A Thesis
entitled
Post Soul Poetics: Form and Structure in Paul Beatty's The White Boy Sltuffle
by
LaVelle Q. Ridley
as partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the Bachelor of Arts Degree
with Honors
in
English
Thesis Director:
Dr. Kimberly Mack
Honors
Dr. Melissa Valiska Gregory
The University of Toledo
DECEMBER 2015 Abstract
Nelson George's notion of the post-soul aesthetic--defined as the artistic
vision of black artists who come of age after the Civil Rights and Black
Power/Arts Movements of the 1960s and 70s--provides many African
American writers and scholm's with a vehicle for critically examining
contemporary African American literature and culture. In his 1996 debut
novel The Whtte Boy Shuffle, poet Paul Beatty parodies and
examines many spheres of contemporary black culture, among them the
fagade of"white" multiculturalism, the queerness of black masculinity,
and the globalization of black popular culture. I argue that the formal
structure of the novel replicates Beatty's exploration and subversion of
post-soul discourses on blaclcness. By simultaneously rejecting yet
worldng within the category of"post-soul," The White Boy Shuffle evinces
a post-soul sensibility that maintains the fluidity and playfulness inherent
to the post-soul generation, illustrating Greg Tate's definition of post-soul
as the "African American equivalent to postmodernism." Through the
protagonist Gunnar I(aufman, a young black poet, I believe that the
novel's form prioritizes poetry, which disrupts the fictional gem-e. Also, by
employing particular racial nomenclature and consistent querying from
Gunnar which satirizes past racial discourses, the novel signifies on the timeline of "America's never-ending discussion of race" and brings them forward for the post-soul generation to examine.
ii Acknowledgements
I would like to thaN( Drs. Kimberly Mack and Melissa Valiska Gregory for their help, encouragement, and guidance through this journey.
Additionally, I would like to thaN( the University of Toledo Department of English for their consistent academic and financial support and the
Schomburg-Mellon Humanities Summer Institute for funding the early stages of this thesis. No less important was the support of my family, close friends, and my partner Jack Alferio; thaN( you for always supporting me and keeping me accountable.
iii Table of Contents
Abstract ...... ii
Acknowledgements ...... iii
Table of Contents ...... iv
Post-Soul Poetics: Form and Structure in Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle ...... 1
Works Cited ...... 23
Works Consulted ...... 24
iv Post-Soul Poetics: Form and Structure in Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle
When Paul Beatty's debut novel The White Boy Shuffle was published in 1996, literary
and cultural critics almost immediately began to identify it as a "post-soul" novel, a text
that speaks to the complexities of black identity in the wake of the Civil Rights
Movement. Coined by Nelson George in his 1992 book Buppies, B-Boys, Baps & Bohos"
Notes on Post-Soul Black Culture, the term "post-soul" signals a critical turning point in
African American arts and letters. Defined by George as "the culture of African-
Americans who've come of age since the demise of the civil rights movement in the late
'60s" (xi), the post-soul aesthetic provides a framework for re-visioning what constitutes
contemporary black politics and black art, performing what Bertram D. Ashe describes as
an "exploration of the boundaries of blackness" (611). The White Boy Shuffle engages
with a variety of post-soul topics, such as the fagade of white multiculturalism, the
queering of black masculinity, and the perceived crisis in African American leadership.
As a poet who chooses to use humor in order to work through racial discourses, Beatty
does not hesitate to parody these subjects, revealing the absurdities sometimes inherent in
the ways in which race, class, and gender are discussed in the contemporary moment. The protagonist, Gunnar Kaufman, is an emerging poet who, throughout the novel, develops his craft in disparate neighborhoods, allowing his poetry to speak to, for, and about post-
soul America.
