Under a Microscope
In the past few years, it’s become trendy for mainstream news outlets to send reporters deep into the heart of Trump country, searching for anecdotes about what people think. This hunt assumes that people sitting in a certain kind of diner, in a certain kind of place, have tapped into some great vein of American truth. Wallace, the deeply introspective protagonist of Brandon Taylor’s debut novel, , is both immersed in and alienated by this supposedly default culture. A black man attending a masters program in biochemistry at a midwestern university, for Wallace questions of belonging and authenticity are deeply personal, and impossible to ignore. Over the course of a weekend, we see him grapple with some of them: Is grad school a profession? Is a gay relationship? Are the racial microaggressions he feels targeted by ? Are roasted vegetables food?
