All My Friends Are Fictional’s Reviews > The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews > Status Update

Percival Everett: „I love abstract paintings and I used to avoid the term abstract. I used to say non-representational because I thought abstract sounded like there was no substance. Now I believe in the word abstract. What I want to make is an abstract novel. The problem with this is the medium that I use is representative by nature. It's very difficult to make an abstract thing out of representative elements.“

Percival Everett: „Yeah. I mean, you know, when we look in the mirror, we're not seeing an identical representation of ourselves. We're seeing a mirror image. I suppose photographs are the closest thing, but even then we're seeing a photograph. I don't know what's in a photo-graph. It used to be silver and metal and stuff. Now we're seeing pixels.“

“On such evenings, an irresistible energy can be felt rising in the room until — if we get very lucky — it reaches what I call 'escape velocity'; that heady moment when the formal interview breaks its bounds, and becomes something more: a conversation that matters. A conversation which will, perhaps, resonate in the lives of everyone involved long after they've left the bookshop.”