Percival Everett’s novel opens with its narrator, Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, describing how what is presently being read is actually his journal. He then goes on to discuss race, explaining how he personally does not see race, but based on the world he lives in — a world that does see race — he is Black. As an author and Black person, Monk is expected to write “Black” stories: he retells a story wherein he is told by an agent that he should stop writing about Greek mythology, and instead write about the hardships of Black life.
After a brief journal entry about woodworking, Monk writes about a conference that he went to in Washington. Before the conference, he meets with his sister, Lisa, who works at women’s health clinic. Monk describes how he does not believe that Lisa hates him, but their relationship is definitely tense. She picks him up, and they discuss their lives and family. Lisa laments their mother and how difficult it is taking care of her by herself. Later, after Monk’s conference, Lisa is murdered at work by an anti-abortionist.
For the first few chapters, Monk mentions a novel titled “We’s Lives in da Ghetto,” written by a Black author named Juanita Mae Jenkins. Monk, upset that a racist novel riddled with stereotypes such as “We’s Lives in da Ghetto” can be successful while his novels are not, writes a parody of Jenkin’s novel titled “My Pafology.” Instead of using his own name, however, Monk uses the pen name Stagg R. Leigh, because he is too ashamed by the novel to put his own name on it.
Monk’s journal then cuts off, and “My Pafology” begins. “My Pafology” follows the life of a troubled young Black man living in the ghetto named Van Go Jenkins. Throughout the novel, Van Go rapes multiple women and refuses to pay for the children of the past women he has slept with. Van Go goes on the Snookie Cane show to dispute his children with the women from his past, when the studio is surrounded by police there to arrest him for raping a woman named Penelope Dalton. Van Go flees, and by the end of the novel, Van Go is captured by the police. However, he is unbothered by the fact that he is being arrested because he is on TV.
Following the submission of the novel and getting it approved by Random House, Monk struggles with “My Pafology.” He is thankful for the money it will bring in, because he believes that his mother needs to go to a retirement home where people can properly take care of her with her worsening Alzheimer’s. At the same time he is ashamed and disgusted by the content of the book, and does not want it to be published. In the end, he publishes the book, but before doing so, he renames it “Fuck.”
Monk agrees to interviews as Stagg R. Leigh and wonders how far he should take his performance. He worries that he may “become a Rhinehart.” He then takes his mother and Lorraine on vacation — it is his mother’s last vacation, before admitting her to a retirement home. There, he meets a woman named Marilyn, who lives in the house of a professor he knew as a child. They spend time together and become lovers. Monk’s mother’s Alzheimer’s steadily worsens, and she runs away often. Monk finally decides that it is time for her to go to the nursing home.
Monk continues to struggle with the Stagg R. Leigh persona, and eventually he is offered the opportunity to serve on a panel for The Book Award, gifted by the National Book Association. Monk accepts and is horrified to find “Fuck” on the list of contenders. He is even more horrified when “Fuck” is voted the victor by the other panelists. At the ceremony, “Fuck” is announced as the winner, and Monk disorientedly staggers up to the stage while the other panelists and audience looks on in amusement and confusion. Monk is unsure of his own identity, uncertain where Stagg R. Leigh begins and Monk ends. He imagines a boy that he thinks may be him as a child, holding a mirror in front of him.
