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<\/span><\/a><\/span>\nAll images courtesy Percival Everett.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I sat down to talk with novelist Percival Everett on the pretext of discussing his new epistolary novel,\u00a0A History of the African American People [Proposed] by Strom Thurmond as Told to Percival Everett and James Kincaid<\/cite>, but truth be told, I was looking for any old reason. You see, Everett has three (that\u2019s right, three) books slated for release this year: the aforementioned\u00a0History<\/cite>\u00a0(Akashic), a co-authored satire about the American obsession with celebrity and our political system\u2014and yes, the two grow closer every day\u2014as well as the sycophantic industry that is book publishing; the recently released\u00a0American Desert<\/cite>\u00a0(Hyperion), which concerns the misadventures of a college professor who is accidentally killed on his way to commit suicide, and the chaos that ensues after he sits up at his funeral, for all definitive purposes, alive; and a collection of stories,Damned If I Do<\/cite>\u00a0(Graywolf), probably written just to complete the hat trick. In all, I desperately wanted to have a conversation with Percival that would be recorded for posterity, mainly because Percival Everett is a friggin\u2019 genius. But don\u2019t consider it odd if you\u2019ve never heard of him, for although he\u2019s by no means antisocial (on the contrary, he\u2019s actually quite gregarious and generous with his time, teaching at the University of Southern California during the academic year and at various writing workshops during the summer), Everett actively shies away from the PR machinations and media attention that most other writers seek. And although he has published more than 15 works of well-received fiction (mostly with small presses, for reasons revealed in our conversation), his books are so stylistically varied that attempts to summarize his interests or creative oeuvre prove extremely difficult. In almost every one of his works you peel away one layer of references and meaning only to find another, only to then discover another, only to come upon another, until\u2014well, you get the idea. Welcome, then, to an interview about everything, because in many ways the meaning of everything is the only subject Everett really writes about.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Rone Shavers:\u00a0Would you consider yourself an avant-garde or experimental writer?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Percival Everett\u00a0I don\u2019t know what\u00a0avant-garde<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0experimental<\/em>means. Every novel is experimental.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0What do you think you\u2019re bringing to the table in terms of American Arts and Letters? Do you see a purpose to your fiction?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Do you see a purpose to art? Of course there is a purpose to art, but do I see a function in my fiction? No. Is it going to feed anybody? No. Hopefully, the world is richer for more art being put into it. That\u2019s what I care about.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Do you consider yourself a satirist? I say\u00a0satire<\/em>\u00a0because of such works as\u00a0A History of the African-American People [Proposed] by Strom Thurmond<\/cite>\u00a0and\u00a0Erasure<\/cite>, as well as\u00a0Glyph<\/cite>. All three books poke fun at one aspect of American society or another. Is it important for you to have humor in your novels?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Humor is an interesting thing. It\u2019s hard to do, but it allows you certain strategic advantages. If you can get someone laughing, then you can make them feel like shit a lot more easily. I\u2019m not interested in sentimental stuff; I\u2019m a little too self-conscious to pull it off.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0I have this theory that Americans can only deal with serious work if it\u2019s funny.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Aristophanes gets out a lot of great stuff because he\u2019s funny, whereas you can only read Aeschylus in so many ways. His tragedies are beautiful but they\u2019re limited. Likewise, if you read Kafka and don\u2019t think it\u2019s funny, you\u2019re not reading Kafka very well. (laughter<\/em>)<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0How do you categorize yourself as a writer? Do you work within the constraints of a particular fiction category? Your works are so all over the map.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0No, whatever the particular work is, that\u2019s what it is. I don\u2019t put myself in a camp. I want to write what works for the story at hand. I serve the story, basically. I don\u2019t think that as the author I\u2019m terribly important, and I don\u2019t want to be. I want to disappear. If anybody\u2019s thinking about me when they\u2019re reading my work I\u2019ve failed as a writer. The work is supposed to stand by itself. I\u2019m teaching you to fly. When you have to go solo, hey, I\u2019m not there.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Does theory influence your work at all?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Only insofar as it\u2019s a source. Anytime anybody goes through that much trouble to come up with something nonsensical you have to have fun with it. It\u2019s hilarious stuff. It’s not important that it means anything that takes us somewhere, because its not going to. But the fact that anybody wants to think it is, that\u2019s fascinating.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Yet\u00a0Glyph<\/cite>\u00a0is influenced by semiotic theory and post-structuralism.