For this essay, I understand post-soul to mean both a chronological framework for
black artists coming of age after the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, as well as
an aesthetic with specific characteristics, such as signifying on past racial conversations,
disrupting traditional notions of blaclcness, and employing unusual mediums for
expression. Additionally, I rely on Darryl Dickson-Carr's understanding of "literary
signifying" for my essay. He states that the literary signifying found in novels such as
The White Boy Shuffle is "closely related to postmodernity to the extent that it is 'a
contradictory phenomenon, one that uses and abuses, installs and then subverts, the very
concepts it challenges'" (30). He goes on to say that this form of signifying "presumes that the reader is conversant with a vast repelÿoire of discourse and cultural kmowledge,"
(30) which makes sense given that referencing and updating past cultural discourses is a central tenet of the post-soul aesthetic. For this essay, I understand signifying to be an act of both referencing and revising or changing past conversations and discourses internally
(within the text) and externally (other texts). I argue that the form and structure of The
White Boy Shuffle replicates the characteristics of the post-soul aesthetic by prioritizing poetry, employing consistent racial nomenclature, and simultaneously rejecting yet working within the post-soul category. The novel evinces a sensibility that maintains the fluidity and playfulness integral to the post-soul aesthetic. More specifically, I believe that a formal analysis of The White Boy Shuffle, especially the poetry that it spotlights within the text of the novel, will produce a necessary understanding of its literary value as a post-soul text. Although many literary scholars have cited Beatty's novel as an important post-soul work, they tend to limit their analyses almost exclusively to thematic
and sociopolitical questions or its satirical style, failing to see how the novel's key formal
elements ground and develop those very questions. Ashe, for instance, includes The
White Boy Shuffle in a list of texts that he believes "negotiate contemporary America's
confused and complicated racial terrain" (610), but I would argue that the novel cannot
achieve this negotiation without Gunnar's poetry, which can be seen working through
this terrain in the poems Beatty brings into the novel. Similarly, Mark Anthony Neal
discusses Gunnar's "'queered' black identity"--both in terms of race and gender--and
argues that he is as a "ghetto-fab ethnographer and cultural critic" (134) who represents
the sea change between the soul generation and the post-soul generation. But the primary
way in which Gunnar embodies this change is through his poetry, which tracks his own
geographic, social, and political relocations. L.H. Stallings considers The White Boy
Shuffle post-soul because it "reconsider[s] the importance of gender and sexuality in
African American texts by and about black men" (99)--but this post-soul engagement is
not just represented through character but built into the very fluidity of the text itself.
Another typical reading of The White Boy Shuffle is to view it almost exclusively
through the lens of satire. Focusing on how the novel deconstructs restrictive "gender
hegemonies" (100), Stallings claims that "Beatty's use of satire.., is as important as the
critique itself' (100), and that "Beatty turns to satire specifically because it is a form that will allow him to deconstruct the black public sphere" (102). However, Beatty does not actually consider himself a satirist. When asked "Do you think of yourself as a writer of satire?" in a recent interview published in The Paris Review, Beatty responds: "No, not at all .... I definitely don't think of myself as a satirist" ("An Interview"). Humor often 4
accompanies satire in writing, and The White Boy Shuffle, I acknowledge, is very
humorous. However, Beatty recognizes this, saying, "There's comedy in the book, but
there's a bunch of other stuff in there, too. It's easy just to hide behind the humor, and
then you don't have to talk about anything else" ("An Interview"). While the novel
maintains a certain level of humor, the purpose it serves is a post-soul commentary of
racial discourses, which can be read as satirical given the tone and humor characteristic
of Beatty's style. Given this, I believe that there are other, equally productive frameworks
literary scholars might employ to interpret this novel. I assert that through analyzing the ways in which the novel is consciously constructed--the ways the poems displayed on the page project a post-soul sensibility and intrude on the prose, as well as Beatty's fluid use of the term "nigger"--the reader can understand the novel itself as a tangible mirror of the post-soul aesthetic.
In its entire composition, The White Boy Shuffle is divided into three formal sections: the prologue, five subsections containing chapters, and the epilogue. The novel inaugurates the discussion of poetry in the prologue. As the first person narrator of the text, Gunnar establishes that he has assumed the "messiah gig," foreshadowing the text's rising action and climax where he is crowned "Negro Demagogue," or leader of Black
America (1). He explains how he meets the criteria for the position: "Being a poet, and thus expert in the ways of soulful coercion, I am eminently qualified" (1, emphasis added), referencing the leadership of the soul generation preceding him. Cameron
Leader-Picone suggests that the novel's critique of black leadership might "serve as a statement of purpose, a new organizing principle through which one might embrace the heterogeneity of black cultm'e" (139). He posits that post-Civil Rights leaders like 5
Gunnar affirm such heterogeneity, and that leaders like him exhibit a "necessary
precondition for embracing a disaggregated black community leadership that is capable
of progressing beyond nostalgia for anachronistic models rooted in the civil rights era"
(140). A maj or current throughout the novel, Gunnar's exhibition and critique of black
leadership illustrates a post-soul consideration of the shifting dynamics within
contemporary black community. Gunnar concludes the prologue: "These pages are my
memoirs, the battlefield remains of a frightened deserter in the eternal war for civility"
(2). By declaring the text to be his "memoir," Gunnar signals to the reader that the form
of the novel will follow a conscious structure, one that, I interpret, replicates the post-soul
tendencies that the plot and characters of the novel espouse.
