- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury US (July 28 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1596912413
- ISBN-13: 978-1596912410
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 14.1 x 1.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 204 g
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
The narrator of Beatty's late '80s picaresque, Ferguson W. Sowell—aka DJ Darky—is so attuned to sound that he claims to have a phonographic memory. Ferguson, who does porno film scores for the money in L.A., has a cognoscenti's delight in jazz, and he's close to obsessed with Charles Stone, aka the Schwa, a musician who apparently disappeared into East Germany in the '60s. Ferguson receives an already-scored tape whose soundtrack is so rich and strange and transformative that it must be by Schwa. Ferguson is soon on his way to Slumberland, a bar in West Berlin to which he sources the tape. He arrives just in time to experience the sexual allure black men exercise on Cold War Berliners, and stays long enough to watch the city's culture fall apart after the fall of the Wall. With its acerbic running commentary on race, sex and Cold War culture, the latest from Beatty, author of Tuff and editor of The Anthology of African American Humor, contains flashes of absurdist brilliance in the tradition of William Burroughs and Ishmael Reed. But the plot seems little more than an excuse to set up a number of comic routines, denying the story a driving, unifying plot. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
“What Gore Vidal did for sex and gender constructs, Beatty does for race and prominent black Americans, with sacred cow-tipping on nearly every page. Waterfalls of wordplay that pool and merge like acid jazz on the page.”—Washington Post
“A remarkably strange and funny meditation…revelatory and mind-blowing.”—Seattle Times
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.4 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews)
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply amazing, Sep 18 2008
By Traumreich "Traumreich" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Slumberland (Hardcover)
As a German living in Los Angeles (well Pasadena, but you know what I am saying) I just couldn't put down Slumberland. There were a couple of unfortunate mistakes in the German expressions used in the book but I have rarely seen any American, or any writer at all, display a better insight into the schizophrenia of a person's struggle between identity, purpose, and projection. We all are constantly trying to define our identity between our own delusion, heteronomy, and reality. As this might be read as a text on racism, I would argue it simply addresses identity issues at large. That racism, "white man's burden", colonialism, and slavery still linger through the ages, is a given, but it is the individual's struggle to find his or her place in the world tat really matters. Funny enough white man travel to Asia and indulge into the illusion of "yellow fever" while white women seek the holy grail of sexual nirvana in Africa - but what does it really say about human nature? It is the other, eternally defined as something unattainable, the promise of a better tomorrow that, let's be honest, will never come. But that is not the point of this novel that deals with a fish-out-of-water turning from a seeker to a seer: It is the jazzy and irreverent prose that takes us down the rabbit hole of a "former" fascist society struggling with the contradiction of its failure to implement the bizarre nightmares of racism and its inability to make amends that transcend the narrow horizon of its overcast sky, while seeking definite absolution for the holocaust - but it does not matter if the final solution is worse than slavery - in the end it is that we are all human besides our divisive, and absurd, ideas about what constitute the other and ourselves. Music will slave us to a common beat with all our foibles and fears... I was blown away by this work and its style. I like to see this adopted into a movie. Paul let me know if you are interested...
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious social criticism and music snobbery, Sep 3 2009
By Terri Lee-Johnson "BrownGirlSpeaks" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Slumberland (Paperback)
Paul Beatty has written a really scathing and hilarious tale about a Black guy, who goes by DJ Darky, on his journey of creating the perfect beat. The most significant part of this journey involves him going to Berlin to get validation from his musical hero, jazz musician Charles Stone, who he and his friends- The Beard Scratchers- have affectionately dubbed "The Schwa". This novel presents ideas of race, culture, and music with language that's lyrical and cheeky. From the opening page, DJ Darky declares that Blackness is over and while reflecting on years of tanning says: "My complexion has darkened somewhat; it's still a nice nonthreatening sitcom Negro brown, but now there's a pomegranate-purple undertone that in certain light gives me a more villainous sheen." Brilliant!I was laughing out loud from just the first few pages. This is rare that a book invokes emotion in me that's evident. This has to be my favorite book thus far for the year. That this book's focal point is music and the level of music snobbery by the host of such thoughtful characters was so on point for me as I can be quite a music snob. Slumberland is like your favorite movie from which you love to quote every other line. Yes, this book has too many lines I want to quote. I'm glad I held on to Beatty's White Boy Shuffle even though I couldn't get into it on my first attempt many years ago. I think I have more appreciative eyes towards his writing now.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Who's your audience?, Sep 1 2009
By Dogberry "dogberrysheir" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Slumberland (Paperback)
Paul Beatty's novel Slumberland may leave you with more questions than answers, but somehow, that's just fine. Set in Berlin just as the Wall was coming down, Slumberland explores race, bigotry, music, fame, obscurity and about a dozen other topics through DJ Darky, Schallplattenunterhalter extraordinaire. DJ Darky, a young Los Angelino, heads to Berlin to locate a mysterious jazz musician who has been somehow forgotten behind the Iron Curtain, because only he- Charles Stone, AKA the Schwa- can complete Darky's "perfect beat," a groove so amazing, it can breaks hearts and mend them, make a man see God and simultaneously question His existence.Equal parts Confederacy of Dunces, High Fidelity, Big Fish, and some other stuff I haven't read yet, Slumberland is funny, irreverent and substantive.
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