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Percival Everett Can’t Be Pinned Down
His masterful new novel, James, cements his status as one of our most idiosyncratic writers.
Some Everett devotees (myself included) wondered if, after years of inventive, philosophical, and absurdist work displaying a dizzying range — mute baby geniuses, nutty heist plots, post-westerns, and metacommentaries on race and publishing — he was finally selling out. Similar to Mark Twain’s picaresque, the book’s action kicks into gear when James — usually only white people call him Jim in Everett’s version — goes into hiding on an island after learning he will be sold downriver, away from his wife and daughter. If his characters push against constraints in the worlds he builds for them, deploying language as a form of power, he’s doing the same thing as an author, resisting categorization by writing in ways that don’t make him easy to pin down and market as a Black writer.
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