In addition to harboring the novel's chapters, each section has a header that
signifies on some aspect of soul culture that the novel seeks to engage and revise in its
form. The first section "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe" is an eponymous reference to
black feminist scholar Hortense Spiller's famous 1987 essay which seeks to establish an
understanding of gendered black identities, specifically black female identities, through
semiotics, feminist theory, and cultural studies. This relates not only to Stallings's claim that The White Boy Shuffle explores the queering of black masculinity and offers a
critique of gender hierarchies, but also the role Gunnar's parents have in the novel.
Raising him and his sisters as a single mother, Brenda Kaufman is an influential figure in
Gunnar's life, whereas his father is not. Even though R61f Kaufman is not heavily involved in his family dynamic, the text keeps him as a central part of the narrative, both as a father whose "weakness shadowed [Gunnar's] shame from sun to sun" (21) and also as someone he engages with throughout the text's plot. As an African American protagonist, Gunnar begins the novel by proclaiming its
simultaneous inclusion and detachment from the African American literary canon. He
claims, "Unlike the typical bluesy earthy folksy denim-overalls noble-in-the-face-of-
cracker-racism aw shucks Pulitzer-Prize winning protagonist mojo magic black man, I
am not the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son" (5). I interpret the "folksy
denim-overalls" protagonist to be a reference to Janie Crawford from Zora Neale
Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). Gunnar's rejection of essentialist
notions of Afi'ican American literary identity relate to the post-soul aesthetic because this
signals his divorce from the soul generation, from the established standard in Afi'ican
American literature. This claimed difference stems from Beatty's stance on the post-soul
aesthetic. When speaking about the "post-raciality" of the Obama era, Beatty states,
"New Negro, post-racial, post-soul .... These expressions don't really have much meaning for me. They're different because I want them to be different. I don't know what these post-expressions mean" ("An Interview"). Though Beatty does not claim to represent the post-soul aesthetic in his work, critics have understood him as such, and I read The White Boy Shuffle as a post-soul text. I interpret this move as representative of the post-soul aesthetic itself: distancing oneself from the conscious collective of ideals and expression while simultaneously working within the category as it is defined and shaped by existing literature.
Since a tenet of the post-soul aesthetic is signifying on the artistic and racial discourses of previous generations, Gunnar introduces himself as the narrator and claims:
"From birth my parents indoctrinated me with the idea that the surreal escapades and 'I's- a-comin" watermelon chicanery of my forefathers was the stuff of hero worship" (5). The novel begins with Gunnar's genealogy; however, only his father's Kaufman side is detailed, which feeds into the patriarchy and androcentric nature sometimes characteristic of the Civil Rights Movements. He notes, "Kaufman lore plays out like an autogamous self-pollinating men's club .... The women who allied themselves to the Kaufman legacy are invisible" (23). Gunnar seeks to alter that history by often referencing his mother
Brenda and showing her agency throughout the text. Brenda passes on Gunnar's family line orally. Gunnar claims, "Their [his ancestor's] resolute deeds and Uncle Tom exploits were passed down by my mother's dinner table macaroni-and-cheese oral history lessons" (5). He even refers to her as a "loud griot," (5) relating her storytelling to that of
African cultural heritage. In order to revise and update cultural conversations they must be described and questioned. Gunnar mentions a moment where he and his sisters Nicole and Christina "open up the questioning" (6) to their mother about a variety of topics, mostly about their heritage and family line, namely if they are adopted or not. Their questioning of their familial baggage is a post-soul project, for one must know their history in order to revise their future. The stories passed on to Gunnar are a "shameful history" (18), one which Gunnar actively seeks to distance himself from. He states, "They say the fruit never falls far from the tree, but I've tried to roll down the hill at least a little bit" (24). By claiming "these pages are my memoirs" (2) and leading with his family tree,
Gunnar establishes that the novel is structured in way so that he as the protagonist can reject his inherited history and alter the direction of his family line. As a post-soul text, the form of the novel seeks this revision just like Gunnar, following his development as a black, post-soul character. This attempt to revise the past is an act of signifying, both in character and form because both elements of the texts aim for this goal. After moving from suburban Santa Monica to the fictional ghetto of Hillside,
