The end of White Boy Shuffle was, as forewarned, quite shocking. Especially the last sentence that concluded the whole story, not just the stage of his life that he had entered once he left college and was living with Yoshiko. I had lost track of Gunnar's father's influence during his adult years, but when he came back in the last few sentences, it felt like someone had suddenly stopped after shaking a bottle of water and all the bubbles were falling to the bottom and disappearing. The pieces set in place, the whole story made sense, but Gunnar's life in perspective suddenly made sense.
Another part that concluded the book really well in the end was Psycho loco's question about why Gunnar had not committed suicide in solidarity of his movement. I think we can see in several parts how that is not in Gunnar's style. Psycho loco, who Gunnar calls one of the best instigators of all time, seems like he would "do the act" to instigate and provoke the movement even further. But Gunnar, who's idea is to not even give white people the chance to be racist, I think sees some kind of dichotomy in the progression of this movement that somehow white people will appropriate and then it, the most extreme form of protest, will become futile. And why give white people the chance to have life easy and not have to check themselves or be aware and empathetic to a variety of people's conditions. This is just my interpretation of his response. But I still haven't totally figured it out- like with the thrashing donkey image: you kill it and bring both the donkey peace (dead) and the people riding the stagecoach a less uncomfortable scenario where instead of having to witness/sit in the moments where the donkey is slowly dying or really in pain, they could just declare the donkey dead and not have it on their conscience anymore. But with each suicide note we read the more painful it is to realize how racist people have not been held accountable enough for their discrimination and how that also is not the answer.
Another example is when one of the Good morning international shows is interviewing him and asks when we is going to commit suicide and instead of making a serious answer he says mildly, "When I'm good and goddamn ready." But obviously his impact was huge, and led people close to him to commit suicide, yet he sticks behind his words.
I also feel like Gunnar has completed his story in the epilogue, he would go into the Kaufman legacy like his ancestors. He says in chapter 1, "they say the fruit never falls far from the tree, but I've tried to roll down the hill at least a little bit," and I think he has. His ancestors were willing to degrade themselves in exchange for a better life, but Gunnar refuses to be part of the show and chooses an honorable death instead.
ReplyDeletePsycho Loco might be seen as trying to get Gunnar to take a more "guns blazing, last-stand-against-oppression" response to racism--to be "angry," in the Wrightian protest-novel sense, and to lash out against the oppressor rather than seem to concede. If the Wright model of protest fiction is to be "angry," Beatty's seems to be more about depression. Gunnar is plenty angry, exasperated, exhausted by all these day-to-day microaggressions, but there isn't really an "enemy" he can blaze his guns *at*. (Even the cops, apparently, grant "poetic immunity" in Boston!) In which direction would he shoot, figuratively speaking? Instead, he opts to call the bluff of white America, which claims to love him so much--to try and free himself from this endless codependent relationship the only way he knows how.
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