Grand Canyon, Inc.

by Percival Everett

Tanner, call him Rhino Tanner, his friends do because they're afraid of him. He's a self made man who makes his living killing large game in Africa -- a dysfunctional Horatio Alger who sets his sights and 'sites' on the world's greatest natural The Grand Canyon. But in doing so, Tanner unleashes forces that he cannot comprehend and cannot his idealistic son Niko, Native American holy men, Zen adepts and, yes, Mother Nature.

Genres: Fiction

126 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2001

About the author

Percival L. Everett (born 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

There might not be a more fertile mind in American fiction today than Everett’s. In 22 years, he has written 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children’s story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old.

The Washington Post has called Everett “one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.” And according to The Boston Globe, “He’s literature’s NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next.”

Everett, who teaches courses in creative writing, American studies and critical theory, says he writes about what interests him, which explains his prolific output and the range of subjects he has tackled. He also describes himself as a demanding teacher who learns from his students as much as they learn from him.

Everett’s writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, Wounded), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, Erasure), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, Big Picture) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, Zulus). He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991.

Reviews

[Numidica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, that was a lot like a Kurt Vonnegut short story. And Percival Everett anticipated the advent of Donald Trump about fifteen years before he descended the escalator.

[Cody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here’s an odd case. Published after Everett had potentiated, it seems of an earlier cut. For all I know it well could be; this is a one-off for a very small press, after all. It’s a sort of pocket-sized compendium of many familiar preoccupations that are spatially limited (or self-limiting)—a curio made curious principally by its almost singular impermanence. Seriously, I pretty much forget all of it three days later.

———

Fun but in no way essential except to ‘completist’ Everett fans. I say this only because it’s been out-of-print since its release, and it is not a cheap book by any means. If you find a copy for a reasonable price, hey, buy away. But should you be a spine-sniffing ‘collector’ (v reader) that worships scarcity, please leave it be; it’s not for you. The price gets driven up for no good reason. It is a VERY small paperback that is generously padded to reach 126-pages. Rarity-worshipping, bookstagram exhibitionists please fuck right off and let us members of the proletariat have a single corner free of your poisonous Muzak.

As for contents: It’s a bauble, an hour pleasantly invested. Nothing more. There are worse things in life.

(I am of the mind I can help remediate scarcity of this title for those READERS in need for completionism purposes. Give me a few; I will update status of this endeavor.)

[Kara ✨]

This...was perhaps the strangest novella I've ever read...

Read for my Rural Literature class.

It only took just over an hour to complete, probably because it is made up of vignettes.

[Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very short book (out of 126 pages of text, at least 36 are blank or nearly blank for chapter dividers), so when I saw it on the library shelf next to Glyph, I figured why not? I had a vague sense of Everett as being a little experimental or weird, and this seemed like a harmless way to dip a toe in before committing to something larger.

It's a pretty straightforward tale of an over-the-top character, Rhino Tanner, who likes to shoot animals and who manages to con the bankrupt government into letting him develop a gift shop which metastasizes into an amusement park/resort in the Grand Canyon—and his estranged son Niko, who joins local native tribes in opposing the development. Put a big Boom! at the end and nature wipes the slate clean. The telling is appropriately tongue-in-cheek, but the satire has lost its bite with the metastasizing of U.S. corporate culture in general.

It's not bad; it's entertaining enough for the brief time it'll take you to read. But it's very slight, and while I haven't been moved to avoid him, I don't feel like I've gained any sense of what the rest of Percival Everett's writing might be like.

[Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty funny little morality tale about a dude named Tanner. He's a crack shot and cracked to boot. The novel is narrated by his bestie, BB Trane, and details Tanner's eventual acquisition of concession rites in the Grand Canyon. He's a vulgarian with a twisted past, including a son adamantly opposed to his machinations in the park. By description it is a novella and it passes even more briskly than Everett's briskest work. Although Everett often gets by doing more with less, this has to count among his lesser works. A mild satire that gently mocks commercialism and a particular brand of American obliviousness. He can pretty much do this stuff in his sleep whenever he likes; his best works are grander in scope and require significantly more effort than this enjoyable but minor outing.

[Poptartk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim volume really packs a punch leading to an extremely satisfying conclusion.

[Kip Kyburz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A typically Everettian skewering of the farce that is the American Dream.

[Meer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny, ironic, and hilarious. It's brief and you can finish it one night.