fiction files redux discussion

I am jealous, because Patrick has already started reading Assumption, and I haven't. I picked up a copy, but I'm in the middle of V. and need to finish it first. Anyway, I thought that with a new book coming out, it was high time I started a thread for the Percival Everett fan club.

No worries, Patty. I haven't gotten very far. Same day it arrived two inter-library loans arrived at work.

For Her Dark Skin

and

The Body of Martin Aguilera

also still reading his two earlier books of poetry.

you can find mini-review/descriptions of most of his titles here:
http://www.dzancbooks.org/imported-ew...

thanks for starting this thread.

You two are crazy for this Percival character! I have a feeling I will be starting to read him in the near future. Where should the uninitiated start?

You will love him, Dan. My vote would be for starting with Not Sidney.

'I am Not Sidney Poitier' is pretty incredible

Two votes for Sidney. I looked for it today when I went to buy the new Murakami but they didn't have it. I'll keep looking before I break down and get it from the big A.

The wind and snow and freezing rain kept me indoors yesterday, and I read all of assupmtion. As soon as anyone else finishes, please let me know! We need to talk!

I finished up a couple nights ago and have been waiting, hoping to hear what others think. I really enjoyed it. Have wondered if the end/last third maybe was a bit too abrupt? It could have been more fleshed out. Maybe, because i was enjoying it so much, i wasn't ready for it to end.

Dan, i trust the others assessment that Not Sidney is a good place to start. oddly, i haven't read that one cover to cover yet. It definitely seems to be one of his most popular.

and for anyone interested...

http://youtu.be/s5RDfcoMZEs

http://youtu.be/Kmk6qdE7Jo0

http://youtu.be/n49ChDsDdPs

you can listen to his story "The Appropriation of Cultures" here"-
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v19965005Cp...

and read another story, "Confluence" here -
http://www.theliteraryreview.org/Word...

What I need to know, Patrick, is what you thought was going on with the ending. Did that have something to do with a head injury, or was there something I overlooked the whole time?

i didn't relate it to the head injury, but that's interesting. the end made me want to start over.
i still feel as though it wrapped up too quickly for me. but a handful of his earlier novels felt that way to me as well. Cutting Lisa, may be the prime example. very spare, skeletal even. and really troubling. and like Assumption, in some ways, he clearly telegraphs where things are headed. or, at least you have the sense that something is not right. and even though, i felt like i could see what was coming- the end still startles.
I don't think i gave Cutting Lisa as high a rating as i've given some of his other books, but may be the one i find myself thinking about the most.

As Patrick knows, I went to see PE read on Thursday night. Someone asked him about the title, Assumption. "Is it about the reader's assumptions about the book,or about your own?" And he replied, "It's about people's assumptions about me."

I thought that was really interesting, and am now even more certain that I need to reread it. He read from the very beginning of the book, only up to the point where Odgen finds the cat. I found myself listening intently for clues.

Next I'm going to read Wounded, which I picked up at the reading.

I had a dream last night that I began reading one of PE's books. It was one no one had heard of before. I remember being excited but little more...

That's the one I want to read! Can I borrow your dream copy when you are done?

So I downed Sidney Poitier and loved it. Then I read Assumption and loved it, but it is definitely a head scratcher.

Is this a safe place to post spoilers (view spoiler)[well, is it? (hide spoiler)]

There's a lot to discuss here.

i say spoil away, Dan. glad you liked it. i've been wanting to read it again since listening to a podcast of him and Steve Erickson together. He didn't actually talk much about Assumption- he talked about and read from his upcoming book- sadly, not due out til next year. but the host of the discussion kept coming back to Assumption & she made me want to read it again. but i gave my copy away already. will have to retrieve it.

geek that i am, i actually transcribed the passage that he read from his upcoming book- so i could spend more time rereading it. the book sounds nuts.

i am chomping at the bit for the "nuts" new book. he says that it's the most surreal thing he has written to date, and his editors basically just left it alone. :)

yeah, Dan, the end of assumption blew my mind. I'm all for spoilers if you can help me grasp wth happened there! i'm still not sure that i'm totally ok with it.

