Erasure

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Interlude

Chapters 7-10

Chapters 11-14

Chapters 15-18

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Fishing and Woodwork

Content Warning: The source text discusses racism, violence, sexual violence, anti-Black biases, anti-gay biases, and suicide. It also includes racist and sexist slurs that the guide reproduces only in direct quotations.

Fishing and woodwork are recurrent motifs in the novel; their materiality and objectivity contrast with the ambivalence and complexity of language. At the novel’s opening, Monk introduces himself as a fiction writer and an art lover, but he also claims to be a “fisherman” and “woodworker.” In later sections, the novel shows that Monk puts specific emphasis on the ways fishing and woodwork relate to him and how they coexist with his work as a writer. These practical pursuits provide Monk with a certainty that contrasts with the fluidity of language. For instance, while describing a tree, Monk notes that the “heartwood” offers a “structural support,” and says that this is a characteristic that he often cannot find in sentences (13). While confronting the crises of his family situation and his artistic work, he finds refuge in woodworking. He starts making things out of wood for his mother in an attempt to distract himself from literature and writing. While language sometimes confused him since he could use it in ways that he could not really define, wood obliged him to follow its structure. Monk states: “In my writing my instinct was to defy form […]. But the wood, the feel of it, the smell of it, the weight of it. It was so much more real than words. The wood was so simple” (139). Language make Monk contest reality while woodworking reconnects him with it.

Fishing is also one of Monk’s favorite pastimes. Throughout his life, he spends a lot of time fishing. The practice reminds him of things that are beyond language and therefore beyond his control. While he can manipulate language and use it in several ways, catching a fish is not as controllable; it obliges him to observe his surroundings and forces him to be attuned to the world. Monk realizes that no matter how much he wants to catch a trout, he cannot command it. The waters have their own “structure” that is beyond human will and perception. Monk thinks: “A trout is very much like truth; it does what it wants, what it has to” (199). In this way, he connects the unpredictability of the fish with the slipperiness of the truth, which can even elude language. Ultimately, fishing and woodworking provide contrasts to language and words. They offer Monk a sense of reality and a connection to the world while literature often disorients him.

My Pafology

Monk’s satirical novel My Pafology is a key symbol in the narrative. It is a text within the text that emphasizes the novel’s metafictional aspects and connects to racist stereotypes about the lives of Black people in America. My Pafology lampoons the putative Black narratives that popular culture and the publishing industry accept as authentic representations of the African American experience. The novel’s title, a misspelling of “pathology,” alludes to dominant social views on Black suffering and marginalization. Such views obscure the responsibilities of racist political and social structures that define Black lives in marginalized communities. They victimize Black people through emphasizing their plight and suffering as a pathology or disease.

With his satirical novel, Monk intends to manipulate the stereotypical views of Black people through hyperbole and make them obvious to the public. For Monk, the novel is not a work of art but a “functional device” (208)—a stereotype that indicates the racist assumptions that underlie its creation. However, the process turns out to have unexpected results as the public is ready to accept and consume such stereotypes as truth. Therefore, while My Pafology demonstrates the social construction of race and racial stereotypes, it simultaneously redefines and proliferates them, which causes Monk’s existential crisis as a literary artist.

Stagg R. Leigh

Stagg R. Leigh is Monk’s persona as My Pafology’s writer and a symbol that interrogates an author’s connection to their work. Even though this persona begins as a satire, Monk realizes that Stagg R. Leigh takes on a life of his own. Monk constructs a personality he can use to confront the editors and publishers while pretending to be Stagg R. Leigh. He tells his agent to say that Leigh is “painfully, pathologically shy” (136). He also imagines a backstory for Leigh, saying that Leigh “lives alone in the nation’s capital,” that “he’s just two years out of prison” and he “still hasn’t adjusted to the outside” (153). This persona exacerbates Monk’s frustration with his art as he begins to conflate himself with this persona. Leigh becomes a performative identity that makes Monk wonder about his connection to the satirical novel even though he disavows it. Monk begins to wonder whether his personality as Monk or Stagg R. Leigh dominates his nature, worrying that he will “slip into an actual condition of dual personalities” (237). Even though he tries to distance himself from My Pafology and Stagg R. Leigh, he feels the persona slowly becoming part of himself. However, Stagg R. Leigh becomes a “plight” for Monk that undermines his identity as an artist. In his final act of revelation, Monk sees Stagg R. Leigh asking him if his “illusions” of artistic purity have collapsed.