LET’S TALK ABOUT IT (LTAI) BOOK DISCUSSION: Erasure

Schedule for Book 5: Erasure by Percival Everett
March 18 @ 5:30pm Movie American Fiction (R)
March 22 @ 12:30pm Movie American Fiction (R)
March 25 @ 6:30pm Discussion with Dr. Todd Hagrette

Erasure, a “blistering satire about race and publishing” by author Percival Everett, published in 2011, is the last of five novels to be presented between September 2024 and March 2025 as part of the discussion series, LET’S TALK ABOUT IT (LTAI) – SOUTHERN NOVELS ON PAGE AND SCREEN. With discussions led by USC-Aiken humanities scholars, LTAI is more than your average book club! Participants read, watch, and then compare the novels to their film adaptations.

“Thelonious “Monk” Ellison’s writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been ‘critically acclaimed.’ He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited ‘some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days.’ Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies―his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer’s, and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father’s suicide seven years before.

In his rage and despair, Monk dashes off a novel meant to be an indictment of Juanita Mae Jenkins’s bestseller. He doesn’t intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is―under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh―and soon it becomes the Next Big Thing. How Monk deals with the personal and professional fallout galvanizes this audacious, hysterical, and quietly devastating novel.”

Let’s Talk About It (LTAI) is intended for ages 18 and older
This program is made possible with a grant from SC Humanities

Book registration begins August 12 at the Reference desk
Books will be available first come, first served
Movie viewings and book discussions take place in the 1st floor Meeting Room

For more information call 803-642-2020, Ext. 3.