Percival Everett

Percival Everett (born 1956) is an American writer and professor.

Quotes

• There are two ways to approach the race thing. One is the unfortunate marginalization of American writers who happen to be black by calling them “black writers,” which tacitly acknowledges the existence of something else that would be mainstream, and so ghettoizes the work immediately. That is the unfortunate part. If one allows that, one fails to acknowledge the truth that there is no such thing as a “black American experience”…
  • On the term “Black writers” in “Percival Everett, The Art of Fiction No. 235” in The Paris Review (Summer 2017)

• The interesting thing about irony for me is that real irony is far more sincere than earnestness. To accept the absurdity of a situation is to accept the humanness of it. Utter sincerity suggests a kind of belief that one knows all there is to know about a given circumstance. That is not to say that one should ever make light of serious and grave and important issues, but that open and genuine intellectual curiosity should never be a casualty in any situation. Irony is not always funny. Humor is not always ironic.
  • On irony versus humor in “Coming Home from Irony: An Interview with Percival Everett, Author of ‘So Much Blue’” in Los Angeles Review of Books (2017 Aug 23)

• I have no desire to offer a political message in a novel. An artist cannot hide from her or his political beliefs; they will be in the work. But to presume that I am smart enough to preach a position runs counter to my artistic sense.
  • On the avoidance of a political message in his works in “Coming Home from Irony: An Interview with Percival Everett, Author of ‘So Much Blue’” in Los Angeles Review of Books (2017 Aug 23)

• I'm writing the West that exists. You have to remember that Westerns are complete mythology. If you talk about the historic West, a third of the cowboys were black. The railroad was built by the Irish and the Chinese ... and black workers. All of this supported by women, all the time, and yet you can find any number of Westerns that have no women in them.
  • On writing accurately about the West in “For Prolific Author Percival Everett, The Wilderness Is A Place Of Clarity” in NPR (2015 Sep 20)