My Book Report
By Deidre Depke
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Jane Gibson, the protagonist in Danzy Senna’s wonderful new novel, Colored Television, references consumer brands as if she’s name-dropping at a cocktail party. Among the many she cites are Hannah Andersson, Design Within Reach, domino magazine, Restoration Hardware, Vans sneakers, Volvos, Baskin-Robbins, American Girl dolls.... I could go on.
Jane’s husband, Lenny, thinks these enthusiasms make the couple “members of the sucker class.” Maybe, but this story is a whole lot more than a tale of conspicuous consumption. Senna’s book is a biting, hilarious, thoroughly entertaining meditation on race and class and academia and marriage and parenthood and America’s declining cultural literacy. All in less than 300 pages.
At the start of this addictive novel, Jane has decamped from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, where she and Lenny are enthusiastically – if unsuccessfully – pursuing their creative passions. Jane is a self-described mulatto novelist who has spent a decade writing her second book. Lenny is a Black abstract impressionist whose paintings are, as Jane puts it, unsaleable. He’s got vague plans to flee the United States and its racist consumerism for Japan and thus spends much of his time with earbuds in, learning Japanese.
Parents to a young daughter and son, the two are barely scraping by – relying on untenured teaching gigs and the kindnesses of others. The family is living for a year in a friend’s glitzy Hollywood house while the owner, a novelist-turned-screenwriter, is off in Australia with his wife for a year of work.
Jane and Lenny make themselves at home, depleting their friends’ collection of expensive wines and raiding their closets. (Lenny dresses in a yellow polo shirt, because “Jane had noticed over the years that everybody loved a Black man in a yellow polo.”)
Jane finishes her novel while camping out in the L.A. mansion. Titled Nusu Nusu – a Swahili phrase meaning partly-partly – the book is a 150,000-word story about mulattos, centered around a fragile 1950s film actress who drowns herself off the Malibu coast. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings are referenced. Zoe Kravitz and O.J. and Nicole make appearances. Unsurprisingly, maybe, Jane’s agent and editor, hate it.
“Frankensteinian” is the adjective they use. “We both feel you’re doing yourself a disfavor by writing about race again – by writing, about, you know, the whole mixed-race thing. We’d love to see you expand your territory, Jane,” her agent tells her.
Despairing of novel writing and desperate for a Hollywood house of her own, Jane tries to engineer a move to screenplays, pitching “a comedy about mulattos” to a Black producer looking to develop a series for an unnamed streaming network. He’s onboard with the idea and turns up the pressure.
“By the year 2050 the majority of this country will be mulatto. Which means every network is trying to get to the plate first, to launch their own little biracial juggernaut. What I’m trying to tell you is: this is no joke. We were supposed to get to it first and biggest. That’s why I called you in, Jane.”
At home, her husband is alternately confused and dismissive of Jane’s efforts to reinvent herself.
“Lenny claimed that she was a fool to turn her sights away from the novel. He wanted her to stay with him in the trenches of high art. He wanted her to keep banging away at her mulatto War and Peace…But no book deal meant no tenure, no money for a house, no Black Lesbian neighbors, no transgender playmates for the kids.”
Jane only wants what everyone else around her already has – security, success, the American dream.
“Jane’s father once told her that white people believed, deep in their hearts, that Black people would choose to become white if they could. But Black people didn’t want to be white, he told her. They only wanted to have what white people had. He said race was always about money, and money was always about race. That’s what white people didn’t understand. Black people wanted only a big yellow Victorian on the hill, not to be the white people who lived there.”
Senna herself is the daughter of a white mother and Black father, both prominent writers and activists. (Her mother’s people founded The Atlantic; other relatives on her mother’s side were notorious slave traders.) Senna has made a career out of satirizing people like herself. In Colored Television, she turns in a Hollywood award winning performance.
BTW: Senna is married to Percival Everett. His 2024 masterpiece, James, is about Jimmy, the enslaved sidekick in Huckleberry Finn. Nominated for a National Book Award, shortlisted for a Booker, and a contender for the Pulitzer, it’s by far the best book of 2024.
Dream date: A dinner party at their Pasadena home.
Short Takes
Kamie Got Her Gun
In an interview with Oprah last week, Kamala Harris said, “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.”
Then she allowed, “Probably shouldn’t have said that.”
Whether that was a real “Oops!” moment or a calculated appeal to gun owners, whom the Right has spent years trying to co-opt, only the Veep, her handlers, and maybe Oprah know for sure.
But despite the efforts of the corrupt and discredited NRA, spreaders of despicable (and now costly) lies like Alex Jones of Infowars, and all manner of gonzo militia types, the Second Amendment isn’t really on the ballot this November.
