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Chapter 17
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Erasure, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race and Identity
Familial Obligation vs. Personal Needs
Artistic Integrity vs. Commercial Success
Authenticity
Summary
Analysis
Monk flies back to D.C. feeling hopeless and ashamed to the point of being suicidal. The passenger seated next to him on the plane, an Australian woman, notices his dejected mood. She suggests he visit Australia. There are places in the desert that are so awful they’d likely make anything back here seem great by comparison. She explains that her father used to tell her, “There isn’t anything so bad that seeing something worse won’t make better.”
Monk’s troubling thoughts of suicide underscore how significantly his performance as Stagg Leigh has affected his emotional wellbeing and splintered his sense of self. In writing My Pafology, he has comprised his artistic integrity so greatly that he no longer recognizes himself, nor considers his life worth living.
Themes
Back in Washington, Monk reconvenes with the other judges over the phone and is horrified to learn that they’re all over the moon about Fuck. “The best novel by an African American in years,” one observes. It makes the judges’ top-five list.
With a majority of Monk’s fellow judges expressing their enthusiastic approval of Fuck, Monk’s predicament intensifies, and his disillusionment with the publishing industry (and with society as a whole) grows. He thought Fuck’s unserious tone would be obvious, yet it continues to fool people who ought to know better.
Themes
Later that week, Monk visits Mother and they listen to classical music. They dance, and Mother reminisces about Father. She sensed that she annoyed him at times, but she knew that he loved her—“because why would he have hidden his feelings so,” she reasons. Still, she recalls having “felt so small” at times. Then Mother takes a deep breath and notes that she smells like mentholated spirits. She laments her earlier promise to herself never to “become old and smell of mentholated spirits,” but here she is. She asks if Monk has promised himself anything, and Monk replied that he once vowed to never “compromise [his] art.” Later, Monk tries to reach Bill multiple times, but he gets no response.
Mother’s explanation that Father must have loved her because he “hid his feelings so,” not letting her see if she inspired feelings of annoyance or frustration in him, adds to the novel’s larger examination of identity, authenticity, and familial obligation. She’s suggesting that if a person truly cares for another, they prioritize that care over their own emotions—that is, they show their care through their actions, not necessarily through their feelings. This seems to resonate with Monk, who has thus far justified his writing of My Pafology/Fuck by insisting to himself that he doesn’t believe in what the book represents—he’s simply a reluctant participant in an unjust industry that has left him with no other option to support himself. But Mother’s words here suggest that Monk’s intentions don’t override his actions.
Themes
Monk considers how he has “reconfigure[d]” and “disintegrate[d]” himself so that there are now “two bodies of work, two bodies, no boundaries yet walls everywhere.” Now he fears he must face the consequences. Later, he considers the possibility of killing Stagg Leigh—though, of course, the problem with that plan is that he is Stagg Leigh. He created him “well enough that [Stagg] created a work of so-called art.” Monk resolves not to let Fuck win The Book Award, even if he must destroy himself in the process.
Monk’s conflicted relationship with Stagg R. Leigh comes to a head as he realizes his ideological or aesthetic disapproval of what My Pafology/Fuck represents isn’t enough—in continuing to go along with the Stagg R. Leigh performance, and in penning My Pafology/Fuck in the first place, he has gravely compromised his artistic integrity.
Themes
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Christmas and New Year’s come and go. By mid-January, Fuck is number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Monk reads a laudatory review of the book written by Wayne Waxen, who speaks of the “sheer animal existence” of Van Go Jenkins’s life and how “well drawn” and real the characters are. “Fuck,” Waxen declares, “is a must read for every sensitive person who has ever seen these people on the street and asked, ‘What’s up with him?’”
Waxen’s review of Fuck mirrors the glowing reviews of We’s Lives In Da Ghetto that Monk scoffed at the beginning of Erasure. In short, he has become the spineless, sell-out author he once despised. Increasingly, he realized that he cannot continue to justify My Pafology/Fuck as performance art—in fact, it is merely proof of Monk’s complicity in an unjust system.
Themes
Monk meets his fellow judges for lunch in New York. He listens as they dismiss the four finalists other than Fuck one by one. Monk tries to turn them off Fuck, deeming it “offensive, poorly written, racist and mindless.” But his efforts are in vain. “I would think you’d be happy to have the story of your people so vividly portrayed,” Hoover says in response. In the end, it’s decided: Fuck is the winner.
Monk’s worst nightmare comes true: not only has Fuck fooled a group of people who are supposed to be intelligent and discerning in their tastes, but it has risen to the very top, earning a prestigious literary award Monk adamantly believes it does not deserve. The irony of Hoover’s remark is that in suggesting that Monk ought to be happy about the committee’s choice to give voice to “the story of [his] people,” it is effectively silencing the voice of its minority judge.
Themes
In his hotel room later, Monk lies on the bed and considers why he created Stagg in the first place, and he feels angry “with [his] world.” He also knows that it won’t be long before he’s exposed. At the ceremony later, all the judges for all the different prize categories sit at tables with the rich donors. Monk is introduced to several CEOs at his table and jokes, “I feel generally out of place.” Everyone laughs. Some of them try to get Monk to reveal The Book Award winner before it’s officially announced, but he refuses. They joke about “you artists and your integrity,” which prompts a sharp, short laugh from Monk.
Monk created the persona of Stagg to ridicule the publishing industry for its systemic racism and disingenuous embrace of so-called Black stories, and now he has become the butt of his own joke. Not only has Fuck failed to resonate with the publishing industry in the manner Monk intended, but it has revealed Monk himself to be just as fraudulent and complicit as the very people he set out to criticize.
Themes
Finally, with great ceremony, Wilson Harnet takes the stage and announces this year’s winner: Fuck by Stagg R. Leigh. Monk stands and makes his way to the stage, feeling as though he’s wading in quicksand. Cameras flash as spectators murmur to one another in confusion. “It’s a black thang maybe,” Harnet offers to the audience as explanation for why Monk might be approaching the stage.
Harnet’s nervous explanation for why Monk might be making his way to the stage—“It’s a black thang maybe”—points to his implicit bias and the systemic racism of the industry he represents. Tension builds as the reader (and perhaps Monk himself) is left to wonder what Monk will say, if anything, once he reaches the stage.
Themes
Monk approaches the stage, and all his past, present, and future faces flash before his eye. Stagg addresses him, asking him how “it feel[s] to be free of one’s illusions.” Monk, as he approaches Harnet and the microphone, says, “The answer is Painful and empty.” Harnet, confused, calls out for help. Monk looks at the television cameras before him and says, “Egads, I’m on television.”
Monk, in approaching the stage to accept the award as Stagg, becomes “free of [his] illusions,” bridging the distance between his Monk persona and his Stagg persona, signaling that he has finally abandoned his previously held belief that he is above artistic compromise or that he can reject the concept of race and operate outside of unjust systems that enforce it. His declaration of “Egads, I’m on television” mirrors the final words of Go, signaling Monk’s surrender to the fate a society governed by systemic racism has forced on him. He, like Go, will play the role society has carved out for him, limiting and demeaning as it may be.
Themes
