Book Review 2019-001
Two Stories by Percival Everett
2018 by FreeReadPress, 38 pages
(I purchased a paperback copy of this even though one can apparently download everything from the publishing website at no charge).
Not long ago, looking to see where another Everett title we'd pre-ordered was (it had been bumped to mid-January), we stumbled on this title and quickly ordered a copy. As the title suggests, this little chapbook sized book contains just two stories--and between them they sort of cover Percival Everett the writer. The first, "Knowledge," is a pretty straightforward fiction where the second, "Parts of Brain," is anything but, pushing meta-fiction to its limits.
A couple that's been together 30 plus years are in a familiar Everett scenario, on a ranch out west. The husband, Tyler, is in a waist high cast on one leg so Ruth, his wife, is relegated to doing all of the ranch work and to make matters worse, it's been pouring for a few days. The situation leads to some minor irritation between the two, nothing that seems major. The fact that they recently lost Daisy, their dog of fifteen years, comes up in conversation and Ruth ends up swinging out to a neighbor's in a deluge to pick up a new puppy, at the very least a little bit behind Tyler's back (he'd not said no to a new dog but certainly hadn't said yes when the possibility came up).
Tyler names the dog Zoe right around the same time that Ruth is finding a trio of old letters up in their attic (she'd gone up to find a large box for the puppy) addressed to Tyler, signed "With all my love, your darling Chloe." These were sent to Tyler when he was stationed at Camp Pendleton shortly after they were married.
Similar minor irritations continue to occur between Ruth and Tyler for the last sixty percent or so of the story, but with a much more ominous feeling for the reader due to our being in Ruth's head while she sorts through her anger, her worries, and her concern after having found the letters--meanwhile Tyler has no idea this is all going on.
Everett does slide in a nice bit of wordplay as Ruth accidentally (maybe?) calls the puppy Chloe one time in front of Tyler before stating she'd said Zoe.
"Parts of Brain" is not a normal story at all. It states this up front as it begins as a review for a work of Everett's titled Parts of Brain: Its Functions), something published in 2015. It notes that it completes a trilogy of work started with I Am Not Sidney Poitier and continuing with Percival Everett, by Virgil Russell (both actual works by Everett).
Those accustomed to the gentle and mock-witless prose of Everett's early works should quite frankly stand clear. Gone here are the amusing subversions of his many novels, novellae and stories, and gone too, as if in recompense, are the almost perfunctory rave reviews, appearing everywhere a fan, or perhaps a student, is granted access to the back neglected pages of a quarterly. The text, curiously, is unillustrated.
To readers who find the second in this series difficult, the third will prove simply inaccessible.
As we have read and enjoyed all of Everett's works, including the two mentioned above, it's a fantastic few sentences in this mock review as he did seem to lose a chunk of, what was a not immense to begin with, readership with the publication of some of his later, not so linear novels. The fact that this story is included after a very linear fiction only enhances the differences that Everett has written with over the years.
The story goes on to include 2 or 3 more of these reviews of the fictional work, as well as letters to Professor Kincaid (a reference to the USC Professor that co-penned A History of the African-American People (Proposed) as Told by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percivall Everett & James Kincaid (a Novel) perhaps, though there have been characters named Percival Everett in his work that weren't the author, so maybe not?), and then a Part II of the story that includes a missing fragment of the work, mostly appearing in poem form, similar to some of Everett's poems.
We could most likely read Parts of Brain a hundred times and find ourselves thinking of a hundred different things. Everett does this well enough with his linear fiction, but is much more than simply competent writing these meta-fictions in a way that still contain story, still contain enough bits of humanity to make them worth the time to read.
Combining the two stories together, in the order they're in, seems like a stroke of genius, making both even more enjoyable than had they been found alone.
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