"Hell of a Book" by Jason Mott

This is a really hard blog post for me to write. It would have been hard anyway, for two reasons, but unfortunately it's made even more difficult by the fact that I finished reading this book about two weeks ago and we all know by now that such a delay does not help a literary amnesiac write a blog post.

The author of Hell of a Book has written a book about an author who has written a hell of a book and is on a book tour to promote it. The writing from the author's author's perspective seems light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek, reminding me somewhat of Christopher Moore. Mott describes a man who is a bit self-destructive (drinking too much, being surprised by an angry husband who chases him through hotel hallways away from the wife he hadn't known was married) but Mott does not at first describe what the author looks like, so initially I didn't even think about it, and then I started to wonder, and finally Mott confirmed that the author was black. (That's not a spoiler. It's right there in the blurb on the cover--how did I not notice that at the beginning?)

Flitting around the periphery of the author's story is a news story. A tragedy has occurred, and everyone knows the details--everyone, that is, except for the author (the one in the book, not the one of the book). When people ask if he's heard about the tragedy he truthfully says yes, because of course he has heard people talking about a tragedy, but he hasn't heard any details. Throughout the book, those details emerge slowly: from an amorphous blur to a vague outline to harrowing details. 

So are you wondering about the two reasons that this blog post would have been difficult for me to write even if I'd written it right away? One is (in case you hadn't already guessed) because I am white. And while on one hand Mott has done an excellent job of portraying the disturbing reality of being black in America (particularly of being black and male) without alienating those who are not, I still feel uncomfortable expressing an opinion (especially publicly) on that disturbing reality. Like . . . who am I to say anything? The other is that this was a pretty complex story, with enigmatic characters whose relationships with Mott's author are difficult to determine and possibly even open to interpretation. Including too many details would surely either give away spoilers or contribute erroneous interpretations or possibly even both.