The Sellout: A Novel by Paul Beatty

Author:Paul Beatty [Beatty, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780374712242
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2015-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

City Lites: An Interlude

I never understood the concept of the sister city, but I’d always been fascinated by it. The way that these twin towns, as they’re sometimes known, choose and court each other seems more incestuous than adoptive. Some unions, like that of Tel Aviv and Berlin, Paris and Algiers, Honolulu and Hiroshima, are designed to signal an end to hostilities and the beginning of peace and prosperity; arranged marriages in which the cities learn to love one another over time. Others are shotgun weddings, because one city, (e.g., Atlanta) impregnated the other (e.g., Lagos) on a first date that spun violently out of control centuries ago. Some cities marry up for money and prestige; others marry down to piss off their mother countries. Guess who’s coming to dinner? Kabul! Every now and then, two cities meet and fall in love out of mutual respect and a love for hiking, thunderstorms, and classic rock ’n’ roll. Think Amsterdam and Istanbul. Buenos Aires and Seoul. But in the modern age, where your average town is too busy trying to balance budgets and keep the infrastructure from crumbling, most cities have a hard time finding a soul mate, so they turn to Sister City Global, an international matchmaking organization that finds love partners for lonely municipalities. It was two days after Hominy’s birthday party and although I—and the rest of Dickens—was still hungover, when Ms. Susan Silverman, City Match Consultant, called about my application, I couldn’t have been more excited.

“Hello. We’re happy to have processed your application for International Municipal Sisterhood, but we can’t seem to find Dickens on the map. It’s near Los Angeles, right?”

“We used to be an official city, but now it’s kind of occupied territory. Like Guam, American Samoa, or the Sea of Tranquillity.”

“So you’re near the ocean?”

“Yes, an ocean of sorrow.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter that you’re not a recognized city, Sister City Global has paired communities before. For instance, Harlem, New York’s sister city is Florence, Italy, because of their respective renaissances. Dickens hasn’t had a renaissance, has it?”

“No, we haven’t even had a single Day of Enlightenment.”

“That’s too bad, but I do wish I’d known you were a coastal community, because that makes a difference. But as it were, I ran your demographics through Urbana, our matchmaking computer, and it came back with three prospective sisters.”

I grabbed my atlas and tried to guess who would be the lucky ladies. I knew better than to expect Rome, Nairobi, Cairo, or Kyoto. But figured second-tier hotties like Naples, Leipzig, and Canberra were definitely in play.

“Let’s see your three sister cities in order of compatibility … Juárez, Chernobyl, and Kinshasa.”

While I didn’t quite understand how Chernobyl had made the cut, especially since it’s not even a city, at least Juárez and Kinshasa were two major municipalities with global profiles, if not besmirched reputations. But beggars can’t be choosy. “We’ll accept all three!” I shouted into the phone.

“That’s all well and good, but I’m afraid all three have rejected Dickens.

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