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Well, I\u2019m making fun of post-structuralism.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Even\u00a0Erasure<\/cite>\u00a0takes the piss out of theoretical positions, notably Gayatri Spivak\u2019s idea of strategic essentialism. I am wondering if you yourself have a theoretical position that you\u2019re working out.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0If anybody thinks they\u2019re actually going to delineate the necessary and sufficient conditions for any literary work of art, then they\u2019re greatly mistaken and would probably be better served picking up some other line of work, like computer maintenance. But if you\u2019re out to play with ideas and have some fun with them and admit that that\u2019s what you\u2019re doing, and don\u2019t tell the regents at a university that . . . . It\u2019s important to watch how ideas work and how they can be manipulated. That\u2019s probably the most important question to me in the world. What can you do with thinking? But to take it seriously, I mean, that\u2019s why the French, Derrida and Barthes, are so much fun. The fucking Americans get so earnest about this stuff that it stops being fun.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Well, what about the New Critics and their idea about the absolute autonomy of a work?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Oh, they need to take a pill. (laughter<\/em>) Just chill.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0But you do have that New Critical approach, especially if you say that the work is the work and that\u2019s all there is.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Well I suppose, but I just don\u2019t give a shit about the artist anyway. Why should I? If I find a painting a hundred years from now, and I can\u2019t appreciate it until I find out something about the person who made it, it\u2019s not much of a painting.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0What would you describe as your aesthetic point of view? Do you have one?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0What do I like? I like stuff that\u2019s smart, stuff that challenges me and makes me think differently, that introduces me to things I didn\u2019t know before.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Give me some examples.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Tristram Shandy<\/cite>\u00a0is probably the best novel ever written. It takes every form of literary discourse of its time and exploits it.Huck Finn<\/cite>\u00a0is fantastic. Chester Himes\u2019s\u00a0If He Hollers Let Him Go<\/cite>\u00a0is a very sneaky book. And oddly anticipates so much of\u00a0Invisible Man<\/cite>\u00a0that it\u2019s frightening.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0I have a couple of questions about your style.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Style schmyle.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Your style, or lack thereof. (laughter<\/em>) Do you have a predominant style?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Style is a tool. The work will dictate the style.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0So you write in a manner that suits the work.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0The only reason I would want a particular style is so that people could identify every work of mine as mine. There\u2019s nothing at stake for me in having people recognize the work because of stylistic consistency.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0You tend to blend styles a lot.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Well, I play with styles. I think they\u2019re amusing. I think that anybody who thinks they have a style\u2014it\u2019s like watching punk rockers get ready to go out. It must take you two hours to get that look. How many safety pins do you need? To me there\u2019s a wonderful irony in that. To work so hard to dress your work. Send the work out there naked.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0What\u2019s also interesting to me is the way you use history. Much of your work is dependent on historical events, but then the events tend to be jumbled; it\u2019s not literal history, it\u2019s mixed up. For instance, in\u00a0Watershed<\/cite>, there is an infamous event from the American Indian Movement, but the novel is set in contemporary times.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0I create a circumstance that\u2019s similar to the siege at Wounded Knee. It\u2019s interesting that you call it infamous. It\u2019s a little like the American insistence on calling its attacks\u00a0battles<\/em>\u00a0and the enemies\u2019 attacks\u00a0ambushes<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0massacres<\/em>. History is like memories: it is constantly being reconstructed. History doesn\u2019t exist without the lies. We believe in some way that history makes sense, but history is an amorphous, very strange creature that\u2019s constantly changing.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Why do you rely on the historical so much?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Well, we live in a world. We define ourselves by the times through which we live. Everything is historical. If you read any philosophy now, you can\u2019t help but be historical.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Why? I mean, I don\u2019t read philosophy.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Can you understand any theory about the narrative of film if you don\u2019t know Aristotle? The answer is no. Everything\u2019s dependent on the work that\u2019s come before it. Our understanding of philosophy is necessarily historical, because otherwise we wouldn\u2019t be addressing anything. The problems of philosophy are historical: What is beautiful? What is a promise? How do we perceive?