilled by the weird, reckless shit it was saying. I first encountered his work through the Nuyorican Poetry scene in the nineties. ![]() But he has always belonged only to himself, unrushed and unburdened by any scene or movement. His early poetry and his first novel, The White Boy Shuffle, opened up expansive new territory for writers trying to build an alternative literature, one that found its energy and idiom outside of the traditional American literary complex. But he moves through them with light steps, his precisely choreographed Southern California meander broken by exuberant outbursts of buck dancing and the occasional disemboweling. Paul Beatty’s recurring themes-race and tribalism, human psychology, ambition and failure, and the haunting presence of history-are the heavy ones. ![]()
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