- Published: January 9, 2022
- Updated: January 9, 2022
- University / College: University of Strathclyde
- Level: College Admission
- Language: English
- Downloads: 21
The paper ” Platitudes by Terry Ellis” is an excellent example of a literature book review.
The novel is self-indulgent and carries reflection on certain events of Terry’s life. This uproariously funny debut novel of Terry was first published in 1988. It presents the conflicts within the African- American literary community. Dewayne Wellington who is a black failing experimental novelist and Isshee Ayam who is a radical feminist author joins hand on the latest sixties comedy by Dewayne. They alternately tell the story about a coming age in Earle and Dorothy’s life. Earle and Dorothy are two black middle-class teenagers who roam sex-starved in New York City. The battling writers slip ever and in a dangerous manner reconcile their literary dispute. This edition of Platitudes was also included “ The New Black Aesthetics” which is considered as a groundbreaking essay by Ellis and was published in the journal called Callao (University Press of New England, “ Platitudes”).
Earle Tyner is 16 year old black in contemporary New York City. Being bourgeois, he falls in love with Dorothy La Mont, a young Waitress working at her mother’s down-home Harlem dinner. It was love at first sight for Earle and Dorothy as Tyner takes an after-school job near the restaurant. The friendship between these two teenagers through many weathering and upsetting phase develops and ultimately strengthens into love. These doubly fictional characters of the novel within a novel ultimately help to strengthen the relation of Dewayne and Isshee. The relations of the novel grow parallel and reconcile together. With Dewayne’s rapidly developing story both the relation end up happily.
Henry Louis Gates Jr has rightly said that the novel is a perfect blend of two great literary genre epistolary and satire. Ellis’ novel is wonderfully comic, smart and sassy, sensitive and intelligent. It has an understanding of his literary precursors and at the same time is a skillful management for the display of his own voice and his generation, views Clarence Major.
Is the title of the novel really apt?
Why did the author use doubly fictional characters in the novel?
Is the reconciliation of both the pair in any way connected with each other?
