Slumberland

Slumberland

3.81 of 5 stars 3.81  ·  rating details  ·  381 ratings  ·  83 reviews
Critical darling Paul Beatty's highly original, widely praised novel of race, identity, and underground music.After creating the perfect beat, DJ Darky goes in search of Charles Stone, a little know avant-garde jazzman, to play over his sonic masterpiece. His quest brings him to a recently unified Berlin, where he stumbles through the city's dreamy streets ruminating about...more
ebook, 256 pages
Published January 15th 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (first published June 10th 2008)
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Eugene
a sly and outrageous book that i don’t know why isn’t getting more attention or wasn’t on anyone’s best of 08 lists. it may be provincial to say but i’ll read a hundred beatty’s before i read a book about friggin cricket.

a strange curse to be the smartest comedian in the room. my two pfennigs: paul beatty is the funniest american writer alive. a riff master, there‘s so much comic bravado packed into this one i had to keep putting it down to walk around the room, big grin on my face. comedians ar...more
Jamil
Slumberland is probably the most intensely racialized book i've read in a while. It hits it from a multitude of angles - self-loathing, self-deprecating, self-mythologizing...

"There are many similarities between Germans and blacks. The nouns themselves are loaded with so much historical baggage it's impossible for anyone to be indifferent to the simple mention of either group. We're two insightful people looking for reasons to love ourselves; and let's not forget we both love pork and wear sand...more
Andrea
Nov 22, 2009 Andrea marked it as to-read  ·  review of another edition
The breakout novel from a literary virtuoso about a disaffected Los Angeles DJ who travels to post-Wall Berlin in search of his transatlantic doppelganger.
Hailed by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as one of the best writers of his generation, Paul Beatty turns his incisive eye to man’s search for meaning and identity in an increasingly chaotic world.
After creating the perfect beat, DJ Darky goes in search of Charles Stone, a little-known avant-garde jazzman, to play over his sonic m...more
Osvaldo
Let's say two-and-a-half stars.

Much like White Boy Shuffle, I really wanted to like this book more than I did. Like White Boy Shuffle, I felt like it had a lot of promise, but failed to deliver.

It is hard to not want to love a novel about a self-hating African-American DJ jukebox sommelier and his quest for the composer of the perfect piece of music which was written for a German chicken-fucking porno which he happened upon in his own quest to create the perfect beat that he wants the chicken-fu...more
Miki
Laugh out loud funny book about Frances - aka DJ Dark - an African American who moves to West Berlin, shortly before the Wall came down, in search of the Schwa, a legendary, but obscure jazz musician. DJ Dark has a "phonographic memory" - the ability to recall every sound he's ever heard. A sometimes rambling, but always funny look at race, music and the absurdities of the human condition (In polite democratic society it's important to note stratification, but impolite to label the layers). You...more
Angie
It was somewhere around the chicken-fucking "fowl play" that I started to wonder if I was going to be able to finish this book. The day I found out I won this book, a similar feeling had passed through me, something akin to, "Oh great. Out of all the books I thought I wouldn't poke my eyeballs out trying to read and I get this... what the hell IS this, even??"

Ultimately, however, this book is a damn joy to read. You get sucked into the wordplay, which at times seems cheesy but it helps that it i...more
Terri
Paul Beatty has written a really scathing and hilarious tale about a Black guy, who goes by DJ Darky, on his journey of creating the perfect beat. The most significant part of this journey involves him going to Berlin to get validation from his musical hero, jazz musician Charles Stone, who he and his friends- The Beard Scratchers- have affectionately dubbed "The Schwa". This novel presents ideas of race, culture, and music with language that's lyrical and cheeky. From the opening page, DJ Darky...more
Marvin
You don't have to be a jazz fan to enjoy Slumberland but it helps. Paul Beatty not only knows a hell of a lot about jazz but he writes like a jazz musician. He states the theme, write like a maniac around it, wanders off into imaginative detours then miraculously returns to the theme. His writing is loaded with outrageous and hilarious ideas, then he's off to the next one. Beatty manages to say a lot about race, music, and culture, both American and European. And before I forget, there's a plot....more
Wizzard
What is the black man coming to? Paula Beatty says the B lack man is now “passé.” I have come to the conclusion that with slumberland and tuff, beatty shares a large chunk of responsibility of killing the black man.

