Begun in an undergraduate creative-writing class at Stanford with the great Gilbert Sorrentino when I was twenty-years-old, I finished Platitudes two years later while living in Florence, Italy. The first draft was written by hand in several notebooks. The second and third drafts were typed on an old Smith Corona. I was absorbed in post-modern fiction at the time and Platitudes is a story within a story. A failed, post-modern black male novelist alternates telling a boy's coming-of-age story with a very successful black female novelist. The narrative is a satire of every type of writing imaginable: menus, song lyrics, standardized tests, you name it. Platitudes also includes "The New Black Aesthetic." This essay began in an African-American history at class at Stanford and then was commissioned by the New York Times Sunday Magazine. After several drafts with them they ultimately killed the article and I gave it to Callaloo, an academic journal. Since then it's had an amazing life of its own and has been cited several dozen times in books and academic papers.  |