<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Perception, and misperception, is a central issue in your work. Take Ralph, for example, the baby genius from\u00a0Glyph<\/cite>. He\u2019s so brilliant that he refuses to speak. The attempt to understand how people construct meaning leaves him flummoxed. And then there\u2019s Thelonious, the writer in\u00a0Erasure<\/cite>. He\u2019s the victim of misperception after misperception, until he no longer recognizes himself. And then, of course, there\u2019s Strom Thurmond, from the latest book. He actually becomes convinced he\u2019s the best person capable of writing the history of black people in America.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Let me just say that I wish I could\u2019ve made Thurmond up and that he didn\u2019t exist. But sadly, he did exist. I\u2019ve written a lot of books. Some of them are going to be that way, others are all based in contemporary story and don\u2019t do that. I don\u2019t think anyone living in any time cannot be interested in the past and its manipulation.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0What if someone accused you of trying, in not necessarily a bad way, maybe a clever way, to rewrite African American history?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0What the hell\u2019s wrong with that? You can write anything you want to. If anybody takes anything they read, history or fiction, as some gospel, then fuck \u2019em anyway, who cares? The point is, take it and then play with it.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Would you say that your work is corrective?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0I\u2019m not correcting anything. That would mean I know enough to correct. I\u2019m just a dumb writer.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Well then, what about a personal history?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0I don\u2019t write anything autobiographical. I\u2019m private, and I hate this nonfiction shit that\u2019s out in the world. These memoirs. Oh my God! I do not care! I\u2019m sorry you\u2019re dying, but I don\u2019t care.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Or that your mom beat you with a two-by-four.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0And really, if you\u2019re writing memoirs, she ought to beat you with a two-by-four.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0(laughter<\/em>) Actually, reading your work, I could begin to trace certain commonalities, especially in terms of family. You don\u2019t want your personal life to be the basis of a novel, but do you think that there are experiences or bits of your history, your family, that inadvertently slip out?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Well, I don\u2019t know if it inadvertently slips out. I understand some things, like that of the relationship between the father and Monk in\u00a0Erasure<\/cite>\u00a0is a lot like the relationship between this old woman and the main character, David Larson, who ends up living on her ranch in my early novel,\u00a0Walk Me to the Distance<\/cite>. But Monk\u2019s relationship with his mother in\u00a0Erasure<\/cite>\u00a0is nothing like the relationship Suder has with his mother in my first novel. The father in\u00a0Erasure<\/cite>\u00a0is a combination of several people.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0There are certain generalities in your work, to the point where you could say, \u201cWell, maybe it\u2019s drawn from personal experience.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Like what?<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Let\u2019s just say that the mother figures are not exactly the most stable. (laughter<\/em>) Like in Suder the mom is\u2014<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Well, she\u2019s nuts. But she\u2019s the only one who has sense enough to be nuts in the world in which she lives. And in\u00a0Erasure<\/cite>\u00a0the mother just has Alzheimer\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0But also, in terms of personal experience coming through, generally your characters are of a particular class. They\u2019re professionals: doctors, hydrologists, baseball players, fiction writers.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0That\u2019s the world I know. I know artists and I grew up with doctors. My grandfather, father, and uncles were doctors. My sister is a doctor. And I spend a lot of my time with ranchers, hydrologists, and veterinarians. Occasionally someone will say. \u201cThat\u2019s not the Black Experience.\u201d And I laugh and say. \u201cI\u2019m black, and that\u2019s my experience.\u201d I know a lot of black people whose experience is that, but it\u2019s not what people want to think is the black experience\u2014they want their black experience to be inner-city and rural south.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0All that is the preamble to my next question, which is: How important is class to you, especially given that class tends to be conflated with race?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0I\u2019m a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and I go to the ballet, and I train mules and I write fiction for a living.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0What does that mean?