Magic Yeast
In White Boy Shuffle, we see that Nick Scoby (the yeast man {you did this to me Bella}) is an extremely important character in Gunnar's development. His undeniable nerdy or geeky qualities make it easy for him to connect with and accept Gunnar, but he also functions as something as a role model for Gunnar, someone for him to look up to, and helps him become accepted in his new neighborhood.
In his role as a someone that Gunnar looks up to, Nick Scoby has qualities that seem impossible, even magical. His most obviously superhuman quality is that he is seemingly incapable of missing the hoop in basketball. His Curry-esque consistency when shooting under any circumstances seems far from what should be possible for a professional, let alone a high school student. He also has the ability to read a bar code and tell the price of the object from it, and he can tell if a person has black ancestry without knowing them (even if they aren't black).
In class today (thank you Xanthe), and in some of our discussions of Toni Morrison's Beloved, the idea that aspects of our reality are better explained, or more accurately represented by fictional, supernatural characters, objects, or events, has come up. Since Nick also seems to have magical qualities in a similar way to the ghost, Beloved, or even Baby Suggs, I wanted to see if I could come up with some idea that Paul Beatty could be trying to represent through magic.
In that vein I, the best thing I could come up with was that Beatty's magical representation of Nick could be a representation of how strange expectations for black people in America are. The idea that black people have some innate mystical gift that Gunnar at one point describes as "mojo" that was given to him by "the gods of blackness", is not uncommon. In particular, the idea that all black people are good at basketball or all black people know each other are stereotypes that come up frequently in American culture, which are both "talents" of Nick's.
This is just an idea, and it isn't really supported by the bar code thing as far as I can tell so it's a little flimsy but what do you guys think?
In his role as a someone that Gunnar looks up to, Nick Scoby has qualities that seem impossible, even magical. His most obviously superhuman quality is that he is seemingly incapable of missing the hoop in basketball. His Curry-esque consistency when shooting under any circumstances seems far from what should be possible for a professional, let alone a high school student. He also has the ability to read a bar code and tell the price of the object from it, and he can tell if a person has black ancestry without knowing them (even if they aren't black).
In class today (thank you Xanthe), and in some of our discussions of Toni Morrison's Beloved, the idea that aspects of our reality are better explained, or more accurately represented by fictional, supernatural characters, objects, or events, has come up. Since Nick also seems to have magical qualities in a similar way to the ghost, Beloved, or even Baby Suggs, I wanted to see if I could come up with some idea that Paul Beatty could be trying to represent through magic.
In that vein I, the best thing I could come up with was that Beatty's magical representation of Nick could be a representation of how strange expectations for black people in America are. The idea that black people have some innate mystical gift that Gunnar at one point describes as "mojo" that was given to him by "the gods of blackness", is not uncommon. In particular, the idea that all black people are good at basketball or all black people know each other are stereotypes that come up frequently in American culture, which are both "talents" of Nick's.
This is just an idea, and it isn't really supported by the bar code thing as far as I can tell so it's a little flimsy but what do you guys think?
That's a really interesting theory. I actually never really questioned Scoby's supernatural abilities, I think because kind of a lot of the book relies on hyperbole, and sometimes you can't tell whether or not Beatty is joking, but if there is some sort of metaphor (which I'm sure there is), your idea makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDelete