![]() Because we have little to no context for this confession, we can only suspect that the narrator has been caught up in a messy predicament or simply wants to clarify a widely held stereotype to somewhat comedic and ironic effect. The few preconceptions that we have of the novel-that it’s funny, outrageous, raunchy, wild-might color the way we read this sentence. ![]() “This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I’ve never stolen anything,” the narrator tells us in the novel’s opening sentence-without revealing that he’s inside the court. ![]() ![]() While awaiting the beginning of the Supreme Court trial is the culmination for our protagonist, it is formally the beginning for us, though we don’t know it just yet. We come to learn that the removal of the town’s name is the inciting incident that propels our unnamed narrator all the way to the Supreme Court, where he is on trial for violating civil rights law. The Sellout takes place in the peripheries of Los Angeles, in a fictional town that used to be called Dickens. ![]() Paul Beatty’s The Sellout offers us ample ground to think about craft and theme: every page is rich in detail and images, generating new reversals, ironies, and constellations on how we are to think about race, identity, and power. ![]()
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