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0That\u2019s my point\u2014it means absolutely nothing. People live in the worlds they live in, and they\u2019re interested in the things that interest them. That\u2019s what makes this world fascinating. I really don\u2019t think about class. Everybody should read fiction. I think everybody should read Joyce and Ellison. I don\u2019t think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that won\u2019t educate its people to read these things. It would be a much more interesting place if it would. And it\u2019s not just that mechanics and plumbers don\u2019t read literary fiction, it\u2019s that doctors and lawyers don\u2019t read literary fiction. It has nothing to do with class, it has to do with an anti-intellectual culture that doesn\u2019t trust art.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0But are you sure that class doesn\u2019t play a part? I mean, in a lot of your novels there\u2019s a particular break where a character will come out and say. \u201cOh yeah, by the way, I\u2019m black.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0That has nothing to do with class.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0That\u2019s why I brought up the intersection of race and class. That tension\u2019s always there in your novels. Most of your main characters are black professionals to one degree or another, and there\u2019s always that break in the work, as though to say, \u201cWhat? I can\u2019t be a professional\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0African American?\u201d You relate a typical black experience, the black experience that isn\u2019t rural or ghettoized.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0I don\u2019t think I\u2019m saying that. I don\u2019t understand it. But I guess it\u2019s not typical.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0Speak on that a bit more.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0When I grew up, there were three black people on TV, and they were all porters. And so all that talk about the positive black role model that everyone wanted to see made sense because there was no other. In fiction as well. You had the inner-city novel, and the \u201cyessir, boss\u201d role model, and it was not the experience that anybody I knew had. I grew up where the Civil War started, in South Carolina, and I have never in my life heard someone say, \u201cWhere fo\u2019 you be going?\u201d (laughter<\/em>) So Alice Walker can kiss my ass.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0What does Alice Walker say about the whole thing?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0One thing she says is that she doesn\u2019t write for people who can read. At least, somebody said she said that, so that might be a big lie, but I would believe it given what I have read.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0What do you think about the whole Oprah thing?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Oprah should stay the fuck out of literature and stop pretending she knows anything about it, in the same way that people should stop giving any credence to book reviews on Amazon.com. And people should get educated so they can read all sorts of things and have their lives and society become richer. Walt Whitman in\u00a0By Blue Ontario\u2019s Shore<\/cite>\u00a0writes, \u201cProduce great Persons, the rest follows.\u201d You produce better people by having smarter people.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0What if someone accused you of being anti-democratic? In the sense of art reaching a mass audience?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Give me a fucking break. Art is not democratic. Why should everybody think they can write a novel? Everybody can\u2019t play violin. That doesn\u2019t mean people don\u2019t aspire to do it. That doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t have a violin and try to play it. But to think that everybody is going to be good at it, just because they want to\u2014that\u2019s complete idiocy! That\u2019s why George Bush is president. Democracy has its failings, and one of them is that it allows the existence of capitalist rapists like Dick and Dubya. If you want an argument against democracy watch American Idol.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0I asked you earlier if you consider yourself avant-garde. Have you read William Gass\u2019s essay \u201cThe Vicissitudes of the Avant-Garde\u201d?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0No.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0He lays out three types of avant-garde: the leftist, which ends up being conservative, the rightist, which ends up being reactionary, and a third type that always bites the hand that feeds it. I can see your work fitting in that last category.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0Anybody who succeeds in this capitalistic culture making serious art isn\u2019t necessarily biting the hand that feeds him. I mean, my God, look at\u00a0Guernica<\/cite>. That\u2019s a great protest work, a beautiful painting. But it takes its meaning from the ugliness that allows its creation. It achieves its power because it\u2019s produced in a world full of ugliness. That\u2019s the nature of protest. It\u2019s wonderfully ironic, wonderfully weird and finally, absolutely human.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0What is absolutely human?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n PE\u00a0The fact that the very thing that allows our expression of something is the thing that we hate. But we love the expression of it, so we get something from it. There are some people who wouldn\u2019t be happy if they couldn\u2019t complain. This world is made for them. Social injustice is not going to go away, so if you hate social injustice and love complaining about it, then this is the world for you.<\/span><\/p>\n RS\u00a0(