Slumberland : a novel (edition 2008)

Like his jazz-cat heroes whose names pop up throughout "Slumberland," Paul Beatty doesn't write as much as riff. "Slumberland" is a story about a Los Angeles hip-hop dweeb and turntablist savant who decamps to Berlin in the late eighties in search of a phenomenally talented, long-missing jazzman named Charles Stone. If you'll read it, though, you'll also get acquainted with what might be Beatty's opinions of Tom Cruise, Wynton Marsalis, techno music, and the hygienic habits of modern Germans. Like a talented soloist, Beatty somehow manages to keep it all together; "Slumberland" is messy, hyperactive, and playful, but it never comes off as sloppy. Beatty's kinetic, often uproariously funny prose – keeps "Slumberland" from becoming a long series of pointless digressions.

Beatty's trying to make his readers laugh,of course, but there's a lot of serious stuff in "Slumberland," too. Beatty's fascinated by American blackness and his decision to situate his story in Berlin lets him play with this theme in some interesting and unexpected ways. Offhand, I can't think of another novel with a beautiful, biracial East German dancer in it. Situating his novel in this world-altering time and space lets both Beatty and his characters consider whether race, which is to say, blackness, is still a useful category in a constantly transforming world. The answer they come up with is "yes," and much of that has to do with black music. It's not surprising, then, that Beatty also nails the mania that drives DJs and music nerds in general to find the coolest, most obscure sounds they can find, and even manages to even write about the experience of listening to music without resorting to journalistic cliché or vague superlatives, and that's a lot harder than it sounds. I can't imagine that "Slumberland" will be everyone's thing, but it's fierce, funny, and a whole lot more profound than you'd figure. Recommended. ( )

I sipped my beer, the second-best beer I'd ever had,* and asked the question I imagined all great artists ask themselves before engaging in the creative process: "Is there a God?" I weighed the arguments pro (Hawaiian surf, Welch's grape juice, koala bears, worn-in Levi's, the northern lights, the Volvo station wagon, women with braces, the Canadian Rockies, Godard, Nerf footballs, Shirley Chisholm's smile, free checking, and Woody Allen) and con (flies, Alabama, religion, chihuahuas, chihuahua owners, my mother's cooking, airplane turbulence, LL Cool J, Mondays how boring heaven must fucking be, and Woody Allen), not so much to prove or disprove the existence of a powerless almighty, but to engage my increasingly tipsy thought process with so much conscious prattle that an idea might strike me when I wasn't looking*The first being a Budweiser tall boy I'd snuck into the Mothers Against Drunk Driving fundraiser. (p79) ( )

I sipped my beer, the second-best beer I'd ever had,* and asked the question I imagined all great artists ask themselves before engaging in the creative process: "Is there a God?" I weighed the arguments pro (Hawaiian surf, Welch's grape juice, koala bears, worn-in Levi's, the northern lights, the Volvo station wagon, women with braces, the Canadian Rockies, Godard, Nerf footballs, Shirley Chisholm's smile, free checking, and Woody Allen) and con (flies, Alabama, religion, chihuahuas, chihuahua owners, my mother's cooking, airplane turbulence, LL Cool J, Mondays how boring heaven must fucking be, and Woody Allen), not so much to prove or disprove the existence of a powerless almighty, but to engage my increasingly tipsy thought process with so much conscious prattle that an idea might strike me when I wasn't looking*The first being a Budweiser tall boy I'd snuck into the Mothers Against Drunk Driving fundraiser. (p79) ( )

I think I was mostly drawn to this book because of the cover, which has a hilariously surprising relevance once you get far enough in. I wasn't actually aware before I started reading it that a major focus of the story was on black culture, identity, and racism, but I felt like the author handled it so deftly that it never seemed heavy or preachy. It also helped that the book is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny at several points, and a quick read to boot. I actually read most of it in one sitting. My one criticism is that the book has a sometimes confusing time period - the narrator appears to be speaking from the present day, but the events are set before, during, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is occasionally confusing when anachronistic details are used to explain the main character's state of mind, and further compounded when one East German character lists off details of the next 20 years, explaining that it's all laid out in a grand master plan. ( )

Not quite finished with this book yet, but I'm liking it so far. Falls into the trap of being a bit of narcissistic self-loathing narrator who-is-relentlessly-clever, which I feel like I've read over and over again, but at least this book is full of charm and hilarity to compensate. Beatty writes fantastically well about hip-hop and jazz and music in general: the enthusiasm just jumps off the page. The music is elusive but palatable in the text, and totally in a good way. I may end up bumping up my review to four stars if the book keeps up the, well, beats. ( )