accompanied with a series of hilarious encounters, among them getting beat up by local
black chil&en in the hopes that he might earn "the ghetto seal of approval" (57), Gunnar
finds himself at his new school, Manischewitz Junior High. In his drama class, Gunnar is
paired with Nicholas Scoby, a cool black kid obsessed with jazz music, to perform a
scene in the school's upcoming production of Shakespeare's Othello. The fact that the
students must perform scenes from Othello, the Shakespeare play with the most
prominent main character of color, speaks to the novel's post-soul tendencies of
externally signifying. After becoming familiar with each other, Scoby leaves class, saying
to Gunnar: "Yeah, nigger, let's get together later this week. Cool? Later" (67). Gunnar's
immediate thought: 'tHe called me 'nigger.' My euphoria was as palpable as the loud clap
of our hands colliding in my first soul shake" (67). After being called a "nigger" for the
first time by his new friend, Gunnar experiences %uphoria". Being read as black--and thus deserving of the epithet "nigger"--by another black person seemingly authenticates
Gunnar's blackness, something he desperately seeks upon his family's relocation. This epithet carries significant weight for Gunnar, as it does for Beatty, as the epithet appears frequently throughout the text. In fact, this specific racial nomenclature is an important aspect of the form of the novel overall, for it appears not only in this instance but in each chapter of the text. At some point, the reader must recognize the constant use of the word
"nigger," especially a reader who is not use to this specific epithet. Additionally, what makes the use of the word so perplexing is the fact that Beatty, as a black post-soul writer, has at his disposal the use of the more common term "nigga," which might not be as problematic for readers. I interpret Beatty's consistent use of"nigger" to be a 9
conscious engagement with the "n-word debate," which is also understood as a post-soul
project aimed at revealing the author's own meditation on the epithet and its constant use
in black social spheres. Popular culture scholar Mark Anthony Neal argues that "the word
'nigga'... circulates more widely in the context of American youth culture" ("NIGGA"
556) and that hip hop artists understood the term to apply to cultures and bodies that "are examples of the 'adaptability' and 'fungibility' of black bodies in an era when such bodies are hypercommodified... " (562). Additionally, Neal writes that "The Last Poets suggest that 'niggers' were antithetical to the progress that the Civil Rights and Black
Power Movements aimed to bring about" (559), and thus fit squarely within the post-soul aesthetic. Relatedly, regarding the hip-hop generation, Daniel Grassian, author of Writing the Future of Black America' Literature of the Hip-Hop Generation, includes Beatty in his text, which argues that writers of the hip-hop generation strive to produce stories and discourses that break open the limits of blackness and demonstrate the importance of individuality when it comes to cultural and racial politics. Given that these critics have classified Beatty as a hip-hop generation writer--and given Neal's attribution of the term
"nigga" to the hip-hop generation--one wonders why Beatty chooses to consistently use the term "nigger" instead. In an interview with PBS for his most recent novel The Sellout, interviewer Jeffi'ey Brown asked Beatty about his "liberal use of the n-word," to which
Beatty responds:
I think there's this weird.., line between propriety and how we really
speak and how we really think and I'm just trying to have fun with that
stuff...talking about the word "nigger" .... There's a part of the book
[The Sellout] where the characters are talking about Mark Twain's 10
Huctdeberry Finn and that word is all throughout there and... I'm not
sure why we're trying to erase these things, why we try to use these
euphemisms all the time. What purpose is that serving?
Beatty's treatment of the n-word--in The Sellout as well as The While Boy Shuffle--is
that there is a humor behind words that seem to be taboo. He uses the word in a clearly
historical context, referring back to the era of Mark Twain when the epithet was also used
liberally, though in a much different social context. He queries what purpose it serves to
try to erase the history attached to the word "nigger," which is a question underlying
much of his satire. I assert that Beatty's use of "nigger" is predicated upon his idea that
there is no inherent distinction between either epithets. The word "nigga" carries with it
subconsciously the same tense history as the word "nigger"; reclaiming the world for
amiable use exclusively among black people does not constitute a divorce from the racist history of the word. By reducing this seemingly liberating term back to its original form
of"nigger," and constantly drawing the reader's attention to it, Beatty makes the text honest in its approach to racial discourse. Though the term "nigga" seems to be a post-
soul revision of the derogatory form "nigger," Beatty implies that no difference exists between the two epithets; both refer to the same problematic history.
