The reason why I decided to take this course, regardless of not having any sort of academic English background, is because I genuinely enjoy reading Percival Everett’s literary works. Some may argue that Everett’s style is too complex and all over the place. I agree; however, Everett writes this way to include important messages underlying from the main plot of his stories. He doesn’t necessarily spell out what he wants the reader to take away from his stories, but he does stress the importance of researching the meaning of certain things for the reader to unlock a new level of epistemology, so to speak.
Currently reading I’m Not Sidney Poitier really made me appreciate what Everett does to contemporary literature and how he breaks away from the norm. I read Connor’s blog post and I was glad to see that others in this class related to how I felt about this book. Connor brought up the argument that Everett’s use of crude dialogue ‘jumps out’ and grabs the attention of the reader to signal what’s being said is important to reflect on. Everett acknowledges what people say about him by including himself as a college professor in this book to speak to both Not Sidney and the reader. As a character in this book, Everett drops hints about his writing style and answers questions that people probably ask of him. When he was explaining what lesson is suppose to be taught in his class titled the “Philosophy of Nonsense”, Everett says “Who knows? We’ll learn something, maybe. We’ll read some stuff, maybe a lot of stuff. What, I don’t know yet. You guys will do some presentations, I suppose. Bore each other and, sadly, me to sleep. Probably be some papers to write. Not long papers. I couldn’t take that. I’m not a detail person” (89). I laughed when I read this because Everett is basically explaining the setup of how English classes are taught, especially when it concerns his work. I also laughed at the part where Professor Everett had a conversation about his book Erasure with Ted Turner to subtly answer the comments he typically receives about his writing style (Everett, 225-226). It was almost as if he was aware that his stories would be read in a class like the one we’re all enrolled in now and that the course load would be similar to the one he explained within his own book.
Once again, I’m in awe of how Everett acknowledges his audience’s confusion and thinkING by making the story conscious of its existence. From the novels that I’ve read by him so far (e.g. Zulus and Frenzy), he incorporates a sense of metafiction to the plot that really resonates with the audience after they’ve finished reading. For example, in Zulus, Everett adds a few words with typos when his main character, Alice Achitophel, tells the story of her life. Not to completely spoil the book, but he intentionally did this as a way for the reader to realize that Alice makes mistakes every time she tells her story to keep herself entertained. In Frenzy, the narrator Vlepo doesn’t have a background or any sense of character development throughout this revision of Euripides’s The Bacchae. It can be theorized that Everett did this as a way for Vlepo’s purpose in the story is to act as a storyteller and look into the lives of other plots that are occurring at the same time. Basically, Everett is subtly implying that not every character needs to follow the traditional literary structure of growth.
Overall, I appreciate that Percival Everett listens to criticism and comments made about his work, but he does nothing to change it because that’s just how he writes. Everett writes in such an unorthodox manner for the purpose of evoking more thinkING and conversation by whoever picks up his book. Also, I like how he touches upon important topics that society tries to ignore or turn the other cheek; such as racism, normalizing sex, and how we [people] judge others for simply being different.