Nobody – not pistol-packing Kamala, her hunting partner Tim Walz (a 24-year military veteran), Bernie Sanders of the deer-slaying state of Vermont, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (who as a House member had an A rating from the NRA), or any other Democrat – is going to be taking away your Winchester 30-30, your Mossberg pump-action 12 gauge, or your Colt Python .357 Magnum (if you have that kind of money).
In fact, gun rights are safer than a trigger-locked air rifle in the depths of Fort Knox. But what all sane Americans across our landscape bloodied with the bodies of children, the cadavers of country-music concert goers, and the remains of a would-be assassin with an AR-15-style rifle at his psycho side want is simple: a modicum of common sense.
In 2022, guns were the leading cause of death for kids and teenagers in the U.S., according to the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. That includes suicides, but it is still a profoundly sad and staggering fact.
There is no state in the union where you don’t need a license to drive a car based on minimal assurances of operational ability. And all states save New Hampshire even require insurance.
In 2021 there were almost 50,000 gun deaths in America, more than the close to 43,000 humans who died in car accidents. But there is no rabid ranting about about abolishing driving tests before you climb behind the wheel of a pick-up and cruise through a crowded street.
So why do you need a competency review for one hunk of lethal metal but not another?
Certainly no one with all their marbles thinks any random jackass should be able to hoist himself into the cab of a semi and barrel down a highway at 70 or 80 mph. You need good reflexes, training, and a commercial license to do that. An assault rifle and any weapon more powerful is a tractor-trailer.
Forget Governing. Let Us Entertain You
One of the major messages of the Election of 2016, other than that a lot of Americans just didn’t like Hillary Clinton, was that the electorate could no longer swallow more boring, gutless, political pablum. No more blah, blah, blah bromides and all-things-to-all-people promises.
Instead, voters seemed to want one thing: entertainment.
You can call Donald John Trump a lot of things – liar, scallywag, megalomaniac, anti-democratic scoundrel. But eight years ago, he was often shock-comic amusing, at least for an up-and-coming pol. He wasn’t Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle or Louis C.K. or George Carlin. But he could be funny in a meandering, cruel sort of way.
For most Americans, though, the Trump Show got old fast after Donald took office. (Not every comedian has the leadership skills of Zelensky.)
But hard-core Trump fans didn’t drift away – even after the pandemic hit, and he was revealed to be a pathetically inept crisis manager; even after the election was lost, and he was revealed to be a traitor to the precepts upon which America was founded; even when he fled town and was revealed as lacking the grace or patriotism to pass the country to his successor peacefully.
While so-called Sleepy Joe Biden governed mostly sensibly, albeit with the flair of a lo-cal Fig Newton, Trump fans sat like morose Deadheads waiting for Jerry Garcia to emerge from rehab. They longed for the riotous rallies. The wandering, self-adoring discourse. The weird one-liners. The mocking monikers pinned on his targets-du-jour. They couldn’t wait for the band to get back together and perform live. They yearned to be entertained.
From Trump has sprung a whole new class of lesser political entertainers: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Bernie Moreno, Matt Gaetz, Lorraine Boebert, Kari Lake, et al. A motley mess and not a serious body among them. Yet they keep getting elected, or trying to.
Marx called religion the “opium of the people.” And the God thing still mesmerizes many. But today America is also super-glued to low-brow TikTok videos, endless chatter on X (led by Mickey Musk), mindless Instagram feuds, inane posts by Facebook “friends,” and all manner of mind rot.
So while the world burns and Big Tech numbs us, invades us, tries to replicate us, half the electorate just wants a tailgate (beer-garden?) party in the parking lot of a Trump grievance rally.
But who knows, maybe they’re on to something: Hooting and guzzling looks like a lot more fun than being a stiff and trying to hang on to your liberty.
Dump, The Musical
Nota bene: From now until November 5, The Constant Tribune will feature excerpts from a musical about the Election of 2016 and its aftermath. Some scenes include songs from an album available on Spotify.* For previous scenes, see earlier issues of TCT, starting with the newsletter of September 12.
Act One, Scene Seven
Dump is on speaker phone with Fox News host Seamus McGillicuddy.
DUMP I don’t know, Seamus, so many knives would be out for me. I have a lot of friends, very classy friends. People wouldn’t believe who some of my friends are. But there’s a lot of jealousy out there. I don’t know. A lot of jealousy. Knives and jealousy.
