Percival Everett
Encyclopedia
Percival Everett is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California
.
with his wife, novelist Danzy Senna
and their two sons.
degree at Brown University
, Everett wrote his first novel, Suder (1983), about Craig Suder, a Seattle Mariners
third baseman in major league slump, both on and off the field. Everett's second novel, Walk Me to the Distance (1985), was later re-interpreted with an altered plot as an ABC
TV movie entitled Follow Your Heart. In this novel, David Larson returns from Vietnam and attempts to find the retarded son of a one-legged sheep rancher in Slut's Whole, Wyoming. Cutting Lisa (1986; re-issued 2000) begins with John Livesey meeting a man who has performed a caesarean section that prompts the protagonist to evaluate his relationships.
In 1987, Everett published The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair: Stories, a collection of short stories. Everett published two books re-fashioning Greek myths
in 1990: Zulus, which combines the grotesque and the apocalypse, and For Her Dark Skin, a new version of the Greek
playwright Euripedes' Medea
.
Stepping into the children's book marketplace, Everett authored The One That Got Away (1992), an illustrated book for young readers that follows three cowboys as they attempt to corral "ones," the mischievous numerals.
Returning to novels, Everett published his first book-length western
, God's Country, in 1994. In the novel, Curt Marder and his tracker Bubba search "God's country" for a wife Marder might not even want to find, but who has been kidnapped by bandits. A parody of westerns and the politics of race and gender, which includes a cross-dressing George Armstrong Custer). 1996 brought two more books from Everett. Watershed is another of Everett's books with a western setting, this time contemporary, focusing on loner hydrologist Robert Hawkes, who meets a Native American small person who helps him come to terms with the inter-relation of people. Also published in 1996 was a second collection of stories, Big Picture.
In Frenzy (1997), Everett returns to Greek mythology where Dionysos' assistant, Vlepo, is forced to experience a "frenzy" of odd activities, including becoming lice and bedroom curtains at different times during the story, which he narrates, all so he can explain what the experiences are like to Dionysos, the half-god.
Glyph (1999) is the story within a story of Ralph, a baby who chooses not to speak but has extraordinary muscle-control and an IQ nearing 500, which he uses to write notes to his mother on a variety of literary topics based on books she supplies. Ralph is kidnapped a variety of times due to his special skills, and his odyssey (as "written" by four year old Ralph) teaches him more about love than intellect.
Grand Canyon, Inc. (2001) is Everett's first novella
. In it, Rhino Tanner attempts to tame Mother Nature
with a commercialization of the Grand Canyon
.
Everett also published the novel Erasure in 2001. In a reflection of Everett's own experience, the book targets what Everett views as the publishing industry's pigeon-holing of African American
writers. The protagonist, Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a professor of English literature is repeatedly criticized for not writing "black enough". Ellison is angered by the success of an Oprah-like book club's selection of what is supposedly contemporary black experience, but which in fact presents a stereotypical image. He composes a satirical response based on Richard Wright's
Native Son
and Sapphire
's novel Push
, which is entitled first My Pafology and then Fuck. The Oprah-like talk show host, a Hollywood producer and a panel of famous novelists all prove more willing to accept the brutal, dehumanized black man of the novel than a middle-class intellectual like Ellison himself, who in turn has trouble facing impoverished blacks both real and fictional.
A History of the African-American people (proposed) by Strom Thurmond
, as told to Percival Everett and James Kincaid (2004), an epistolary novel, chronicles "Percival Everett" and "James Kincaid" as they work with Thurmond (occasionally) and his aide's crazy assistant, Barton Wilkes, who orders the authors around even while he stalks them.
Also in 2004, Everett released American Desert and Damned If I Do : Stories, another collection of short stories. In American Desert, Ted Street plans to drown himself in the ocean but is killed in a traffic accident on the way there. Three days later, Street suddenly sits up in his casket at the funeral, his head still severed and without a beating heart. Throughout the rest of the novel, Street undergoes an odyssey of self-discovery about what being alive really means, exploring religion, revelation, faith, zealotry, love, family, media sensationalism, and death.
Wounded: a novel (2005) tells the story of John Hunt, a horse trainer confronted with hate crime
s against a homosexual and a Native American. Unlike Robert Hawkes, however, John Hunt avoids getting mixed up in the political nature of these crimes, taking action only when he is forced to do so.
The Water Cure (2007) is Everett's novel about Ishmael Kidder, who has had a successful career as a romance novelist until the death of his daughter, when his life takes a dark turn. In a remote cabin in New Mexico, Kidder has imprisoned a man he believes to be his daughter's killer. The book's title refers to one of the torture techniques Kidder uses on the man, namely waterboarding
.