After evincing a post-soul understanding of shifting black nomenclature, the novel goes on to illustrate how poetry, and other forms of writing and communication, disrupt the prose of the text and espouse the characteristics inherent to the post-soul aesthetic. A new resident of Hillside, Gunnar is searching for an alÿistic outlet in order to deal with the shifting cultural contexts in which he must now grow up. After speculating with Gunnar about the new styles of urban music, with its "genital-obsessed hip-hoppers" 11
(78), Gunnar asks his mother: "Where do poems come from?" (79). Brenda's response connects to the idea of signifying, as she claims:
It's corny, but I think poems are echos of the voices in your head and from
your past. Your sisters, your father, your ancestors talking to you and
through you. Some of it is primal, some of it is hallucinatory bullshit. That
madness those boys rapping ain't nothing but urban folklore. They
retelling stories passed down from chicken coop to apartment stoop to
Ford coupe. (79)
Not only does Brenda explain a portion of the concept of signifying for Gunnar, but she does so in a poetic rhythm, rhyming towards the end of her explanation and providing clear imagery in her storytelling. Again, Brenda is passing on her cultural knowledge to
Gunnar, who then processes and reproduces post-soul responses to this inherited knowledge. After his conversation with his mother, Gunnar wonders how he just might go about writing his first poem. At first he believes that "maybe poems are like colds.
Maybe I would feel a poem coming on," (79) understanding that his inspiration to write poetry maybe symptomatic or in response to something happening to himself. After a weird hide-and-go-seek-turned-wildly-sexual-encounter in the local laundry mat, Gunnar skips home with clean clothes and runs into Juan Julio, more widely known as Psycho
Loco, the leader of the local gang, the Gun-Totin' Hooligans. Gunnar seems rather taken by Psycho Loco, describing him as "a musclebound shirtless boy of about sixteen covered in soapsuds...washing the hell out of [a] Buick LeSabre" (83). Such a sexual illustration exhibits Gunnar's queered black masculinity, relating to both Neal and 12
Stallings's point about Gunnar's post-soul position in challenging dominant ideologies
about gender and black masculinity.
After these queer encounters, Gunnar goes on to write his first poem titled "Negro
Misappropriation of Greek Mythology or, I Know Niggers That'll Kick Hercules's Ass."
Gunnar fuses the classical with the contemporary, invoking the nine Muses of classical
mythology while simultaneously contextualizing them within the contemporary urban
landscape of California. Filled with alliteration and allusion, Gunnar's poem signifies on
other black writers who have alluded to or "appropriated" classical mythology. He aligns
each Muse with the appropriate contemporary instance. For example, Calliope, the Muse
of epic poetry and leader of the Muses, "immigrated to the San Fernando Valley / fulfills
her ranch-style dreams / with epic afternoon soap operas / and bong water bubble baths"
(85). Clio, the Muse of history who recalls all events, is described as a "dime-dropper,"
and instructed to "not leave her witness protection program / I seen some stone killers passing her picture / down by the 7-Eleven" (85). While Euterpe, the Muse of music, is
"at the talent show / begging entrance into the church basement / permission to sing her
Patti Labelle covers," Gunnar queries whether or not one would find Melpomene, the
Muse of tragedy, "reciting the day's obituaries" if he were to be able to "translate the slobbering bellows of Ray-Ray," (86) alluding to the epidemic effects of illegal drugs and substance abuse in the urban areas of California. Through these images of black popular culture and urban geography--the 7-Eleven, witness protection programs, R&B diva
Patti Labelle, and substance abuse--Gunnar constructs a commentary that is satirical in its appropriation of classical figures, and post-soul in its fusing of the classical with the contemporary. This poem establishes an ethos of its own, disrupting the prose it 13
surrounds and furthering the context of the novel into the post-soul. It also signals the position that Gunnar will take on and maintain throughout the novel, that of bard, of griot, telling the story of those he encounters and the experiences he has, relating back to the prologue in which he claims, "These pages are my memoirs" (2). As a formal element of the novel, the poem espouses sentiments related to Gunnar's transition to Hillside; constant references to the urbanity of the neighborhood and the people found therein allows the reader to detect Gunnar's observations after the move. While the poetry of the novel speaks to the post-soul aesthetic, the prose it neighbors helps in this endeavor also.
