American Fiction

 

Cord Jefferson's American Fiction takes questions of authorial authenticity and develops a fascinating study of the meaning of identity, asking what is it that makes each of us who or what we are and what do we do once we find out.

Jefferson's protagonist in this highly entertaining and provocative tale is one Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (the always wonderful Jeffrey Wright). Ellison is an L.A.-based writer of modest renown, laboring in the fields of academia, where he appears to have stagnated. Ellison appears distanced from his craft, from his family and from himself. The film is about how all of these estrangements converge.

Assembled around Monk are his agent Arthur (John Ortiz), who is trying to keep a talented man invested in his career; his sister (Tracee Ellis Ross), who is Monk's truthteller trying to pull him back into the family; and his brother (Sterling K. Brown), who is on his own quest for authenticity.

At a book festival in his hometown of Boston, Monk hears bestselling urban writer Sintara Golden (a terrific Issa Rae) read from her blockbuster "We's Live in Da Ghetto," (yes, the satire is that broad), a book celebrated by the publishing world as the needed voice of Black America.

Monk is repulsed by what he considers pandering prose, but personal circumstances soon persuade him to give the genre a shot. The shot turns into a goldmine, which fuels Monk's deep crisis of conscience.

Jefferson's film is an adaptation of Percival Everett's "Erasure," which I have not read, but, knowing some of Everett's other works, I expect the source material is even more incendiary in its depiction of the publishing industry's relationship with Black writers -- a topic that Everett, who was reared in Columbia, no doubt knows well.

Fans of Wright who like me welcome anything the man decides to do will undoubtedly love the complexity of the character he portrays with the easy grace that typifies his work. But the film's ensemble is also strong, especially the lovely and understated supporting appearance by Erika Alexander (Living Single) as Coraline, Monk's love interest who gets as close as anyone might to understanding the enigma that is the man.

I hope American Fiction, a wonderful picture, will inspire much post-screening conversation and productive navel-gazing among literary agents and writer's struggling to find their voices amidst the cacophony of modern publishing.