MCGIILLICUDDY Of course they’d be after you, Ronald. Because they would be scared shitless. The libs, the socialists, they fear you because you could rally the real working men and women of America with the straight talk that never came out of the mouth of that phony McCain. You could shut down all the Mexicans swarming over the border. All the Muslims coming here to blow us up. You could chop-stick it to the Chinese. You could cut taxes and build up the military and make those flannel-mouths in Washington actually do something. You could take back America for people like you and me.
DUMP Look, I know I could win. I feel it. I have fantastic name recognition. Everybody knows Dump. But I have no boots on the ground. No organization. That lying bitch Marcy Madison has been building her operation for eight years. She has millions in her war chest. Even the Wall Street guys pay up because they think she’s a shoo-in and don’t want to get shut out. And she’ll have Obama on her side. Remember how all the Blacks came out for him like he was some kind of god. Got a Nobel Peace Prize just because he was breathing. And he wasn’t even a real American.
MCGILLICUDDY Ronald, look, maybe you got to let that go. I mean at least until you’re elected. Then you can investigate him.
DUMP Let it go? Dump never lets anything go.
Sings
MCGILLICUDDY Hey, hey, calm down. You know winning is the best revenge. Just because they came out for Obama doesn’t mean they’ll show up for Marcy. She’s a dud with a cheating husband. End of story.
DUMP What about the campaign team she’s been building?
MCGILLICUDDY Her team? Self-important dumb-fucks who have no clue. All that preparation, all that cash, and she fighting off a commie from Vermont nobody has taken seriously for thirty years.
DUMP I kind of like Bernie. Says what he thinks. Looks like hell – white hair, cheap suit, stooped over – but he knows we’ve been fucked over by the Chinese. Knows Wall Street has been getting a free ride. Have you seen his wife, though? Total mess. She makes Marcy look like Angie Dickinson.
MCGILLICUDDY I know you’re wrestling with this. It’s not easy. But look at the competition. A bunch of clowns. Jeb Bush! Gimme a break. His old man was a pussy, and I don’t think Jeb pisses standing up either.
DUMP What about Murdoch? I’ve heard he’s for Marcy.
MCGILLICUDDY Once Rupert sees which way the wind is blowing, he’ll be blowing you. And don’t worry so much about the money. Light a bonfire and the fat cats will gather round purring.
DUMP Seamus, you’ve convinced me. I’ll do it. What do you think about this for a tagline: Make America Right Again?
MCGILLICUDDY You’re the Man. Make America Right Again, drain the swamp, close the border, bring back Christ and a new world order. I love it.
DUMP It’s going to be beautiful. And the rubes out there in fly-over land are going to go nuts over Fellania.
Fellania, who has been listening, hears the door to his office close. Sings.
Act One, Scene Eight
Marcy, wearing a disguise, furtively approaches the reception desk of the hotel spa.
SPA RECEPTIONIST Good morning, good morning. Namaste we like to say. Do you have an appointment?
MARCY Yes, one was made.
SPA RECEPTIONIST Your name please.
MARCY Monica Jones. I’m meeting a friend.
SPA RECEPTIONIST Oh, wonderful. Your friend is already here. What fun, a joint massage!
A hefty, Nordic-looking masseuse appears.
SPA RECEPTIONIST Ms. Jones, this is Olga. She’ll be your masseuse today.
Olga cocks her head, and Marcy follows. They pass a giant video screen. A montage of the most bruising moments from her debate with Bernie is playing on Fox
Act One, Scene Nine
In the treatment room, Macy lies on one table. On an adjoining table, Leslie Schnitzel, chair of the Democratic National Committee, is being rubbed down by a masseur. Both Marcy and Leslie are in clay masks. Olga and the male masseur wear industrial-strength, noise-canceling headsets.
MARCY Come on, Leslie. It wasn’t meant to be this way.
LESLIE What am I supposed to do? He was a joke and then he started getting traction. The young people love him. They think he’s what we used to call “a trip.”
MARCY What are you supposed to do? For Christ’s sake, you run the goddamn DNC. Cut his cojones off. He’s not even a real Democrat.
LESLIE It’s not that easy.
MARCY He’s not going to win but we’ll spend a lot of time and money fighting this decrepit codger.
LESLIE Look, you know I’m with you. Always have been.
MARCY You’ve been great. And you’ll be great in the future. We’re roughing out the Cabinet, and I know the unions love you. Labor would be perfect.
LESLIE That’s so nice, but.…
MARCY No buts. No goddamn fucking buts.
Marcy sits up, holding her towel with one hand while peeling the lemon slices off her eyes. Leslie, also clutching her towel, pops up, too. They sing.
*Songs performed by Tari Kelly and Mike McGowan
TO BE CONTINUED.