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Writer Percival Everett: “In ownership of language there resides great power”
Who, besides Percival Everett, would have a pet crow named Jim Crow? “When he was on my shoulder, when I wrote the novel ‘Erasure,’ if I wasn’t paying enough attention to him, he would march down my arm and peck at the keys,” Everett said. “So, I do credit him for having written some of the novel.”
Percival Everett
Consider the irony (one of Everett’s favorite literary devices) that “Jim Crow” helped him write a book about race – a novel-within-a novel satirizing publishing industry complicity in perpetuating stereotypes of Black America. “Erasure,” published in 2001, has been turned into the Oscar-winning film, “American Fiction,” starring Jeffrey Wright.
Another irony: The film he had nothing to do with (but likes) has given Percival Everett more visibility than the 30+ books he’s written, or the fact that he’s been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and a finalist for a Pulitzer.
Everett’s books are often perversely funny. Imagine a funny novel about lynching (“The Trees,” from 2021), written in the form of a police procedural. Funny, until it isn’t. “Humor is interesting,” he said, ” because if I can disarm a reader with humor, then I can address serious stuff.”
Everett’s latest novel, “James,” is a re-telling of Mark Tain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” from the point-of-view of Huck’s enslaved friend, Jim. In it, language is a running joke, but also dangerous.
The enslaved people, Jim in particular, speak in what would commonly be called standard English. But they slip into dialect when they’re around White people.
“Papa, why do we have to learn this?”
“White folks expect us to sound a certain way, and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” I said. “The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us.”
Doubleday
In “James,” a man is lynched for stealing a pencil so Jim can write his story.
“In language, and in ownership of language, there resides great power, and resides an avenue to any kind of freedom that we’re going to have,” Everett said.
He uses words considered “not politically correct,” such as the N-word. “‘Cause I’m telling the truth,” Everett said. “You know, if somebody came in here right now and said, Hey you, N-word, am I gonna be less offended than if they use the word n*****? No. That focus on the word misses the point. I don’t care about the word. I care about the intention. I care about the meaning. I’m not impressed with attempts to cover up anything.”
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Everett, the son of a dentist, grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s from a long line of physicians – and says the only thing he knew growing up was that he didn’t want to be a doctor.
Why? “They had to be around people all the time!” he explained.
He discovered he does like being around animals (“I’ve never had an animal lie to me!”). On the way to becoming a prolific writer, and a distinguished professor of writing at the University of Southern California, Everett trained horses, and even mules.
He is intensely private, protective of his home and family, and only shows up for book events when he has to. He would rather be fly-fishing. He ties his own ties. “I like small streams, so I fish with very small flies,” he said. “It frees me to think.”
He also paints. A solo show, his fourth, opens in Los Angeles next month, his vocabulary as abstract as his writing is explicit.
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He said, “Working with stories is internal and sedentary. I love the physicality of making the paintings. I don’t consider them differently. I consider them as things I do to explain to myself my place in the world.”
And where does race figure into Percival Everett’s worldview, given that his books confront it? “Do I think about race? No, but it’s there. Sadness? Sure. Why not? What’s had to be sadness. The reality, yeah, do I really care? No. I can’t change this cultural tsunami that happened 400 years ago, and the waters of it are still waiting to recede.”
And writing his books doesn’t take steps in that direction? “One hopes!” he laughed. “I just do what I can, and move on.”
Read an excerpt: “James” by Percival Everett
Read an excerpt: “Dr. No” by Percival Everett
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Story produced by Amol Mhatre. Editor: Chad Cardin.
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Father of Liam Payne in Argentina to collect son’s belongings, make arrangements for remains
The father of former One Direction star Liam Payne arrived in Buenos Aires on Friday to arrange for the return of his son’s body to England two days after the famous boy band singer fell to his death from a hotel balcony.
After landing at the Buenos Aires International Airport in the early morning hours, Geoff Payne was photographed emerging in a blue suit from a downtown hotel accompanied by British consular officials. He was hustled by security officers into a sleek van with black-tinted windows.
Payne visited the Buenos Aires morgue to identify his son’s body before heading to the local prosecutor’s office, which is investigating the case as a matter of protocol, to organize the repatriation of his son’s remains, Argentine authorities said. He later stopped at the Casa Sur Hotel where Payne died to collect his son’s belongings, where throngs of distraught Argentines had gathered for the third straight day to pay their respects.
Mario De Fina / AP
People swarmed Payne as he approached, but a chain of young fans with linked arms maintained effective crowd control as Payne squeezed past the flowers, photos and hand-written cards piled outside the hotel in tribute to his son. He paused at the makeshift memorial, leaning down to pick up a photo of Liam before thanking everyone and disappearing into the hotel.
“I felt sick to my stomach because I couldn’t say goodbye to him,” said Mara Dorf, one of the fans at the scene.
It’s the first time that any of Payne’s family members have been seen publicly since the star’s sudden death, which set off a global outpouring of grief and emotion from major pop industry figures and diehard One Direction fans. The shock hit particularly hard at home, with his family saying in a statement hours after his death that they “are heartbroken.”
Mario De Fina / AP
“Liam will forever live in our hearts and we’ll remember him for his kind, funny and brave soul,” it said. “We are supporting each other the best we can as a family and ask for privacy and space at this awful time.”
In media interviews over the years, Payne had expressed gratitude and affection for his auto mechanic father and nurse mother, describing them as hard-working and supportive. Both parents made cameos in “One Direction: This Is Us,” the 2013 concert documentary about the popular boy band.
“When I see him on stage I absolutely burst with pride, but we do miss him so much,” Payne’s mother, Karen, said at one point in the film.
The 31-year-old singer’s final hours at the Casa Sur Hotel in Palermo, a trendy neighborhood of Buenos Aires, remain murky as Argentine prosecutors say he appeared to have excessively consumed drugs and alcohol. The prosecution cited investigators who found Payne’s hotel room a mess with what appeared to be narcotics and alcohol strewn about broken objects and furniture.
Natacha Pisarenko / AP
It remains unclear whether Payne intentionally jumped or accidentally fell from the third floor. The autopsy performed a few hours after his death showed he died from the plunge, which caused “multiple trauma” and “internal and external bleeding” in the skull, chest and abdomen and limbs. The results of the toxicology reports are pending.
Investigators said that there were no signs of anyone else being involved in his death, citing a lack of defensive wounds on Payne’s body that also indicates he did not try to protect himself from the fall. The prosecutor’s report said Payne could have fallen into a state of semi-consciousness or unconsciousness.
In the media frenzy over the case, the gossip and celebrity news site TMZ had drawn particular backlash for publishing a cropped image that purported to show Payne’s body, with his identifying tattoos, sprawled on a wooden deck after his fall.
The site later pulled the image under a torrent of criticism. But the fallout continued on Friday when the Girls Aloud singer Cheryl — Payne’s former girlfriend and the mother of his son, Bear — posted a powerful statement on Instagram in implicit response.
“What is troubling my spirit most is that one day Bear will have access to the abhorrent reports and media exploitation we have seen in the past two days,” she wrote. “Please give Liam the little dignity he has left in the wake of his death to rest in some peace at last.”
