Black Buck

The Author’s Note establishes several formal features and themes that repeat throughout the book. First, it emphasizes the theme of selling as a set of learnable skills that will lead to increased opportunity: Learning to sell enables people to “fix the game” that would otherwise beat them (x), and to succeed. Second, it represents the legacies of renowned Black figures as stories of successful salesmanship: Notably, Askaripour likens Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speeches promoting racial equality to a used car salesman pitching a faulty product to a naïve customer. This analogy establishes one of the key themes, and fundamental tensions, that the novel explores: the gap between aspirations for the future and the conditions of the world as it currently is. MLK’s vision of equality, like a used car, didn’t quite take off as hoped, but the aspiration toward equality—toward the end goal of a better future—is still an important and daring innovation and a necessary step toward one day implementing a “vision for what the world could look like if millions of people were to change their minds—the hardest thing to change” (x).

The Author’s Note introduces the history of Black success while also alluding to the history of anti-Black racism and white supremacy, which have made achieving success particularly difficult for Black people. Therefore, the protagonist states, he’s focusing his efforts on helping Black people achieve success. More broadly, however, the Author’s Note establishes the theme of learning how to sell as a form of self-development, available to anyone who wishes to learn: Buck promises that, by choosing to follow his lead, others can achieve what he has. His advice to repeat the phrase “Every day is deals day” while visualizing your goals resembles common self-help advice about envisioning and manifesting one’s desires (xi). As Buck puts it, “I can give you the tools to change, but only you can change yourself” (xi); deciding to take action and pursue success is the crucial first step on the journey that learning how to sell promises to those who embark on it.

Formally, the Author’s Note establishes several critical elements that recur throughout the novel. It incorporates several sales techniques that are referenced in the novel, such as having an inspiring message, speaking confidently about something you believe in, and closing a deal with the phrase, “Does that sound fair?” (xi), which makes people more likely to say yes. These are just a few examples of how Askaripour blurs the distinction between the world of the novel and the world the reader inhabits. Askaripour’s choice to open the novel with an Author’s Note signed by his protagonist, Buck, exemplifies the shifting between metatextual levels that occurs throughout the book. The readers are reading a novel that a character in that novel claims to have written—but real-world details, such as that the book we are holding costs $26, just as its character/author claims, complicate the reader’s ability to draw a firm border between the world of the book and the one we inhabit.

The Author’s Note sets up Buck’s direct address to the reader, used most notably in the sales lesson passages inset throughout the text. The instability of the border between the book and the real world provides an opportunity to consider the relationship we, as readers, have to the novel. Should we approach it as we might approach any other novel, and read and reflect on it? Or should we take up the approach Buck asks us to follow and engage with the text as a manual for learning salesmanship and self-development? Moreover, are we meant to take Buck seriously as the role model he purports to be, or should we maintain a critical distance from him and his choices? Askaripour asks us to navigate between multiple levels of reality and multiple forms of literature simultaneously. Though we should avoid conflating Buck with Askaripour as the actual author of the novel, the Author’s Note nonetheless poses provocative questions about the events it represents and the readers’ relation to them.