Sometimes, just for fun, I like to reread Norman Mailer’s 1957 essay, “The White Negro.” In this long, discursive piece, which covers a number of topics, from jazz to orgasms and the threat of atomic destruction, Mailer argues that the only way for a thinking white man to be is black. It’s the black guys, he says, who embody a kind of pure existentialism and, thus, an intuitive understanding of the dissonant loneliness at the heart of modern life. No matter what, Negroes represent:

Knowing in the cells of his existence that life was war, nothing but war, the Negro (all exceptions admitted) could rarely afford the sophisticated inhibitions of civilization, and so he kept for his survival the art of the primitive, he lived in the enormous present, he subsisted for his Saturday night kicks, relinquishing the pleasures of the mind for the more obligatory pleasures of the body, and in his music he gave voice to the character and quality of his existence, to his rage and the infinite variations of joy, lust, languor, growl, cramp, pinch, scream, and despair of his orgasm.

Despite the triteness and bungling innocence at the heart of Mailer’s approach, his essay is fascinating to reconsider in this age of “wokeness,” when, in all probability, it wouldn’t be published at all, given that it involves a white man trying to describe blackness, and isn’t that part of the problem? Still, the idea of blackness as a barometer for authenticity has been a subject of debate in American culture since before Elvis sat at Big Mama Thornton’s feet. What does black authenticity mean, even to black artists? And when black artists say that a white artist is “down” enough to be black, are they judging by white criteria? Or, in a moment of race shame—you like whitey?—trying to justify their attraction to an authentic white artist?

In “Talking Funny,” an inert 2011 HBO special, the comedians Ricky Gervais, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, and Louis Székely, whose professional name is Louis C.K., meet on a denlike set and talk about their work. Mixed in with the predictable bro-dude ribbing are several exchanges that puncture the collegial, competitive atmosphere. At one point, C.K. says, in reference to one of Rock’s jokes, that when white people are rich they’re rich forever, whereas when a black guy makes money it’s a “countdown until he’s poor again.” They all crack up, and then Rock announces, “This is the blackest white guy I fucking know. And all the negative things we think about black people—” C.K. cuts him off: “You’re saying I’m a nigger?” It’s a destabilizing moment, and Rock, a little jarred and maybe upstaged, says, “Yes, you are the niggerest fucking white man,” before trailing off, as Gervais laughs maniacally and Seinfeld, looking pained, says, “I don’t think he can do that. I don’t think he has those qualities.”

What a comedian can or cannot do onstage or in front of a camera is a compelling question, and one that’s being reëxamined as political correctness of all kinds targets the titillating foulness at the root of a lot of standup. Since the days of Pigmeat Markham, not to mention Lenny Bruce, the comedian’s job has been to say the unsayable—to give voice to the things that stink or bite us in the heart. And though, early in his career, C.K., who is now fifty-two, did some things that Seinfeld would consider wrong—using the word “nigger” in his act and so on—the title character of his hit show, “Louie,” which aired from 2010 to 2015, wasn’t unflinchingly transgressive; he was a sexy schlub, open to and part of the emotional diversity of the city. Indeed, that diversity was mirrored in his family. His two daughters looked white, while their mother, his ex-wife, was black. In one episode, Louie even fell in love with a man. That version of Louis C.K. was a storyteller, and the story he told in “Louie” was one that attracted viewers of color, because he didn’t seem to see color—he simply responded to individuals in all their sanity or madness with his own sanity or madness. That didn’t last, however. At some point in the series, Louie started hanging out with a loud and exhausting woman named Pamela (Pamela Adlon) who—much like C.K. did on “Talking Funny”—punctured her companion’s reality by laughing at the idea of his white kids coming out of a “black pussy.” Doing so, she robbed viewers of the momentary fantasy that race wasn’t a defining aspect of life in America.

The Louis C.K. I saw last month at Yuk Yuk’s comedy club on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, where it seemed I was the only person of color in the audience, was actually two comedians: the Louis C.K. of “Louie,” a brilliant observer of the small moments that go unremarked—one bit, for instance, was about his visit to an antique store and his crankiness at the cheery ting-a-ling sound made by the bell over the door—and the destabilizing Louis C.K., who can give even Chris Rock pause.

I had never seen him live. But I am interested in performers who try to work through the difficulties in their own lives by addressing them in art. In 2017, five women accused C.K. of sexual misconduct, which, in some cases, involved masturbating in front of them. His current tour—which goes to Houston this week, then to Denver, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and other cities—is the first he’s undertaken since then. Before he arrived onstage in the basement-like club, two male comedians came out to warm up the mostly male audience. The jokes, such as they were, focussed primarily on the men’s dicks and on the unattractiveness of female genitalia. That kind of routine is not unusual at a comedy club, but I wondered if it had extra weight, given that we were about to see an artist who was, at present, perhaps as famous for his cock as for his art.