Although to some people it may seem like our first day of class was years ago, it has only been one month since we’ve commenced our journey. For me, Reader & Text: Percival Everett Intertextuality was not only my first class of the semester, but my first class here at Geneseo. On the first day of class I remember not knowing what to expect, as well as trying not to have any expectations at all. Therefore, on the first day of class when Professor McCoy presented us with the picture of the suspicious pants tweet I remember having all of these thoughts flood into my head. For instance, “How is this going to relate to an English class?” and “What are suspicious pants?” As Professor McCoy presented this picture I recall her saying, “Suspicious pants is all of Percival Everett’s work in one tweet.”
I was extremely confused that day and all I wanted was figure out what Professor McCoy meant by that. Well here I am about one month later, and I have an interpretation of what Professor McCoy was talking about.
In class about one week ago, Professor McCoy had asked the class to find and read some of Percival Everett’s interviews in order to learn more about him as an author and as a person. As I searched, I came across quite an interesting interview. After reading through the interview, we were encouraged to discuss what we discovered about Everett with our groups. It turned out that two other people in my group had come across the same interview. As we started discussing what we had discovered, we realized that Everett’s responses in the interview were very straightforward and to the point, much like his work. For instance, when Everett wrote about characters in Frenzy such as Vlepo he was very frank in the way he wrote about how he was feeling and what he was thinking.
However, we also realized that although his responses in the interview and his work seem to be very straightforward there was also this underlying complexity to it. For example, an underlying complexity in the way he wrote about Vlepo’s character would be that the thoughts and feelings he has are not his own they are ones he feels and thinks for Dionysos.
From this, my group and I connected this discussion to the tweet about the suspicious pants. In comparison to Everett’s writing, the tweet about suspicious pants can be seen as very straightforward and to the point- as in its just a pair of pants that looks suspicious- or it can be interpreted as something more complex. Furthermore, when we were discussing this comparison I recalled what Professor McCoy had said to us on the first day of class, “Suspicious pants is all of Percival Everett’s work in one tweet.”, and it made me wonder that maybe suspicious pants isn’t a reflection of Everett’s writing but a symbol of Everett as an author and as a person. .