A difficult interview subject
July 21, 2024 1:13 AM Subscribe
Everett doesn’t often validate specific interpretations or theories of his work. The fact that this work often manages to be simultaneously hilarious, ambiguous, deeply moving, and filled with a kind of muted anger at America complicates efforts to interpret either it or Everett’s politics. When he is in the humor to indulge interpretations, he will often entertain a potential reading by saying that it’s not what he intended, but, as far as he is concerned, the process of meaning-making, insofar as it can be said to be a duty, belongs to the reader alone—and it is the reader alone, through their engagement with the text, who completes this process of meaning-making. Everett refuses to hold your hand or tell you what to think. from Several Attempts at Understanding Percival Everett [The Millions]
Percivalously
Percivalously
National Memorial for Peace & Justice [content note: terrorism]
posted by HearHere at 2:24 AM on July 21 [1 favorite]
posted by HearHere at 2:24 AM on July 21 [1 favorite]
Later, in 2004, he wrote an epistolary novel with the scholar James Kincaid, A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as Told to Percival Everett and James Kincaid, made up of fictional emails about the titular South Carolina senator’s fictional attempt to tell the history of African Americans...
In 1989, when Everett was 33, he returned to Columbia, the city in which he’d grown up, after being invited to speak at the South Carolina State House. Instead of discussing his connection to the city, as I’m sure his audience expected him to, Everett used the opportunity to inform them that he would not speak there while the Confederate flag—that “symbol of exclusion,” as he has called it—was still being flown there, before walking off the stage.
Wow. Thanks for this, chavenet. I loved the emotional and intellectual thrills of Erasure (the movie version is fine, but the book is so much better) and this post has confirmed that I need to keep going with Everett.
posted by mediareport at 3:14 AM on July 21 [5 favorites]
In 1989, when Everett was 33, he returned to Columbia, the city in which he’d grown up, after being invited to speak at the South Carolina State House. Instead of discussing his connection to the city, as I’m sure his audience expected him to, Everett used the opportunity to inform them that he would not speak there while the Confederate flag—that “symbol of exclusion,” as he has called it—was still being flown there, before walking off the stage.
Wow. Thanks for this, chavenet. I loved the emotional and intellectual thrills of Erasure (the movie version is fine, but the book is so much better) and this post has confirmed that I need to keep going with Everett.
posted by mediareport at 3:14 AM on July 21 [5 favorites]
Loved this. And as a native Southerner who considers the South the longest love/hate relationship of my life, this stood out to me:
Having grown up in the South, where he enjoyed his childhood, Everett has complicated, occasionally conflicting, feelings about the region. “The United States has used the South as a wonderful scapegoat,” Everett told an interviewer in 2005. “If you have a really awful member in your family, anytime you do something bad you can point to that member of the family and feel good about yourself—think you have done better. […] The North and the large western urban areas have excused their behavior toward minorities, the American word for downtrodden and disenfranchised peoples, by blaming the South for all the evils in the land.”
To be a Southerner is to live with a complicated and troublesome history. Most folks ignore it, but it's always there. And I appreciate his perspective on that as a Black Southern man, and I do love that he has not allowed himself to be defined by where he's from. It's a tricky thing to do.
posted by Kitteh at 4:21 AM on July 21 [9 favorites]
Having grown up in the South, where he enjoyed his childhood, Everett has complicated, occasionally conflicting, feelings about the region. “The United States has used the South as a wonderful scapegoat,” Everett told an interviewer in 2005. “If you have a really awful member in your family, anytime you do something bad you can point to that member of the family and feel good about yourself—think you have done better. […] The North and the large western urban areas have excused their behavior toward minorities, the American word for downtrodden and disenfranchised peoples, by blaming the South for all the evils in the land.”
To be a Southerner is to live with a complicated and troublesome history. Most folks ignore it, but it's always there. And I appreciate his perspective on that as a Black Southern man, and I do love that he has not allowed himself to be defined by where he's from. It's a tricky thing to do.
posted by Kitteh at 4:21 AM on July 21 [9 favorites]
Since American Fiction came out and James was published, there has been a flood of interest in Everett. This is probably the most wide-ranging piece yet. (I've been trying to keep up, much as I have tried to keep up with the works of Everett himself over the years.)
posted by kozad at 5:48 AM on July 21 [2 favorites]
posted by kozad at 5:48 AM on July 21 [2 favorites]
I read American Fiction with some awareness of what it was about. I read The Trees just based on liking AF. whoa. The Trees is really intense. I recommend it, but it's a lot darker than AF and exploring some of the uglier legacies of racism in the US.
posted by supermedusa at 10:19 AM on July 21 [1 favorite]
posted by supermedusa at 10:19 AM on July 21 [1 favorite]
The problem with Everett--and it's a good problem to have--is that unlike some literary novelists, he writes quickly. I thought I knew his oeuvre in an okay way--like, if you named a book of his, I'd probably recognize it--but this review brought up a couple of titles I hadn't heard of. He's kind of like Joyce Carol Oates, isn't he? A respected artist who just keeps pen on paper, and makes book after book after book. Anyway, I gotta get James onto my reading list at some point.
posted by mittens at 5:33 AM on July 22 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 5:33 AM on July 22 [1 favorite]
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posted by robbyrobs at 2:15 AM on July 21 [3 favorites]