Reviewed by Halimah Abdullah

A History of the African-American People (proposed) by Strom Thurmond is an epistolary satire that lampoons the worlds of publishing, politics, and academia. Under the guise of ghost-writers, co-authors Percival Everett and James Kincaid place themselves squarely in the midst of an absurd cast of characters that include a sexually perverse book editor, a psychotic, svengali-like congressional aide, a naïve editorial assistant, and of course, South Carolina senator, Strom Thurmond. But despite the high concept premise and wildly imaginative pairings, the story never truly comes alive.

The novel chronicles the motley crew’s attempts to publish the senator’s historical memoir on Blacks in America. Barton Wilkes, the senator’s mentally-unhinged aide, spearheads the project and convinces Simon and Schuster staffers and eventually even the authors themselves to sign on. Told through off-the-cuff missives, historical excerpts, and interview transcripts, the tale explores various forms of hypocrisy, isolation, and racial ideology.

Juggling such a diverse selection of themes and characters might prove difficult in less capable hands. To their credit, Everett, the author of some fifteen works of fiction, and Kincaid, a literary theorist, prove adept at navigating the plot’s razor-sharp twists. Unfortunately, the resulting funhouse mirror effect is both the novel’s greatest charm and its greatest technical flaw. Everett’s fans may appreciate the madcap conceit, a hallmark of the author’s work, but those unfamiliar with his writing might find the plotline dizzying and the lack of thematic focus unfulfilling. And while the authors’ obvious enthusiasm for the unconventional narrative format and subject matter is infectious, one wonders if they were more interested in entertaining themselves than their readers.

Nowhere is this self-indulgent exuberance more problematic than in the book’s failure to fully address questions it raises. The novel touches briefly on the authors’ own hypocrisy in agreeing to take on the “history” project. Everett bumbles when he notes that he once refused to finish a speech before the South Carolina State Legislature because the Confederate flag hung nearby. However, whether agreeing to write Thurmond’s revisionist text is an indictment of authors who sell out or something else all together remains to be seen. Readers are scarcely given time to ponder this point before the authors race off to satirize other issues. As a result, the work seems more concerned with punch lines than with plot resolution.

To be sure, the novel delivers its fare share of comedic lines and scenes. Wilkes suggests the “promotion of a Strom doll… a dream I have long held to and a design of which I have prepared. You should hear what it says when I pull the string.” Thurmond’s barely lucid ramblings are equally funny. He never manages to get Clarence Thomas’s name correct, instead calling him Clevon, Justice Tom, or Charles Thomas. The ongoing dialogue between Everett and Kincaid also provides some wryly funny Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-esque moments.

There are also flashes of character-driven brilliance. Wilkes’s manipulation of the editorial process is a desperate attempt to break free from his own isolation. Watching him seduce other characters is wickedly satisfying, as are his twisted attempts at redemption. For the most part, however, characters scarcely evolve beyond caricature and their voices are virtually indistinguishable. The authors introduce new characters as late as the last third of the text, adding to the confusion. Motivation is equally unclear; for example, Wilkes’s terse relationship with Juniper McCloud, a Simon and Schuster editorial assistant, turns into a friendship and then zooms into a heady romance all within a matter of a few pages. The authors also fail to fully explain why Everett as a character would accept such an assignment in the first place; one assumes he is motivated by morbid curiosity, but the missing incentive dilutes the full arc of his personality.

The novel’s conclusion, a whirlwind of marriage proposals and party invitations, is an overly contrived reference to “All’s Well That Ends Well.” And while the authors’ intent may have been to poke fun at such endings, the impact of the satire is lost on the plot’s overall zaniness. The end result is a frenetically-paced book that would work far better as a comedy sketch.