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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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Mail carriers reach tentative contract with USPS that includes pay raises, air-conditioned trucks
Some 200,000 mail carriers have reached a tentative contract deal with the U.S. Postal Service that includes backdated pay raises and a promise to provide workers with air-conditioned trucks.
The new agreement, which still needs to be ratified by union members, runs through Nov. 2026. Letter deliverers have been working without a contract since May 2023.
Both the union and the Postal Service welcomed the agreement, which was announced Friday.
“Both sides didn’t get everything they wanted. But by bargaining in good faith, we ended with an agreement that meets our goals and rewards our members,” Brian Renfroe, the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, told The Associated Press. “To make that happen, the Postal Service had to recognize the contributions of members to the Postal Service and the American people.”
Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images
Among other improvements, the deal increases the top pay and reduces the amount of time it takes new workers to reach that level, Renfroe said. He credited Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and his deputy for bargaining in good faith throughout the arduous process.
The Postal Service said the agreement supported its 10-year ‘Delivering for America’ mission to modernize operations and adapt to changing customer needs.
“This is a fair and responsible agreement that serves the best interest of our employees, our customers and the future of the Postal Service,” said Doug Tulino, the deputy postmaster general and chief human resources officer.
As part of the agreement, all city carriers will get three annual pay increases of 1.3% each by 2025, some of which will be paid retroactively from Nov. 2023. Workers will also receive retroactive and future cost-of-living adjustments.
There is also a commitment from the Postal Service to “make every effort” to provide mail trucks with air-conditioning.
Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images
The Postal Service in summer began rolling out its new electric delivery vehicles, which come equipped with air-conditioning. While the trucks won’t win any beauty contests, they did get rave reviews from letter carriers accustomed to older vehicles that lack modern safety features and are prone to breaking down — and even catching fire.
Within a few years, the new delivery fleet will have expanded to 60,000 vehicles, most of them electric models, serving as the Postal Service’s primary delivery truck from Maine to Hawaii.
Under the tentative contract agreement, the Postal Service must discuss with the union any plans to buy new mail trucks that don’t have air-conditioning.
This is the second contract negotiated since DeJoy was appointed postmaster general in 2020. It is expected to take several weeks for union members to ratify the contract. Rural mail deliverers aren’t covered by the contract because they are represented by a different union.
Three people were killed and eight were injured during a shooting at a trail ride in Holmes County, Mississippi.
The shooting occurred around midnight on Saturday on Highway 17 North, according to CBS affiliate WJTV.
Holmes County Sheriff Willie March said several people went on a trail ride after homecoming for Holmes County Consolidated Schools, WJTV reported. March said an argument took place between young men before the shooting occurred.
Suspects are being sought in the shooting, the sheriff said.
The three victims were identified as Martel Gibson, 25, of Durant; Shundra Chestnut, 19, of Kosciusko; and John Jenkins, 19, of Durant.
Holmes County is about 70 miles north of Jackson, the state capital.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is assisting in this case, a spokesperson confirmed to CBS News on Saturday.
CBS News was told that no further updates will be provided until Monday.
It’s usually a serene two-and-a-half-hour ride on Japan’s famously efficient bullet train. But the journey quickly descended into a zombie apocalypse, with passengers screaming in terror.
Organizers of Saturday’s adrenaline-filled trip, less than two weeks before Halloween, touted it as the “world’s first haunted house experience on a running shinkansen.”
Aboard a chartered car of the shinkansen — the Japanese word for bullet train — were around 40 thrill-seekers, ready to brave an encounter with the living dead between Tokyo and the western metropolis of Osaka.
PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images
The eerie experience was inspired by the hit 2016 South Korean action-horror movie “Train to Busan”, in which a father and daughter trapped on a moving train battle zombies hungry for human flesh.
All seemed normal at first as the bullet train made a peaceful departure Saturday evening, but it wasn’t long until the first gory attack.
The victims — actors planted in seats by the organizers — jerked in agony and then underwent a terrifying transformation before starting a rampage against their fellow passengers.
Event organizer Kenta Iwana of the group Kowagarasetai, which translates to the “scare squad”, said they wanted to “depict the normally safe, peaceful shinkansen — something we take for granted — collapsing in the blink of an eye”.
PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images
Sitting next to one of the actors was Joshua Payne, one of many foreign tourists on board.
“I literally felt like I was in the film, just sitting here watching it take place in front of me,” the 31-year-old American told AFP.
“The fact that we can physically go from Tokyo to Osaka right now and have this whole performance at the same time… I think is really cool and maybe a little bit groundbreaking,” he said.
It was far from Central Japan Railway Company’s first experiment with the usually dazzlingly clean, accident-free shinkansen, a Japanese institution that turned 60 this year.
After demand for long-distance travel plunged during the COVID-19 pandemic, the railway operator started renting out bullet train compartments for special events to diversify its business.
A sushi restaurant, a bar and even a wrestling match have been hosted on the high-speed train, and carriages can also be reserved for private parties.
PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images
Marie Izumi of JR Central’s tourism subsidiary told AFP that she was surprised by the idea for a zombie-themed commute when Kowagarasetai approached her, thinking it would be “almost impossible to pull off”.
But the event has convinced her of “new possibilities” for the bullet train, Izumi said, adding that concerts and comedy shows might be a good fit in the future.
On Saturday, toy chainsaws and guns were used as props, but depictions of extreme violence and gore that could tarnish the shinkansen’s squeaky-clean reputation were avoided.
To counterbalance the subdued horror, the two-and-a-half-hour tour was peppered with light-hearted performances by zombie cheerleaders, magicians and comedians, including a choreographed dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.
“Nobody wants to sit tight for such a long time being constantly exposed to horror,” said Ayaka Imaide from Kowagarasetai.
Many aboard the zombie-infested train said the experience alone was worth the ticket price of up to 50,000 yen ($335).
“It was very immersive,” Naohiko Nozawa, 30, told AFP. “And the appearance of so many different kinds of zombies kept me entertained all the way.”
