LIFESTYLE

Wilmington-area author uses Black experience to pen 'Hell of a Book'

Ben Steelman
StarNews Correspondent
Hell of a Book by Jason Mott

"I don't have much use for reality in my line of work," writes local author Jason Mott in his latest novel "Hell of a Book." 

Indeed, all three of Mott's novels to date -- "The Wonder of All Things," "The Crossing" and the New York Times best-selling "The Returned" -- have revolved around elements or fantasy, the supernatural or the paranormal. 

Yet reality has a way of creeping in. In "Hell of a Book," Mott demonstrates that fantasy, or magical realism, is sometimes the best way to confront it.

"Hell of a Book" is Mott's most autobiographical text to date. It's also his first to deal directly with the Black experience, although all his novels have featured major African-American characters.

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Mott's protagonist is a nameless novelist, who's off on a tour to promote his new novel, "Hell of a Book." There are certain parallels: Like Mott, our hero was born in Bolton, N.C., graduated from a state college (UNCW in Mott's case), worked for years in customer service cubicle land for a certain big cell phone company.

One suspects, however, that our anti-hero is not Mott. When we meet him, he's stark naked, running down a hotel corridor, chased by a jealous husband.

Mott's writer, however, suffers from an over-active imagination. And lately, he's being visited by the specter of a small Black boy. 

The Kid, as the writer calls him, speaks in riddles and never quite makes sense. Is he the writer as a child? Probably not: The writer appears to be fairly light-skinned. Is he a stand in for Emmett Till, and the host of other Black children and adolescents lynched by bigots or just gunned down in the crossfire? 

Alternating with the writer's story are chapters about a small Black boy, nicknamed Soot for his dark skin, growing up not far from Whiteville, "a sleepy, small southern town in a sleepy, small southern county with a long history of strawberry production and lynchings."

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Soot, who's being bullied on the school bus and cosseted by fearful parents, is teaching himself to become invisible. (In a twist on Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Soot wants to be unseen.) Yet being invisible is not enough to protect him from all the pains and horrors of the world.

Mott's novel alternates between the dark, gonzo comedy of the writer's chapters with the stark pathos of Soot's. (Without the author's interludes, Soot's tory would be almost unbearable.)

Is the writer a grown-up Soot? (Apparently not; the stories of their fathers' deaths are very different.)  Is The Kid an avatar of Soot? 

All these questions are eventually answered, sort of, although Mott makes his readers ferret them out.

The climax comes when the writer is called home to Bolton, shortly after the shooting death of a mall boy in the neighborhood -- and has an odd meeting with the child's redneck killer.

Mott treats us to a long, wild ride. In the process, he subtly delivers an old-fashioned philosophical novel, treating Black self-loathing, the issues of the Black Lives Matter movement and the question of whether minority writers should only write about "Black" issues.

In the process, Mott lives up to his advertising -- and earns a place on the shelf beside such African-American writers as Colson Whitehead and Octavia Butler.

Ben Steelman can be reached at 910-616-1788 or peacebsteelman@gmail.com.

Hell of a Book

By Jason Mott

Dutton, $27