Hey Patrick, can you post the link to that podcast for us?

I am not sure that I am going to be able to help in the grasping of anything because I was pretty blown away by the ending.

It resolved so quickly and in so few words that it was stunning.

(view spoiler)[So are we to believe that the first two stories/crimes investigated appear in chronological order? If so, does it matter?

At the very end Warren says that Ogden's face wasn't the face he knew. Does he mean this literally or figuratively, it seems like it could go either way.

And all the questions in Ogden's last rant about things not making sense basically call into question every assumption we've had about the character.

Were there hints throughout the first two-thirds of the book or is Everett just messing with us, sending us on a chase back through the the story? The cover of the book depicting a bullet hold and shattered glass seems to saw a lot about the story. Perhaps Everett's aim was to give us a great story and then shatter everything and leave us no explanation or clues.

As you can see I'm not adding anything to put this story back together again. So I'll stop here. (hide spoiler)]

here you go:

http://www.lfla.org/event-detail/688/...

would love to get your thoughts once you hear it. and i'd also be happy to share my (very) flawed transcription of the excerpt he read from his new book- (if anyone w/ a better ear wants to help me clean up the messy spots) i'll let people listen first & if you want me to post what i have let me know

about Assumption. part of me, initially, was frustrated with the last section of the book. and mostly that was because it felt too short and wrapped up to quickly. he has a tendency at times to be a bit abrupt with his endings. sometimes it works- leaves me marveling & wondering -wtf, just happened there. while in the moment it can feel spare and sometimes insufficient later i'll be haunted by it and wondering just how he did it. Cutting Lisa struck me that way. As i was reading it, i wasn't convinced it was working. it's a troubling one on various levels. very spare. but it's one i find myself thinking about a lot. waiting to go back to it.

If i remember correctly (patty correct me if i'm wrong) at the reading she was at Percival said that the book was in many ways about Assumptions people have about him. which struck me as interesting. but the more i thought about it, listened to him and read more of the books- i realize that is a bit of running theme of his- the tricky nature of identity. the multi-various mis-identifications. often played to comic effect but things can also go dark and troubling very quick.

I read Cutting Lisalast night. I'm amazed and unsettled. I was sort of put off by the description on the dust jacket, but I figured it must just be a bad summary. And then it turned out to be more or less exactly what the cover said it was, which sounded pretty domestic and ordinary, which it turned out to be, but somehow also totally engaging and utterly creepy.

just reread the opening of Cutting Lisa the other night. domestic and ordinary is the perfect description. while reading, it felt slight, but once i was done i couldn't stop thinking about it.

i also read the essay on Erasure that was in that book i showed you at the dorka. i liked it quite a bit. gave a few titles to look at before i read Erasure again.

did you know that Angela Basset had been trying to make a film baaed on Erasure? not sure if it's still in motion. i generally have a very casual attitude about film adaptations--and as novelists go, Percival seems ripe for a (quality) adaptation... but the idea of this one makes me nervous.

and i read that some of the earlier titles will be available in ebook format soon- for those who swing.

http://www.dzancbooks.org/libraries/

i see a real connection between cutting lisa and assumption, do you know what i mean? and i find that disturbing, too.

you know, i have read enough PE now to know that i can trust him. he will always make reading his books worth my time. and i wonder if that trust adds into the disturbingness of these two novels.

did i try to read the erasure essay? i can't even remember if there was a subject to the essay that i read, it was so dry. if the erasure essay was readable, do you think i should try it again? i'm sure the poet could probably get it through his school library.

as much as i love erasure, i think a movie version of it might be kind of slight. i'd be willing to see it, though!

http://www.edrants.com/the-bat-segund...

won't say the erasure article isn't still dry, but i liked it. sadly, haven't gotten thru all the essays in the book & what i have... hit & miss. dry in a heady academic way, but i appreciate that. it's worth hunting down.

been thinking quite a bit about erasure again- even before reading the article. that novel is so rich. at first read, (and from many reviews i've read) people focus on the book within a book- read it as a sort of rebuttal(?) to Sapphire's Push. certainly, there is a thread of that but it's so much more complicated.

