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A review by axmed
Percival Everett by Virgil Russell by Percival Everett
this was yet another PE novel that was weird to the extend that i don't even bother understanding wtf he is talking about at some moments, but whatever he does he does it with so much of a specific kind of humor that I love so much.
"Dad, why all this writing for me? Why don’t you write it yourself ?
I’m an eighty-year-old man, almost eighty, anyway. What do I have to say to those assholes out there?"
"I knew this guy once, he was a writer I guess, a white guy, I introduced him at a reading one time and neither he nor anyone else ever forgave me for calling him the Ralph Abernathy of American letters. A poet, a white woman, asked, pointing a finger at me without actually using her finger, just what I meant. I asked her if she knew who Ralph Abernathy was and she said she did and I said then I didn’t understand her confusion. Another poet, a man with blue eyes and blond hair (because I’m sick of saying white), stood up and said he took exception to my comment. I asked him what he had against Ralph Abernathy. He said he held nothing against Abernathy and so I asked why he should be so offended. Is it because Abernathy is black? I asked. He sat down. This was at the University of Iowa in 1976. You were six and hating every minute of first grade. The night before Gerald Ford gave the country a moment of clarity by declaring that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe while debating Jimmy Carter.
Granted, it must have been a confusing thing for all those white people to hear and I’m fairly positive that even I didn’t know what I meant by it, but the consternation the remark caused was well worth what little trouble it took to utter it. "
"But this guy I mentioned, the hack academic, his name was Housetown Pastrychef or Dallas Roaster, something like that, wrote that my friend was essentially full of excrement and that, furthermore, race was not only a valid category but a necessary one."
"Dad, why all this writing for me? Why don’t you write it yourself ?
I’m an eighty-year-old man, almost eighty, anyway. What do I have to say to those assholes out there?"
"I knew this guy once, he was a writer I guess, a white guy, I introduced him at a reading one time and neither he nor anyone else ever forgave me for calling him the Ralph Abernathy of American letters. A poet, a white woman, asked, pointing a finger at me without actually using her finger, just what I meant. I asked her if she knew who Ralph Abernathy was and she said she did and I said then I didn’t understand her confusion. Another poet, a man with blue eyes and blond hair (because I’m sick of saying white), stood up and said he took exception to my comment. I asked him what he had against Ralph Abernathy. He said he held nothing against Abernathy and so I asked why he should be so offended. Is it because Abernathy is black? I asked. He sat down. This was at the University of Iowa in 1976. You were six and hating every minute of first grade. The night before Gerald Ford gave the country a moment of clarity by declaring that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe while debating Jimmy Carter.
Granted, it must have been a confusing thing for all those white people to hear and I’m fairly positive that even I didn’t know what I meant by it, but the consternation the remark caused was well worth what little trouble it took to utter it. "
"But this guy I mentioned, the hack academic, his name was Housetown Pastrychef or Dallas Roaster, something like that, wrote that my friend was essentially full of excrement and that, furthermore, race was not only a valid category but a necessary one."