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Chapter 14
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Erasure, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race and Identity
Familial Obligation vs. Personal Needs
Artistic Integrity vs. Commercial Success
Authenticity
Summary
Analysis
Monk reflects on the fight that ended his brief affair with Marilyn. It wasn’t her poor taste that set him off—it was, perhaps, that “the book reminded [him] of what [he] had become, however covert.” Later, Monk and a bemused Yul discuss Monk’s demand to change the title of My Pafology to Fuck. Yul suggests that Monk may be taking things too far. Later, however, he reaches out to Monk to let him know that the publisher has approved the title change.
Like Monk’s anger at Bill, his anger toward Marilyn is less about Marilyn and more about himself: he’s angry that her having read and enjoyed the Jenkins book “reminded [him] of” the phony he has become. Meanwhile, Yul’s announcement that the publisher has agreed to change the title of My Pafology to Fuck—a suggestion “Stagg” made only as a joke, certain no publisher would actually take it seriously—sends Monk deeper into the hole he’s dug for himself in his “performance art” piece.
Themes
In the mornings, Monk sits down at his desk and tries—with not much success—to write a new novel to redeem himself. One day, Monk receives a call from the National Book Association, the NBA. Carl Brunt, the director, invites Monk to be on the committee to judge entries for the major fiction award the association sponsors, The Book Award. Monk agrees.
The invitation to serve on the National Book Association committee offers Monk a chance to redeem himself as a serious author—and under his real name, too.
Themes
Later, during a teleconference, Monk meets the other judges on the panel. Wilson Harnet recently wrote a novel about his wife’s cancer diagnosis. She ended up not dying and divorced him for sharing all their secrets. Ailene Hoover has written two novels and a short story collection and lives in upstate New York. Thomas Tomad has written several books of short stories that have been well received by the American Association of Incarcerated People Who Write. Jon Paul Sigmarsen is an award-winning writer who lives in Minnesota and hosts a PBS show called With All This Snow, Why Not Read? After some back and forth, the judges agree to meet in a couple weeks to discuss whether anyone has read anything promising.
The other judges are caricatures of the sorts of authors favored in the mainstream publishing world. For instance, Harnet is the self-important male author who discounts other people for the sake of his art; meanwhile Thomas Tomad’s work with incarcerated people represents the intersection between art and social justice, still popular in the present day.
Themes
Monk’s diary segues into a hypothetical conversation between Rauschenberg and Willem de Kooning. Rauschenberg gives de Kooning a piece of paper and asks him to draw something on it, explaining that he will then erase whatever de Kooning has drawn. Willem de Kooning obliges, and Rauschenberg erases the drawing. He shows de Kooning the erased drawing, which now has Rauschenberg’s name on it. It’s Rauschenberg’s work now—he put more work into erasing it than de Kooning put into drawing it, after all. He calls it “Erased Drawing” and tells de Kooning he has sold it for $10,000.
Rauschenberg and de Kooning were two 20th-century artists. The work Monk describes in this conversation actually exists. Monk’s meditation on it here points to the intersection of creation and destruction, suggesting that a work of art (or a person’s identity, for that matter) come to be through the creation of something new or the erasure of something old. Monk, in drafting this hypothetical dialogue, seems to reflect on whether his playing the part of Stagg R. Leigh is an act of artistic creation—or a destructive erasure of Monk’s own self, either as a person, an artist, or perhaps both.
Themes
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Meanwhile, Monk starts to receive boxes of submissions for The Book Award. He reads the first book and loves the experience of reading it, though the book isn’t all that great. He reads more books and finds all of them to be “sterile, well-constructed, predictable fare.” He wonders whether he’s “jaded” and realizes he must try hard to find something inside himself that “could still be amazed by the dull and commonplace.”
Monk’s experience reading the book submissions reaffirms his love of reading, but it also shows him how his unreasonably high (and perhaps arbitrary) standards have distanced him from that love, leaving him perpetually underwhelmed and critical.
Themes
On Monk’s way out the door to visit Mother, the phone rings. He picks it up. It’s Linda Mallory asking if he wants to have sex. This time, he agrees to come by her hotel room later that night. They have sex, and Monk finds Linda to be painfully “self-conscious” about her performance. Still, he finds that he “respect[s] her enough not to pity her.” After she climaxes (but he does not), he suggests they just watch a movie together. They flip through the channels, landing on a noir film, and Linda soon falls asleep.
Monk perhaps “respect[s]” Linda not despite her self-consciousness but because of it: she is confident enough in herself to appear vulnerable and uncertain in front of others, something Monk isn’t able to do himself.
Themes