What is Blackness – to Beatty it seems to be Self-centered ubercool ogre savant. I have a love hate relationship with slumberland. With Beatty’s gratuitous display of intellectualism. With his arrogant defining of Blackness and sweeping generalizations. His writing substitutes cultura...more
Byron
And I thought I was crazy! Slumberland is filled with descriptions of weird German pr0n (is there any other kind?), shots at people you're not supposed to take shots at, and race discussion that's bound to make pretty much everyone uncomfortable. Needless to say I loved it. There's hardly much of a story to speak of. DJ Darky, from LA, creates the best beat of all time (of ALL TIME) and travels to Germany to have some obscure jazz musician play on it. And that's really about the extent of it. Th...more
Wally
One of my favorite books this year. DJ Darky goes on a quest to East Germany to find the reclusive jazz musician who can provide him with the one note that will complete his personal musical opus. Hilarious.
Isaac

A fantastic (in both senses of the word) boys' own adventure story, full of enough wanky detail to keep music/culture nerds frothing at the mouth. Kind of like a Daniel Pinkwater book for grownups, in which things that are so fantasic that they really -ought- to be happening somewhere really do happen, and people are not quite as transformed as you might expect them to be as a result.

A must for fans of race-baiting, culture-tweaking, crate-digging, showing off, and general offensiveness. (Als...more
Tara C
I like Paul Beatty a good deal and wish that this pop-culture referencing, witty, quick paced prose won the Pulitizer Prize over "Oscar Wao".
Michael
Having recently read two of Paul Beatty's novels (Tuff being the other), I was impressed with and liked both of them, but for completely different reasons. It's fascinating to have a novelist be able to play with his own style that much with so few books under his belt so far.

Tuff was a book I liked primarily because of story and character. Slumberland, alternately, was really pretty light on plotting, though there are good character moments. Slumberland's strength, however, is mood and style. S...more
Charlie Heller
I honestly have no idea how people who are not me will feel about this book, but if this paragraph resonates with you at all:

“Stolen Moments” is Oliver Nelson’s signature tune, a song I find to be the ultimate mood setter; it’s a classic jazz aperitif. Oftentimes, when I play hardcore underground hip-hop or punk gigs, after three or four especially rambunctious tunes the mosh pits begin to resemble the skirmish lines of Bronze Age battlefield, the warehouse windows start to shake, the record nee...more
Rose
I won this copy from goodreads. I love books that take you away from your life and this book was just that treat for me. I got to explore a whole new world of music and place. While I'm sure some of the music references were lost on me, it didn't distract from the story in any way. I got the gist that this musician or that musician was a big deal. What was more interesting to me was the story of Ferguson (DJ Darky) meeting the brilliant, but obscure, jazz musician that can put the final touch on...more
Teresa
"Is there a God?" I weigh the arguments pro (Hawaiian surf, Welch's grape juice, koala bears, worn-in Levi's, the northern lights, the Volvo station wagon, women with braces, the Canadian Rockies, Godard, Nerf footballs, Shirley Chisholm's smile, free checking, and Woody Allen) and con (flies, Alabama, religion, chihuahuas, chihuahua owners, my mother's cooking, airplane turbulence. LL Cool J, Mondays, how boring heaven must fucking be, and Woody Allen)..."
The end to the book was not as good as...more
Sarah
Ergh, I have no idea how to rate this book. On the one hand, I really did not enjoy reading it and indeed was mostly actively irritated by it. On the other hand, I can imagine that some people might like it (in fact, it's my boyfriend's favourite novel, which is why I stuck with it) and Beatty is an undeniably skilled writer. Honestly. That isn't supposed to be damning with faint praise. He's clearly brilliant. I just wish he'd write... something else.

Happily, if you live in a major city, I have...more
Whitney
Oct 19, 2009 Whitney rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: Lovers of langauge and music
Recommended to Whitney by: Goodreads Giveaway
Shelves: first-reads
Normally, when I read a book, I am focused on plot development. I am interested in the words only to the extent that they tell me what the main characters are thinking, feeling, or doing. Reading Slumberland was an entirely different experience. I found myself examining every word chosen meticulously by Paul Beatty to evoke an image or emotion. Granted, at times, that image was a man getting intimate with a chicken and that emotion was disgust. But, the stranger the scenario, the more I was re...more
Indigo Editing/Ink-Filled Page
Slumberland, the third novel from Paul Beatty, is an equal combination of reflections on language and jazz music (with some rock, classical, and pop references thrown in for good measure). The narrative is built around a plethora of pop culture references (ranging from Pink Floyd to Samuel Becket to LL Cool J) that can be either side-splitting, laugh-out-loud hilarious or distancing and only potentially amusing, depending on whether or not you understand them. It’s the kind of postmodern name-dr...more
Ben
A few pages in, I could feel myself swirling in a pool of overwritten trying-a-little-bit-too-hard-to-be-cool prose, but after I made my way a little further in, it started to grow on me. The writing definitely stays a bit overwrought, but it starts to take on a kind of layered DJ/jazz rhythm, and the too-cool feel starts to melt into maybe just regular cool. The plot is fun, and the book is breezy, but that's not a bad thing, even if it dips into the absurd at times. More than anything, it made...more
Christina Marie Rau
Taking on race, nationality, a major historical event, and a major music movement all at once in one book could have been a plan to fail. Paul Beatty's Slumberland does not. It succeeds beyond any expectations. Beatty's descriptions of the simplest elements of daily we take for granted represent how we take our senses for granted--the sound of coins dropping onto a table, the smell of burning flesh, the taste of sex, the feel of dry mouth, the look of a black man in Germany--it's all there in a...more
Danielle
I received Slumberland through the goodreads first reads program. The idea of the book sounded great from the snippet given, and I was even more psyched when this was the book that I won.

