Sincerely, Gunnar

One aspect of The White Boy Shuffle which I found interesting was the inclusion of all these different letters that Gunnar has written over his life. In the early chapters, we get his letters to his best friends, later to his friends in middle and high school, to his mother, to his pregnant sisters, to coach Shimimoto, and finally to Yoshiko and the baby. They all show Gunnar in moments of vulnerability, potentially the most vulnerability we see him display throughout the whole book so far. As Bella wrote about a bit in her blog post (a good post 10/10 would read again) we never really see Gunnar be emotional, truly upset or angry, or even ecstatic (I might be missing something. If I am please comment. We do see him act pretty happy in the car after the GTH go "ghost busting" but that seems fleeting so I'm not counting that). The only exception to his deadpan, middle-finger attitude is in the letters. Even the content of the letters doesn't get too emotional. The tone mostly feels like he's checking up on his loved ones, throwing in sarcastic jokes and whatever is going on in his mind at the time. But writing a letter is a pretty personal act of love and care either way - he writes to his sisters that he's sorry his mom is shunning them for being pregnant, tells his friend David that he helped him realize something about being black but he wasn't sure what, and even sends Yoshiko a handprint of his for her to "rub all over her belly" so that he can be with the baby even when he's not there physically (I really did get a little emotional when I read that). Some of the letters also even take up multiple pages, showing that Gunnar spent time writing them. The letters always make me light up when I'm reading but seem mostly out of the character of the book, which is sarcastic and jabbing, satirical, or devastating.

So why does Beatty include Gunnar's letters? For one, I think they show us a lot about Gunnar's character. While Gunnar goes through his life with an attitude that he doesn't care, maybe he really does. The letters are important in that they show us that Gunnar loves someone, that he cares and he is paying attention, and that life isn't a joke to him. If this is true, my interpretation of his jokes gets more somber - he uses them to cope rather than to disarm or prove wrong just for the sake of justice. That is a really sad, and telling, thought. I think they're also useful purely as a literary device to keep us attached to and interested in Gunnar. It's kind of like the Deadpool factor - Deadpool's funny and all, but if there wasn't a storyline about why he acts like nothing matters to him and what makes him sad, most audiences would probably find him annoying after 30 minutes (admittedly I know very little about Deadpool). Like I wrote in my last post, I think love is the most interesting emotion - nobody wants to watch someone else talk about how nothing means anything to them for two hours, let alone for the time it takes to read a whole book. What do you guys think? Do the letters have some other meaning? How do you read Gunnar's emotional toolset, and/or his humor?