Marlon James visited The Daily Show to discuss his latest novel.
James’ The Disappearers, published earlier this month by Riverhead, follows the aftermath of a savage attack on a group of gay men in 1988 Kingston, Jamaica, that results in the death of one. The novel received a starred review from Kirkus, with a reviewer calling it “galvanizing,” and it became a bestseller after Dwight Garner of The New York Times praised it under the headline “This Masterpiece Is the Novel of the Decade, if Not the Century.”
Host Jordan Klepper brought up Garner’s review to James, asking “What does that feel like? What do you do with that?”
“Well, what you don’t do is impress your mother,” James responded to laughter from the audience. “She’s still like, ‘Those gutters aren’t going to clean themselves.’ Maybe she’ll read it, though.”
Asked about the graphic scenes of sex and violence in the book, James said, “You just have to be real. You can’t oversell it, because then it becomes this kind of porn. And you can’t undersell it either, because then you don’t get a sense of what’s really happening and what’s really going on. You kind of have to be a reporter and get the story. I remember somebody [talking] about gratuitous sex, and I remember thinking, If you’re not having gratuitous sex, what are you having, boo?”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
