Like many theatergoers and critics, I found much to admire in Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction. Having read Percival Everett’s Erasure several years before, I was excited to see how such a wonderfully acidic novel was adapted for the screen. And unlike most film adaptions of literary fiction, American Fiction didn’t disappoint. It was, at its best, an affecting portrait of a family on the brink, novelist Thelonious “Monk” Ellison’s mother vanishing into a haze of Alzheimer’s as his brother comes to terms with his sexuality—and battles drug addiction—while both of them grapple with the recent death of their sister, the glue of the Ellison clan. The acting is superb, and Jeffrey Wright deserves all accolades that come his way.
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