"Personally, I think Everett is a freaking literary genius" —Thumper, AALBC.com

Everett Photo: Middlebury College

Percival Everett is the author of more than twelve other books, including Watershed, Frenzy, and Big Picture.

Honors
Pen/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, Big Picture, 1997
Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, 1994
William Robertson Coe Chair in American Studies, University of Wyoming, 1992
New American Writing Award, for Zulus, 1990
The D. H. Lawrence Fellowship, University of New Mexico, 1984

I Am Not Sidney Poitier: A Novel
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Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press (May 26, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555975275
ISBN-13: 978-1555975272

An irresistible comic novel from the master storyteller Percival Everett, and an irreverent take on race, class, and identity in America

I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk-taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in the world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales. I was Not Sidney Poitier.

Not Sidney Poitier is an amiable young man in an absurd country. The sudden death of his mother orphans him at age eleven, leaving him with an unfortunate name, an uncanny resemblance to the famous actor, and, perhaps more fortunate, a staggering number of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corporation.

Percival Everett’s hilarious new novel follows Not Sidney’s tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin color with his fabulous wealth. Maturing under the less-than watchful eye of his adopted foster father, Ted Turner, Not gets arrested in rural Georgia for driving while black, sparks a dinner table explosion at the home of his manipulative girlfriend, and sleuths a murder case in Smut Eye, Alabama, all while navigating the recurrent communication problem: “What’s your name?” a kid would ask. “Not Sidney,” I would say. “Okay, then what is it?”

Wounded: A Novel
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Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press; 2nd edition (September 4, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555974864

The winner of the 2006 PEN USA fiction award, now available in paperback

“An unsettling look at intolerance and its logical end in violence.” —New York Times Book Review

“Starts rhapsodically and rewards the reader with so many moments of love and laughter—Wounded is full of shocks and surprises.” —Los Angeles Times

“While it’s tempting to compare Wounded to something by Cormac McCarthy or Walter Van Tilburg Clark, in which a brutal landscape makes for brutal men, this book is more about men who resist such pressures with all the humanity they can muster.” —Time Out Chicago, Top 10 Book of 2005

Training horses is dangerous—a head-to-head confrontation with 1,000 pounds of muscle and little sense takes courage, but more importantly patience and smarts. It is these same qualities that allow John and his uncle Gus to live in the beautiful high desert of Wyoming. A black horse trainer is a curiosity, at the very least, but a familiar curiosity in these parts. It is the brutal murder of a young gay man however, that pushes this small community to the teetering edge of intolerance.

As the first blizzard of the season gains momentum, John is forced to reckon not only with the daily burden of unruly horses, a three-legged coyote pup, an escape-artist mule, and too many people, but also with a father-son war over homosexuality, random hate crimes, and—perhaps most frightening of all—a chance for love.

Highly praised for his storytelling and ability to address the toughest issues of our time with humor, grace, and originality, Everett offers a brilliant novel that explores the alarming consequences of hatred in a divided America.

The Water Cure
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Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press (August 21, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555974767

I am guilty not because of my actions, to which I freely admit, but for my accession, admission, confession that I
executed these actions with not only deliberation and
premeditation but with zeal and paroxysm and purpose . . .
The true answer to your question is shorter than the lie.
Did you? I did.

This is a confession of a victim turned villain. When Ishmael Kidder’s eleven-year-old daughter is brutally murdered, it stands to reason that he must take revenge by any means necessary. The punishment is carried out without guilt, and with the usual equipment—duct tape, rope, and superglue. But the tools of psychological torture prove to be the most devastating of all.

Percival Everett’s most lacerating indictment to date, The Water Cure follows the gruesome reasoning and execution of revenge in a society that has lost a common moral ground, where rules are meaningless. A master storyteller, Everett draws upon disparate elements of Western philosophy, language theory, and military intelligence reports to create a terrifying story of loss, anger, and helplessness in our modern world. This is a timely and important novel that confronts the dark legacy of the Bush years and the state of America today.

Damned If I Do: Stories
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Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press (September 23, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555974112

A cop, a cowboy, several fly fisherman, and even a reluctant romance novelist inhabit these revealing and often hilarious stories. An old man ends up in a high-speed chase with the cops after stealing the car that blocks the garbage bin at his apartment building. A stranger gets a job at a sandwich shop and fixes everything in sight: a manual mustard dispenser, a mouthful of crooked teeth, thirty-two parking tickets, and a sexual-identity problem.

Percival Everett is a master storyteller who ingeniously addresses issues of identity and prejudice by simultaneously satirizing and celebrating the human condition.

God's Country
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ISBN: 0807083631
Format: Paperback, 219pp
Pub. Date: June 2003
Publisher: Beacon Press

In his stunning new novel God's Country, Percival Everett offers a wickedly funny rewrite of the Great American western. The unlikely narrator through this tale of misadventures is one Curt Marder: gambler, drinker, cheat, and would-be womanizer. He has lost his farm, his wife, and his dog to a band of marauding hooligans. With nothing to live on but a desire to recover what is rightfully his, Marder is forced to enlist the help of the best tracker in the West: a black man named Bubba. This odd couple is soon joined by Jake, a wayward child determined to join the hunt. As Jake and Marder follow Bubba across desolate, unsettled land, they meet Indians, settlers, and soldiers. Aiming to keep a low profile, they nevertheless find themselves in all kinds of trouble, including run-ins with a scurrilous preacher, a flamboyant prostitute, and General Custer in a nightgown. A natural coward, Marder only survives these incidents because of Bubba's reluctant heroism. However, even after their final, chilling exchange, Marder fails to realize that Bubba's secrets extend beyond his ability to track footprints on the prairie. God's Country is hilarious and haunting by turns, a slam-bang parable of the way things were in 1871.