Moreover, the poem's conclusion "late last night my man picked up a j ailhouse phone /
"Yo, nigger, you got to come down and get me out." / and i was inspired" (86) could illustrate a scene in which Gunnar must go bail Psycho Loco out. The inspiration he receives from this exchange could then lead to the next scene in which Gunnar uses a can of black spray paint and scrawls the poem on the walls surrounding Hillside. Allowing the poetry to be juxtaposed against graffiti and "rest-in-peace calligraphic elegies" (87) demonstrates how the novel aims to fuse the poetic with the urban, how the poetry is literally signifying in the streets. By using the stencils of one of his "Uncle Tom" ancestors, Gunnar and his poem also signify on his family tree, using their tools for his own artistic reproduction. By spray painting the poem on the walls of Hillside like graffiti instead of only writing it down evidence's the novel's investment in unusual mediums for expression, one of the main characteristics of the post-soul aesthetic. This is seen in other moments in the text, each of them alluding to the idea of interrupting prose while adding an artistic aside to it, explaining something in a medium outside of prose. 14
As Gunnar develops his own poetic character, his next poetic moment is when he
recites an elegy for Pumpkin, a member of Gunnar's newfound gang the Gun Totin'
Hooligans. After the other gang members pour beer libations for Pumpkin, Gunnar begins
to recite his poem. The poem titled "Elegy for a Vicious Midget" is composed to sound
like a rap song, fitting for the gang's aesthetic. Similar to his first poem, Gunnar fuses
classic images with contemporary scenarios, signifying on the past. He alludes to the
classic film The Wizard of Oz, drawing on Pumpkin's family line by referring to his grandfather as "a diminutive light-skinned black man / who passed for white Munchldn / in the Wizard of Oz" (105). He concludes the poem proclaiming: "a squat family cries / and shakes pudgy fingers at the wicked witch / of the West Side," allowing what would be the Wicked Witch of the West to be instead the "wicked witch of the West Side"
(105). Replacing a malicious villain with a populated, urban region that experiences high crime and substance abuse, Beatty articulates the negative aspects endemic to the area.
Instead of having the members--or Gunnar or Psycho Loco by themselves--vocalize their feelings for their lost member, the novel allows the poem to speak on their behalf, artistically intruding in the prose and illustrating this character's profile within the text.
After the reading, Gunnar proclaims: "The reading signified my unofficial ascension to poete maudit for the Gun Totin' Hooligans and by extension the neighborhood. My duties were similar to those of a Li Po... in the employ of a Tang dynasty warlord: immortalize the rulers and say enough scholarly bullshit to keep from getting my head chopped off"
(105). Considered an artistic figurehead in the gang, Gunnar still must perform his loyalty, or suffer the consequences. From this point, Gunnar gains "lyrical prowess," 15 believing himself capable enough to "sen[d] many bards home in shame" after "poetic showdowns" 105).
A major moment when the novel showcases unusual mediums of expression is in chapter seven when Gunnar departs for basketball camp. The latter section of the chapter is when he discusses his time at camp; however, he does so under the header "E-mail from Camp," (142) as if it was the subject line of an actual email. From here to the chapter's conclusion, Gunnar speaks figuratively to his mother, sisters, close friends, and coach, allowing the content of the emails to intrude on the prose and establish the content on its own. Using a form of writing outside the conventions of the fictional genre, the novel's form illustrates a post-soul utilization of verbal expression that allows multiple modes of communication to represent the story's plot. This mode of expression is seen again in chapter ten when Gunnar finds solace playing basketball for Boston University, having been persuaded to attend during his senior year of high school by a soulful recruiter. While on the road to a game in Utah, Gunnar decides to write to his pregnant wife, a Japanese mail order bride named Yoshiko, and tell her of his adventures. The letter spans over five pages, and towards its end includes a print of Gunnar's hand, which he directs Yoshiko to "rub... over [her] stomach and give the fetus my love" (195). By again utilizing a mode of verbal communication outside the conventional prose--and this instance including a drawing--the novel showcases a form of expression that allows the novel's post-soul consideration.
As a poet not necessarily excited about college, Gunnar takes only one course during his tenure at Boston University: "My one hour of higher education consisted of
Professor Oscar Edelstein's poetry workshop, Creative Writing 104" (177). This fact 16
demonstrates how the novel's form consistently prioritizes poetry, and how this important
mode of expression maintains importance throughout the text. Gunnar takes this course
alongside "the next generation of great American poets," among them "a thin white
woman with a badly scarred face .... a chubby bearded boy in khakis a size too small
and a rumpled Oxford shirt .... and] a white woman dressed in a tie-dyed sundress, her
hair knotted into blond corm'ow braids" (177, 179). These fiercely derisive caricatures of
white liberal America receive the full force of Beatty's satirical humor. As it is revealed
that the Gunnar in the class is the "Gunnar Kaufman from Los Angeles," (178) one of his
classmates pulls out "a coffee-table book of photographs entitled Ghettotopla. An
Anthropological Rending of the Ghetto through the Street Poems of an Unknown Street
Poet named Gunnar Kaufman" (178). Deservingly so, Gurmar points out the contradiction of being simultaneously unknown and named, while also querying: "More to the point, what the hell is a street poet?" (179). In order to respond to his question, his classmates and professor begin to fetishize his capabilities as a black poet. His classmate
Peyote Chandler, who is obsessed with Sylvia Plath, praises him, claiming that "the urban piquancy of your work is so resonant, so resplendent, so resounding.., you make the destitution of your environs leap offthe page. You're my inspiration" (179). Directly after semi-praising Gunnar's work, he questions her: "What about Sylvia Plath?" to which she responds: "Well, it's really you. I thought that if I mentioned a black poet, I wouldn't be taken seriously by the rest of the class" (179). Laid bare is the hypocrisy and condescension that Beatÿy aims to expose in his writing, something clearly he feels black artists must deal with in certain artistic circles, especially post-soul artists. In a desperate attempt to escape the awkward situation, Gunnar makes his way home, dashing across 17 campus nude, finally arriving to his apartment with his creative writing class in tow.
