Bryan Murphy's Blog - Posts Tagged "usa"

The daftness of racism is mirrored in the categories used to describe a “race”. In the UK, for instance, “Asian” refers only to people from South Asia. I'm not sure where that leaves people from East Asia, West Asia or Central Asia. In the USA, things seem to be even more bizarre. The term “Caucasian” can be applied to people born on the other side of the globe to the Caucusus. I think it means “white”. Then there is “Hispanic”, which implies you're not white, even if you come from Spain or Portugal. And anyone with the tiniest trace of African heritage is deemed “black”, irrespective of the evidence of one's eyes. In “The Sellout”, Paul Beatty makes riotous fun of the whole shebang surrounding “blackness” and pours cold water over the self-righteousness of racists of all persuasions, while leaving the reader in no doubt that racism is still pervavasive and still pernicious. He is a master of language endowed with rare insight into human society and the human mind. I hope that one day he will turn his attention to this far side of the Pond.

The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The 21st Century Witchfinders will have a field day with this novel. The identity politics brigade will excoriate Updike for presenting characters who express casual racism without a second thought or apparent disastrous consequences, whereas the Creative Writing graduates will be horrified by his breaking of Mr King's commandments: all those adjectives and adverbs, as though they added meaning, as though they were a valuable part of the English language! Like the witches of old, he will be found guilty where there is no guilt, no witchcraft. In this age of new, improved puritanism, it is the devil's own job to have satire understood, never mind appreciated. If only there were an afterlife, so that we might catch the sound of the author's spirit cackling fiendishly.



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