Right Here, Right Now by Trey Ellis

First published: 1999

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Satire

Time of work: Late 1990’s

Locale: Saint-Barthélemy (St. Barth’s), French West Indies; Santa Cruz, California; Boron, California

Principal Characters:

• Ashton Robinson, a multimillionaire African American surfer and self-help guru
• Jill Lowry, Robinson’s young, white, married assistant, with whom he once had an affair
• Nikki Kennedy, a light-skinned African American woman from Chicago who joins Robinson’s master self-help class in the Caribbean and later becomes one of his devoted disciples
• Rom Casciato, the tough, cynical director of Robinson’s persuasive infomercials
• Geoffrey, Robinson’s African American former classmate at Santa Cruz High School, who now serves as his business manager
• Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, Ashton’s parents, who refuse to accept their youngest child’s largesse
• Avon Robinson, Ashton’s older brother
• Allison, Ashton’s older sister, who is married and has two children

The Novel

In the brief introduction to Right Here, Right Now, an anonymous narrator provides readers with several key pieces of information. The subject of the novel is Ashton Robinson, the target of a 60 Minutes investigative piece, who has escaped from a penal institution, disappeared in the Mojave Desert, and is now the world’s most wanted man. A cache of audiocassette tapes has been found, constituting Robinson’s diary over about eighteen months and incorporating both his public utterances and his private thoughts. The novel, divided into three parts by locale, consists of excerpts from the cassettes that reveal how Robinson ended up in the situation that opens the story.

When first glimpsed, Robinson—attended by Jill Lowry, Rom Casciato, and his film crew—is speaking to students at a resort in St. Barth’s. He is teaching a Personal Empowerment Systems (PES) master class meant to supplement his popular self-help books and audiotapes. During these lectures and in private moments, Robinson discloses tidbits of personal information: The descendent of Mississippi sharecroppers, he was a lonely, overweight, intelligent child who grew up in Flint, Michigan. Robinson attended Yale University but dropped out following his junior year. After bouncing around for a time, he met a con man named Dale who taught him many of the principles he would apply to his career as a self-help guru.

At St. Barth’s, Robinson meets the beautiful, young Nikki Kennedy, one of his students, and he uses his powers of persuasion to seduce her. He then returns to his home in Santa Cruz, California—a huge pleasure palace overlooking the ocean. Robinson, bothered by a persistent cough and sore throat, smokes marijuana and drinks an expired cold potion. The combination of drugs causes him to hallucinate a Brazilian dwarf that shape-shifts into a beautiful woman who speaks of a magical “ashay.”

A few days later, while dining with Nikki at a Portuguese restaurant in Chicago, where he is giving a self-help lecture, Robinson learns that the secret word mentioned by the imagined dwarf is actually spelled “axe.” Axe is revealed to be a term from a Brazilian mystical belief system meaning “spirit” or “power,” and Robinson finds himself transfixed by the revelation. During his evening’s inspired, extemporaneous presentation, Robinson renounces the value of his previous self-help message in favor of a new, spiritual philosophy.

Most of the audience leaves, but a handful including Jill and Nikki stay. This small, devoted group forms the core of Robinson’s new cult-like religion. He invites them to live in his Santa Cruz house, where they seek spiritual enlightenment, borrowing elements from other faiths. Robinson and his followers clothe themselves at the Gap, drink cough medicine, indulge in tantric sex, and bungee jump as part of their religious ceremonies.

Eventually, Robinson succumbs to old habits—taping the ecstatic testimonials of followers for sale to the public. This ultimately leads to the 60 Minutes exposé and to Robinson’s subsequent downfall, imprisonment, and disappearance.

The Characters

The sole significant, fully rounded character in Right Here, Right Now is Ashton Robinson himself. Other characters are merely sketched, and most are stereotypes or caricatures, who provide a contrast with Robinson’s larger-than-life personality.

Despite his humble beginnings, Robinson has risen to the top of his profession as a charismatic motivational speaker largely as a result of his ability to blend self-confidence with self-deprecation. He has achieved fame, being recognized and admired wherever he goes. He has acquired a fortune, including a large beachfront house, his own television studio, expensive cars, and a healthy bank account that grows daily. His wealth affords him the capacity to eat at the finest restaurants, imbibe exotic drinks, jet to the farthest corners of the globe, and attract the most desirable women. His success has allowed Robinson to transcend his African American roots—he is reminded of his origins only when he visits with his middle-class family. He has become cynical and jaded; life is too easy. He needs a new challenge to give his existence meaning.

What Robinson lacks is something all his possessions cannot give him: satisfaction. During his drug-induced hallucination, he discovers that the component he lacks is spirituality. Not knowing where or how to find enlightenment, he gives himself a crash course in anything remotely connected to belief. He studies hypnotism, telepathy, dreams, out-of-body experiences, Buddhism, transcendental meditation, pyramids, crystals, tarot, Scientology, the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and more.

Robinson picks elements from each discipline, adds a few doctrines of his own invention, and with the same fervor he applied to his self-improvement courses makes up a new religion on the spot. He proves by example that no matter how bizarre a belief, followers can always be found. By the end of the novel, he has learned this truth: Whether it entails getting ahead in life or in the afterlife, humans always seek more than they have.

Critical Context

In the time-honored tradition of François Rabelais, Jonathan Swift, and Mark Twain, Ellis satirizes subjects that are usually taken seriously. Right Here, Right Now, like his previous novels, delivers another permutation on the idea of the “New Black Aesthetic” (NBA)—expressed in Ellis’s oft-reprinted 1980’s essay. For Ellis, this aesthetic involves nontraditional “cultural mulattos” adopting the best elements from both African American and white experiences to produce literary or artistic innovations.

Although Ellis’s work has been lauded for its fresh viewpoint—spotlighting middle-and upper-class characters rather than miserable ghetto denizens—and he has been much in demand as a contributor to a variety of national publications, praise for his work has not been universal. He has been taken to task for presenting an almost exclusively male point of view and for glorifying sex with an almost adolescent obsession. Despite such quibbles, Ellis’s novels have been generally well received: The film rights to Home Repairs were optioned by Denzel Washington, and Right Here, Right Now won an American Book Award and was honored as a Washington Post Book of the Year.

Bibliography

Ellis, Trey. “The Visible Man” In Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, edited by Kevin Powell. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000. This essay by Ellis deals with his time abroad in Italy while a student at Stanford University.

Publishers Weekly. Review of Right Here, Right Now, by Trey Ellis. 245, no. 47 (November 23, 1998): 59. Balanced review that praises the author’s narrative technique but complains about the distraction represented by the sexual scenes that dominate the novel.

Smothers, Joyce W. Review of Right Here, Right Now, by Trey Ellis. Literary Journal 123, no. 19 (November 15, 1998): 90. This mostly favorable review focuses on the author’s ability to draw readers into his story.