American Fiction (2023, Cord Jefferson) (Patreon)

61/100

Friends (and Scotts) seem evenly split between "I found myself itching to get back to the literary/cultural satire whenever we were anywhere else" (Tobias) and "Every time it headed back in the direction of that satire, I found myself wishing it could be about the thing it was telling me people don't want it to be about" (Renshaw). I'm firmly in the latter camp, mostly because American Fiction's satirical aspects are either barn-broad ("I just think it's essential to listen to black voices right now," says a white woman, immediately after ignoring both of the two African-American judges on her panel; Jefferson holds for a beat on the race-divided table, to make sure we get it) or cheaply illogical (Brody's director is described as making middlebrow Oscar bait aimed at the bourgeoisie, yet his next movie is titled Plantation Annihilation). Monk's family melodrama, by deliberately stark contrast, feels richly detailed and warmly lived-in; the affectionate ribbing between Monk and his sister, in particular, is such a rare pleasure that I was kinda crushed by what befalls her very early on. Performances and individual moments work beautifully, but are trapped within a narrative that's primarily designed to place financial pressure upon Monk, so that he'll go along with being Stagg R. Leigh; obviously, there's a significant meta-component to that ostensible structural flaw, but I think it needed the novel's formal gambit (apparently we get the entirety of My Pafology aka Fuck, in the same way that King's Misery includes entire chapters of Misery's Return) to land properly. As is, I loved American Fiction when it's relaxed and observational and lightly funny, didn't connect when it aims for provocative and outrageous. Though the bit when Monk ditches a meeting upon hearing an ambulance (worrying for his mother) and the director assumes that Stagg was fleeing a police siren did get a hearty laugh out of me. Also the violent climax that's of course set to the Lacrymosa from Mozart's Requiem in D minor. 

Would never hold this against the movie or the book (I accept absurd premises as offered), and it's not impossible, but do I believe that Monk would write an entire novel in what appears to be just a few days, strictly out of annoyed spite? Not really. That did gnaw at me just a little—"Do you have any idea how much work that is, even if you're intentionally writing trash?" Try it right now, churn out 80,000 shitty words. Two years from now he'd have done it with A.I.