While reading Slumberland I felt I needed to adjust my perspective on things. I'm average and white. Something DJ Darky is not. I love how Slumberland transported me inside his head, living a totally different life from me -- but also so similar in a strange way. I guess everyone is searching for that "perfect...more
Liesl
I sipped my beer, the second-best beer I'd ever had,* and asked the question I imagined all great artists ask themselves before engaging in the creative process: "Is there a God?" I weighed the arguments pro (Hawaiian surf, Welch's grape juice, koala bears, worn-in Levi's, the northern lights, the Volvo station wagon, women with braces, the Canadian Rockies, Godard, Nerf footballs, Shirley Chisholm's smile, free checking, and Woody Allen) and con (flies, Alabama, religion, chihuahuas, chihuahua...more
Sarah
Oct 04, 2012 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition
Recommended to Sarah by: Book Fight
Shelves: read-in-2012
Being the literary adventures of DJ Darky, who creates the perfect beat and is beckoned to Cold War-era Berlin by a pornographic video accompanied by the greatest jazz saxophonist ever. Yeah, I know, I read the jacket blurb and didn't think I could handle this. This has got to be trying too hard. But the flop sweat never appears, and the author handles the material with a light, skilled touch. He's like a less overtly angry Percival Everett.
Brianna
eh, this book was okay. i think i enjoyed it more than i would have if i hadn't been also reading a book about german history. i loved the white boy shuffle, but haven't been able to really get into his last book tuff, or this book. the language was outrageous and fun, but the plot feel short and the obscure music references left me feeling stupid. not a bad public transportation read, but would skip it if i didn't have so much time to read.
Audacia Ray
Beatty's White Boy Shuffle hit me like a ton of bricks when I read it a few years ago, so I'll pick up anything else he writes. Slumberland, set in Berlin around the fall of the Berlin Wall, is fast paced, dark, and funny. Beatty is a master of writing characters - the characters really shine and are just the best part of the book. I'm a sucker for weird, funny, self-deprecating characters, so I totally ate it up. However, though I really enjoyed the read I don't know how much this book will sti...more
Mary
Slumberland has left me with more questions than answers, but somehow, that's just fine. Set in Berlin just as the Wall was coming down, Slumberland explores race, bigotry, music, fame, obscurity and about a dozen other topics through DJ Darky, Schallplattenunterhalter extraordinaire. DJ Darky heads to Berlin to locate a mysterious jazz musician, Charles Stone, because only he can complete Darky's "perfect beat," a groove so amazing, it can breaks hearts and mend them, make a man see God and sim...more
Jamie
This book is a great read from cover to cover, with quite a few tempo changes but no stops. The language flows like the music it discusses, incorporating images that are that music come to life. It will make you laugh out loud one minute then turn to serious introspection and philosophy the next. Beatty pulls no punches, so the language and images are frequently harsh and crass, but the end result is not something from which you turn away, but something you appreciate for its brutal honesty and...more
Hen
Loved this book - memorable sex scene involving lists of piano players and armpit smells!
LOved the music - some of the best writing about music I have ever read - plus the little details, like riding a ladies bike in Europe and NOONE questioning your sexuality!
I want to read more Paul Beatty (tho' when that happens I often end up disapointed)
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Slumberland (Hardcover)
Slumberland: A Novel (Paperback)
Slumberland (Hardcover)
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Slumberland (Audio)

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“Man, didn't anybody ever tell you that art is propaganda? It doesn't matter whether you think it should be or it shouldn't be, it just is, and motherfucker, like or not, you're sitting on a funky Magna Carta.” 4 people liked it
“Look, dude, you've sampled your life, mixed those sounds with a funk precedent, and established a sixteen-bar system of government for the entire rhythm nation. Set the Dj up as the executive, the legislative, and judicial branches. I mean, after listening to your beat, anything I've heard on the pop radio in the last five years feels like a violation of my civil rights.” 4 people liked it
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