listening to the Bat Segundo interview made want to read Wounded again. when he said, the reaction to it was that it was one of his more "realist" novels but he thought, in terms of language, it was one of his most experimental. sometimes, when he says things like that, how serious he is... i believe he believes it, but i also think he loves to play games.

i've also wanted to return to Wounded to consider the "queer" aspect of it, how that was handled. almost everyone of his novels has had either a gay character or scene(s) and sometimes (often) the representation is so odd and awkward it makes me wince. but, it's also such a consistently reoccurring theme or sticking point for him -it's curious. wondering how it lays into his larger reoccurring themes of the tricky or slipperyness of identity politics.

http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/post/...

wow, that first review is awesome. in fact, i love the writing in that review, almost as much as i love the review. the second one, meh. but it's much tougher to discuss swimmers, i think. at least thematically.

identity politics, yes. now you've got me thinking about the queer characters. i don't remember there being one in cutting lisa, do you? remind me. maybe you should actually list the queer aspect in each of the novels for me, and maybe that would help you think about it? i'd be very curious to see what emerges from that. i have to say that on the whole, i am very invested and interested with the ideas and assumptions that he wrastles (my preferred spelling), but i'm not sure if he and i would always come to the same conclusions.

maybe for me, the whole psychopath angle is an example of my not being sure that he and i are in sync. in cutting lisa an in assumption, he gives us protagonists that we can identify with, even if they are nothing like us. they lead sort of ordinary lives, visit and chat with their mom or their neighbor, go to the grocery store or the office, make phone calls, do ordinary things. they are troubled by their experiences and they wrastle with issues, just like us. they are just plain folk, really. and then they do something unexpectedly psychopathic or maybe just sociopathic, but completely within their plain folk character, and it's just disarming and troubling. it's troubling because it's so plain and true. but this is where i think i may have a disagreement with PE, because although it rings very true, i just don't believe it. but then on the other hand, i guess that's why it appeals to me. he challenges my beliefs and assumptions about what the facts are.

glad you enjoyed that review, i did too.

i'm working on a list of some of the queer moments in his books. it will take me a while. - chapter 12 in Cutting Lisa, the 2 old guys go out for a beer and end up in a nautical themed gay bar. nonsense ensues.

"wrastles" is the perfect word.

i also want to borrow a phrase that johnny dropped over in the RFOC thread- when he mentions "masculinity in crisis". of course, he was talking about his own book- but it certainly feels like a re-occurring theme for PE. and you are completely right about the odd psycho/sociopath angle. he can lull you a bit and then suddenly things will shift tonally. it's strange because i feel like in a way, that darkness or the threat is always close by. sometimes, like with Cutting Lisa, your told explicitly what to expect, but somehow, in the end it's still disarming. do i always believe it... that's a good question, probably no, but like you said, he does challenge. in a lot of ways. and his work, especially some of the ones that seem more straightforward, linger in a way that always surprises me.

i forget, did you read God's Country. that is another example where much of that book was really funny to me, but you hit a point near the end especially where there is a slight shift and what felt like a Blazing Saddles style lampoon just gets dark. brutal dark. disturbing, but i found it effective.

http://www.vqronline.org/interviews-a...

I love how concise his answers are, how clearly he sees/puts things.

This is the 3rd or 4th time I heard/read him state his interest in the philosophical/logical problem "A = A is not the same thing as A is A"

I've never seen/heard him expand on it, though. Is this a well-known puzzle/problem? It just looks like syntax to me, and I marvel that it has held his interest for so long. What's it about?

haven't had chance to read this entire thing yet, but it's addressed in here... and, can't remember where, but i have heard him talk about his love/fascination with frege's puzzle https://youtu.be/T-7ZukUZiaw


http://ojs.u-paris10.fr/index.php/lat...

I downloaded the ojs.u-paris10fr article and was going to read it on the train, but bizarrely on the downloaded version, only the quotes showed up, so it made no sense! I will try again tomorrow.

In other news, there are some really strange stories in "The Women and the Weather Treat Me Fine."