In 2009, Graywolf Press released I Am Not Sidney Poitier. With the name Not Sidney Poitier and a resemblance to the actor with a similar name
, the protagonist meets challenges relating to identity and racial segregation across North America. Furthermore, he meets similar challenges with identity construction in relation to his adopted father, Ted Turner
.
.
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
.
Life
Everett lives in Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
with his wife, novelist Danzy Senna
Danzy Senna
-Biography:Danzy Senna was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the middle child of three children. Her mother is the Anglo-American poet and novelist Fanny Howe. Her father is the African-American writer and journalist, Carl Senna, author of The Black Press and the Struggle for Civil Rights and The...
and their two sons.
Fiction-writing career
While completing his MFAMaster of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
degree at Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, Everett wrote his first novel, Suder (1983), about Craig Suder, a Seattle Mariners
Seattle Mariners
The Seattle Mariners are a professional baseball team based in Seattle, Washington. Enfranchised in , the Mariners are a member of the Western Division of Major League Baseball's American League. Safeco Field has been the Mariners' home ballpark since July...
third baseman in major league slump, both on and off the field. Everett's second novel, Walk Me to the Distance (1985), was later re-interpreted with an altered plot as an ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
TV movie entitled Follow Your Heart. In this novel, David Larson returns from Vietnam and attempts to find the retarded son of a one-legged sheep rancher in Slut's Whole, Wyoming. Cutting Lisa (1986; re-issued 2000) begins with John Livesey meeting a man who has performed a caesarean section that prompts the protagonist to evaluate his relationships.
In 1987, Everett published The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair: Stories, a collection of short stories. Everett published two books re-fashioning Greek myths
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
in 1990: Zulus, which combines the grotesque and the apocalypse, and For Her Dark Skin, a new version of the Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
playwright Euripedes' Medea
Medea
Medea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of...
.
Stepping into the children's book marketplace, Everett authored The One That Got Away (1992), an illustrated book for young readers that follows three cowboys as they attempt to corral "ones," the mischievous numerals.
Returning to novels, Everett published his first book-length western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
, God's Country, in 1994. In the novel, Curt Marder and his tracker Bubba search "God's country" for a wife Marder might not even want to find, but who has been kidnapped by bandits. A parody of westerns and the politics of race and gender, which includes a cross-dressing George Armstrong Custer). 1996 brought two more books from Everett. Watershed is another of Everett's books with a western setting, this time contemporary, focusing on loner hydrologist Robert Hawkes, who meets a Native American small person who helps him come to terms with the inter-relation of people. Also published in 1996 was a second collection of stories, Big Picture.
In Frenzy (1997), Everett returns to Greek mythology where Dionysos' assistant, Vlepo, is forced to experience a "frenzy" of odd activities, including becoming lice and bedroom curtains at different times during the story, which he narrates, all so he can explain what the experiences are like to Dionysos, the half-god.
Glyph (1999) is the story within a story of Ralph, a baby who chooses not to speak but has extraordinary muscle-control and an IQ nearing 500, which he uses to write notes to his mother on a variety of literary topics based on books she supplies. Ralph is kidnapped a variety of times due to his special skills, and his odyssey (as "written" by four year old Ralph) teaches him more about love than intellect.
Grand Canyon, Inc. (2001) is Everett's first novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
. In it, Rhino Tanner attempts to tame Mother Nature
Mother Nature
Mother Nature is a common personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it in the form of the mother. Images of women representing mother earth, and mother nature, are timeless...
with a commercialization of the Grand Canyon
Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in the United States in the state of Arizona. It is largely contained within the Grand Canyon National Park, the 15th national park in the United States...
.
Everett also published the novel Erasure in 2001. In a reflection of Everett's own experience, the book targets what Everett views as the publishing industry's pigeon-holing of African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
writers. The protagonist, Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a professor of English literature is repeatedly criticized for not writing "black enough". Ellison is angered by the success of an Oprah-like book club's selection of what is supposedly contemporary black experience, but which in fact presents a stereotypical image. He composes a satirical response based on Richard Wright's
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
Native Son
Native Son
Native Son is a novel by American author Richard Wright. The novel tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American living in utter poverty. Bigger lived in Chicago's South Side ghetto in the 1930s...
and Sapphire
Sapphire
Sapphire is a gemstone variety of the mineral corundum, an aluminium oxide , when it is a color other than red or dark pink; in which case the gem would instead be called a ruby, considered to be a different gemstone. Trace amounts of other elements such as iron, titanium, or chromium can give...
's novel Push
Push
-Music:* Push , an album by Bros* Push , a Belgian disc jockey born Mike Dierickx* Push , an album by Gruntruck* "Push" , a song by Enrique Iglesias...