Once everyone has congregated in his living room, with Yoshiko and Nick Scoby bemused at what is occurring, Gunnar makes a deal with the professor in order to get everyone to leave. Professor Edelstein urges Gunnar: "What we really came by to say was that we feel you have to publish a collection of your work. Why don't you compile a manuscript, and I'll take care of the publishing end?" (180). Gunnar finally agrees, giving his book of poems the title Watermelanm, the collection he speaks about in the prologue of the novel. This reference to a fact given to the reader in the prologue demonstrates how the novel's form consistently signifies on itself, for this polÿion of the text is the rising action that ultimately leads to the climax in which Gunnar is crowned "Negro
Demagogue."
The eleventh chapter of the novel is under the section header".., stay black, and die," (175) which alludes to the famous line from the classic black film Lean on Me
(1989) starring Morgan Freeman, as well as the final sentiments leading up to and concluding the novel. Asked to speak at a rally against the leader of South Africa,
Gunnar, having heard the "passionate" speeches of John Brown and the president of the
Black Student Union Dexter Waverly, goes up to the mic to address the audience. After polling the audience to see if anyone can remember what the plaque on the statue of
Martin Luther King, Jr. said and finding that no one can, he asks: "How many of you motherfuckers ale ready to die for black rule in South Africa--and I mean black rule, not black superintendence?" (200). Gunnar, through his brief speech, uncovers that the
"radical" activism displayed by the campus' black leaders and students is merely a performance, for none of them are truly invested in this particular social justice issue, or 18
any others most likely. This sentiment is echoed later in the text when Gunnar, Yoshiko,
and Psycho Loco go out one night and stop to listen to a poet's performance. The poet,
"known as Kwasi Moto, the Hunch in the Back of Your Mind, read a poem titled 'Uncle
Sam I Am'" (214). Gunnar recalls: "The Dr. Seussesque ballad was an account of how
the poet's rough upbringing was responsible for transmogrifying him into a red, white,
and blue animal that raped white women and hunted down 'nigras and Messicans" (214).
Though the poet's race is not mentioned, his poem contains violent and graphic language
and imagery; he espouses a radical patriotic-oriented depiction of America, claiming
"Uncle Sam I am, / scared of no man, / white, black, Klan, or tan" (215). Enraged by the
poem's sentiments, Psycho Loco threatens and attacks the poet, who, by the end of the
poem, "had shriveled to the floor, groveling and begging Psycho Loco not to shoot him"
(215). Again, we see an instance in which a person who (literally) puts on a performance
of radicalism is not willing to die for what they espouse. This section of the novel not only prioritizes poetry as a form that disrupts the prose, but also maintains sentiments that complicate the racial discourses the novel engages. To claim that the only way to achieve racial equity is through self-annihilation is chilling and horrifying, and the novel's form illustrates this complexity through its comingling with the prose and other mediums. The death poems Gunnar eventually receives stand in as products of this formal complexity.
Having urged the black populace at Boston University--and by extension Black
America as a whole--to commit mass suicide, Gunnar inspires others to write death poems, forms of writing that allude to suicide letters. The first poem he receives is presented to him by the news media, a poem from Dexter Waverly, the president of the black student union at Boston University. Waverly killed himself in the office of BU's 19
president, demanding that he "rip up the hundred-million-dollar check and spit in
Gottobelezi's champagne or he'd slash his throat" (201). Even once the president
complies, Waverly proceeded to "plunge the knife into his throat" anyway. The poem he
left for Gunnar reads: "Abandoning all concern / my larynx bobs, / enlightenment is a
bitch" (201). This poem echoes the novel's prologue in which the first sentence reads:
"This messiah gig is a bitch" (1), further illustrating how the novel's form signifies both on past conversations external to the text but also to the text itself. The self-referential aspect of The White Boy Shuffle demonstrates how the post-soul aesthetics seeks to refer not only to the soul generation, but conversations inherent to contemporary generations as well. Both young black men lament the position they find themselves in, which reaches beyond them into the post-soul ethos. When the news reporters interviewing
Gunnar ask if he has anything else to say, he makes only one request: "Send me your death poems," (201) thus opening the gate to mass black suicide and poem production.
