The White Boy Shuffle: A Novel

Paul Beatty’s hilarious and scathing debut novel is about Gunnar Kaufman, an awkward, black surfer bum who is moved by his mother from Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighborhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to reluctant messiah of a “divided, downtrodden people.”

This is a laugh-out-loud first novel, but be forewarned: Paul Beatty’s humor is literate, but in- your-face outrageous. The faint of heart (or politically correct) should stay away. The White Boy Shuffle is a gleefully satiric gloss on black history and culture, featuring a main character named Gunnar (as in Myrdal) Kaufman, descendant of Euripides Kaufman, who stood aside and let Crispus Attucks get shot during the Boston Massacre, and Swen Kaufman, who–in an unfortunate reversal– escaped south from freedom into slavery. Elsewhere, it features a character who attends Dred Scott High School, and another who works for the Department of Visual Segregation in Nashville, Tennessee, painting “Whites Only” and “Colored Only” signs.

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