, which is entitled first My Pafology and then Fuck. The Oprah-like talk show host, a Hollywood producer and a panel of famous novelists all prove more willing to accept the brutal, dehumanized black man of the novel than a middle-class intellectual like Ellison himself, who in turn has trouble facing impoverished blacks both real and fictional.
A History of the African-American people (proposed) by Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond
James Strom Thurmond was an American politician who served as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes...
, as told to Percival Everett and James Kincaid (2004), an epistolary novel, chronicles "Percival Everett" and "James Kincaid" as they work with Thurmond (occasionally) and his aide's crazy assistant, Barton Wilkes, who orders the authors around even while he stalks them.
Also in 2004, Everett released American Desert and Damned If I Do : Stories, another collection of short stories. In American Desert, Ted Street plans to drown himself in the ocean but is killed in a traffic accident on the way there. Three days later, Street suddenly sits up in his casket at the funeral, his head still severed and without a beating heart. Throughout the rest of the novel, Street undergoes an odyssey of self-discovery about what being alive really means, exploring religion, revelation, faith, zealotry, love, family, media sensationalism, and death.
Wounded: a novel (2005) tells the story of John Hunt, a horse trainer confronted with hate crime
Hate crime
In crime and law, hate crimes occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group, usually defined by racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, class, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, social status or...
s against a homosexual and a Native American. Unlike Robert Hawkes, however, John Hunt avoids getting mixed up in the political nature of these crimes, taking action only when he is forced to do so.
The Water Cure (2007) is Everett's novel about Ishmael Kidder, who has had a successful career as a romance novelist until the death of his daughter, when his life takes a dark turn. In a remote cabin in New Mexico, Kidder has imprisoned a man he believes to be his daughter's killer. The book's title refers to one of the torture techniques Kidder uses on the man, namely waterboarding
Waterboarding
Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over the face of an immobilized captive, thus causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning...
.
In 2009, Graywolf Press released I Am Not Sidney Poitier. With the name Not Sidney Poitier and a resemblance to the actor with a similar name
Sidney Poitier
Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat.In 1963, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field...
, the protagonist meets challenges relating to identity and racial segregation across North America. Furthermore, he meets similar challenges with identity construction in relation to his adopted father, Ted Turner
Ted Turner
Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television...
.
Poetry
Everett's collection of poetry, re:f (gesture) (2006), features one of his paintings on the front cover. His latest poetry book, Swimming Swimmers Swimming, was published in 2010 by Red Hen PressRed Hen Press
Red Hen Press is an American non-profit press specializing in the publication of literary fiction and poetry located in Pasadena, California. Founded by Kate Gale, the mission of Red Hen Press is to discover, publish, and promote works of literary excellence that have been overlooked by mainstream...
.
Other
Everett's introduction was added to the 2004 paperback edition of The Jefferson Bible.Honors
- PEN Center USA Award for Fiction
- Academy Award in Literature from The American Academy of Arts and LettersThe American Academy of Arts and LettersThe American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 250-member honor society; its goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Located in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan in New York, it shares Audubon Terrace, its Beaux Arts campus on...
- Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction (Erasure and I Am Not Sidney PoitierSidney PoitierSir Sidney Poitier, KBE is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat.In 1963, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field...
: A Novel) - New American Writing Award
- PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary AwardPEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary AwardAccording to its website, PEN Oakland was founded in 1989 by Ishmael Reed, who came up with the idea, and co-founders Floyd Salas, Reginald Lockett and Claire Ortalda, in order to “promote works of excellence by writers of all cultural and racial backgrounds and to educate both the public and the...
- His stories have been included in the Pushcart PrizePushcart PrizeThe Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured....
Anthology and Best American Short StoriesBest American Short StoriesThe Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of The Best American Series published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in contemporary American literature.-Edward O'Brien:The... - Received an honorary Doctorate in 2008 from the College of Santa FeCollege of Santa FeSanta Fe University of Art and Design is an institution of creative and performing arts based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The university offers programs in creative writing, theatre, art, graphic design, moving image arts , music, and photography, based on a liberal arts core curriculum...
- Winner of the 2010 Believer Book AwardBeliever Book AwardBeliever Book Award is an American literary award presented yearly by The Believer magazine to novels and story collections the magazine's editors thought were the "strongest and most under-appreciated" of the year. A shortlist and longlist are announced, along with reader's favorites, then a final...
for I Am Not Sidney Poitier - Winner of the 29th Dos Passos PrizeDos Passos PrizeThe John Dos Passos Prize is awarded annually to the best currently under-recognized American writer in the middle of their career.The Prize was founded at Longwood University in 1980 and is meant to honor John Dos Passos by recognizing other writers in his name...
in 2010