The death poems that Gunnar receive are concurrently serious and hilarious. Another formal element of the novel that speaks to the prose it neighbors, each poem illustrates the person's life and death in a corresponding fashion. For example, Carlton Malthus, who "drank himself to death" writes his poem: "This drunken belch / leaves the last bitter
/ taste of life in my mouth" (212). Additionally, Merva Kilgore, a "prolific writer from
Philadelphia" writes her poem: "Imagine this poem / is cluttered with references to obscure / figures of Greek mythology, / antique birchwood bureaus, / and a quaint New
England bed-and-breakfast; / then send it to The New Yorker" (213). Each death poem satirically demonstrates the outcome of Gunnar's suicidal charge to black America, formally fulfilling the description of how post-soul Black America is responding to his 20
ideals as the next "Negro Demagogue." Ironically, the novel concludes with the death
poem of RSlf Kaufman, Gunnar's father. It reads: "Like the good Reverend King/I too
'have a dream,'/but when I wake up/I forget it and/remember I'm running late for world'
(226). This poem reveals the novel's subversion and critique of famous black leaders and
leadership within the black community.
When considering the conclusion, it is easy to leave the text feeling a sense of
hopelessness, that Gurmar as a post-soul artist--as well as the novel as a post-soul text--
believes that the only solution to these inherited racial issues is simply mass Black
suicide. Natalie Kalich argues that "throughout the text, Gunnar embodies what Bambi
Haggins calls, 'cynical hopefulness,' which she argues is endemic to artists of Beatty's generation" (86). Haggins defines cynical hopefulness as that which can "reflect a view of black cultural productions and sociopolitical discourses through rose-colored glasses; but more often than not it with jaundiced eyes" (5). This idea illustrates the "fact" that this post-soul text aims to tell its readers: even though there are a multitude of issues to critique in contemporary America, there is always a way to deal with these issues.
Though cynical sometimes, the post-soul aesthetic harbors a sense of hopefulness. In an interview with Transatlantica, Beatty reveals that the title of the novel comes from not only the name ascribed to a rhythm-less black boy, but also from the idea of "doing something and not being able to do it" (6). As a formal element of the text, the reader hopes that Gunnar achieves his goal of revising his family history, of breaking his familial tie to "Uncle Toms;" however, he does not achieve this. Understanding this fact about himself leaves Gunnar with this depressive, cynical mode of thinking and existing which taints his character in the latter portion of the novel. This also clearly relates to the 21
climax of the novel, where Gunnar tells the black people on campus that they do not truly
care about social justice in South Africa, or else they would die for it. Relating this notion
of cynical hopefulness to the aesthetic of post-soul artists, Beatty concludes his novel by
suggesting that instead of offering a harmonious tome on racial America, he instead
works through his--and Gunnar's--questions throughout the form and structure of the novel. By attempting to approach these conversations, Beatty demonstrates what he believes is the limit--and simultaneous end goal--of the post-soul aesthetic: exploring the "limits" of blackness and querying whether or not racial ideologies and philosophies can grow in any way, building and signifying upon past conversations that have led up to his post-soul moment.
By p:ivileging poetry as a necessary aspect of the novel's formal structure, Beatty illustrates the ways in which he as a post-soul writer can manipulate form in order to express his ideas, and how the analysis of these forms produce a necessary evaluation of the novel's literary value as a post-soul text. It makes sense that a poet with two published volumes of poetry working on his first novel would prioritize poetry and poetic expression in the novel. In addition to disrupting the gem'e of fiction--definitely a post- soul tendency in its execution--the poetry in the novel speaks on behalf of both narrator/protagonist and author. Gunnar expresses himself through poetry, which is displayed directly on the page, and the novel showcase a variety of modes of expression which work through the characteristics and tendencies of the post-soul aesthetic and disrupt the neighboring prose. Post-soul in nature, this disruption of prose also draws the audience's attention to the ways The White Boy Shuffle is arranged formally. In addition to poetry, Beatty consciously relies on other formal elements, such as nomenclature and 22 non-conventional modes of expression, both verbal and artistic, in the construction of his novel. These formal considerations construct a post-soul narrative that signifies on past discourses and exemplifies how a post-soul text can bring forth generative meditations on inherited cultural conversations. 23
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