Erasure
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Format: Hardcover, 265pp.
ISBN: 1584650907
Publisher: University Press of New England
Pub. Date: September  2001

"This is not a good book by a Black writer, nor is it a Black book by a good writer; it is a remarkable work of fiction that transcends labels. With his strong intellect and satirical wit, Percival Everett has seemingly resolved his own place in the literary spectrum while providing readers with the best of both worlds. ERASURE is a compelling and insightful read, and a must study for serious writers."  — David McGoy

Percival Everett’s most recent novel, the academic satire Glyph, was hailed by the New York Times as “both a treatise and a romp.” His new novel combines a touching story of a man coming to terms with his family heritage and a satiric indictment of race and publishing in America.

Avant-garde novelist and college professor, woodworker, and fly fisherman—Thelonious (Monk) Ellison has never allowed race to define his identity. But as both a writer and an African-American, he is offended and angered by the success of We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited “some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days.” Hailed as an authentic representation of the African-American experience, the book is a national bestseller and its author feted on the Kenya Dunston television show. Her book’s success rankles all the more as Monk’s own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection.

Even as his career as a writer appears to have stalled, Monk finds himself coping with changes in his personal life. Forced to assume responsibility for a mother rapidly succumbing to Alzheimer’s, Monk leaves his home in Los Angeles to return to the Washington, DC house in which he grew up. There he must come to terms with his ailing mother, his siblings, his own childhood and youth, and the legacy of his physician father, a suicide some seven years before. In need of distraction from old memories, new responsibilities, and his professional stagnation, Monk composes, in a heat of inspiration and energy, a fierce parody of the sort of exploitative, ghetto wanna-be lit represented by We’s Lives in Da Ghetto.

But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk—or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh—is offered money, fame, success beyond anything Monk has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems.

Glyph
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Format: Hardcover, 200pp.
ISBN: 1555972969
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Pub. Date: November  1999

Personally, I think Everett is a freaking literary genius. It's ironic that I would reach that conclusion after reading Everett's latest novel, Glyph, which tells the story of 18 month old genius, Ralph. Ralph doesn't consider himself a genius though because he can't drive, or control his bodily functions yet. Ralph can; however, read books in a matter of hours, write novels, develop mathematical equations and theories. In Glyph, we see the journey Ralph takes when he is finally taken to the doctors and is kidnapped by the federal government. Glyph is perceptive, highly intelligent (almost to the point of being scary), and always humorous. An excellent book.—Thumper, AALBC.com

 

Frenzy
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Paperback: 162 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press (December 1, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555972446

Excerpt from Frenzy

Epopeus said in a whisper, as he turned his back to the boy, "Change course."

Acetes watched Epopeus's back as he stepped away.

"What did he say to you?" Dionysos asked.

"I'm not sure," Acetes said.

Soon the rocking of the boat had put the boy back to sleep. Epopeus returned and gave Acetes a hard look, said in a harsh but quiet voice, "Point out a star that will take us to the barbarian lands."

Acetes was confused. "Why?"

"Do it."

"The boy lives in Naxos," Acetes objected.

Epopeus pulled out the large knife and threatened the man. Acetes pointed to the sky. "That one?" Epopeus asked, pointing also.

"Yes."

Epopeus returned to Melanthus.

Morning came, and Acetes found the crew together aft. He said, "I will pilot this boat no more. I'll have no part in this treachery."

"What is this!" a shout came from the bow. It was Dionysos, and he was observing the sea ahead of them. "This is not the way to Naxos."

"Of course it is," Melanthus shouted forward to the boy.

Dionysos walked back to them. "I am no fool," he said. "This is not the way to Naxos. Would you men seek to sell me as a slave in some strange land full of strange people with strange customs?"

Heads shook, but no words found air.

Dionysos waved a hand, and I stopped in midsea. Ivy wrapped about my oars, full of clusters of berries. A vine laden with grapes twisted up and around my masts. I was still there in the water, the sails full of wind and the sea pressing against my transom. Seized with terror, the men took up oars, but they could not make me move. The air was full of flute music that seemed to have no source. The god relaxed, leaning his back against a vined mast, wearing a wreath of grape leaves on his head and holding a thyrsus. Large cats-tigers and lynxes and leopards?appeared and walked the deck. The crew went mad. Epopeus and Lycabas dived into the water, and while Melanthus and Dictys looked on, they began to change. The arms of the men flattened to their sides and melted into their bodies, their shoulders folded forward and met in front of their chests, their hands slipped across their backs and pressed palms in the middle, becoming fins. While watching, the men on deck started to change, their nostrils expanding and their mouths stretching around their heads. Soon the men were all in the deep, and they were all dolphins swimming alongside me and frolicking, making great leaps out of and back into the sea, all to the pleasure of Dionysos.

Copyright © 1997 by Percival Everett. All rights reserved.

 

Related Links

Gray Wolf Press
http://www.graywolfpress.org/resources/authors/authorinfo-everett.html

University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/english/fac/percival.html

Middlebury College - 1999 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference
http://www.middlebury.edu/~blwc/99Fac/99Faculty.html

 

Callaloo
... D. Platt Associate Editors: Myriam JA Chancy, Carrol F. Coates, Brent Hayes Edwards,
Percival Everett, Helen Elaine Lee, Carl Phillips, Marlon B. Ross ...
www.aalbc.com/writers/callaloo.htm