I have mentioned Percival Everett on the ol’ NR before. Once in passing and, more recently, to demonstrate the difference between good fiction writing and not so good fiction writing. I write this current post as an attempt to “review” Percival Everett’s newest book, I Am Not Sidney Poitier.

A SF Chronicle review of the very same book asks the questions:

Is any American writer as undervalued as Everett? Does anyone in America write funnier books?

The answer to both questions is no.

In fact, I’ll go one further and say that Percival Everett is the greatest living American writer of prose fiction. I say this, of course, as one who has not read every prose work of fiction from every living American writer. I have not, in fact, even read all of Everett’s work…but I claim it all the same.

I’ll just state it up front and say that I give I Am Not Sidney Poitier the highest of possible accolades…five out of five unicorns!

5/5 - Punched in the face by AWESOME!

Or, I give it 5/5 for me. I have previously read two other Everett works, Erasure (which is mentioned in this newest work and of which you can read 169 pages at that link) and A History of the African-American People [Proposed] by Strom Thurmond as Told by Percival Everett and James Kincaid (which nearly all of can be read at that link).

Erasure is one man’s journal/protest novel/philosophical musings that was, hands down, the best thing I read in grad school. A History of the African-American People [Proposed] by Strom Thurmond is the story of what might have happened had Strom Thurmond decided to try and write such a book…though Thurmond is not, in fact, in the book in much of a direct way.

See the kind of genius I’m talking about?

This newest work, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, is the story of a young man named Not Sidney Poitier (yes, his first name is Not Sidney). He is independently rich (thanks to some shrewd investing by his late mother) but sort of adopted by Ted Turner. He bears a stunning resemblance to the actual Sidney Poitier and, through the course of the book, relives such memorable Poitier films as Lilies in the Field, The Defiant Ones, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night. Sadly for Not Sidney, his experiences differ quite greatly from Mr. Poitier’s film incarnations.

During the the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner portion, after Not Sidney (a high school dropout) has literally bought his way into Morehouse he takes a class titled “Philosophy of Nonsense” taught by someone named Percival Everett. I’d say I’m generally wary of characters who share a name with the author (although, Everything is Illuminated is a great novel and does the same thing…and the main character in Erasure is Percival Everett with a different name…) but the character of Percival Everett is fucking ridiculously brilliant that I can’t imagine any actual human (particularly one who is a “Distinguished Professor” at one of the premier universities in this country) talks or acts the way the character of Everett does.

I was going to throw in a few quotes here from the character of Everett but his conversations go on so long, and excerpting them would only be an injustice. Really, though, you’ve never read a character like him.

I’ve probably already said too much about the book because, honestly, it is something best experienced with as little foreknowledge as possible. The last thing I will say, though, is that it isn’t for everyone. I understand that, in a review, one is attempting to make an honest appraisal of a work. And my honest opinion is that Percival Everett (the real one, not the character) is the best, and least appreciated, American novelist of our time. So, given that, it would be hard for me to give the book anything other than 5 unicorns.

I do understand, however, that this ain’t Oprah’s book club, or James Patterson, or Nicholas Sparks we’re talking about. Everett, like many of the true genius prose writers that have come before him, isn’t for the masses. It’s an interesting dichotomy to consider. James Joyce, for instance, is often considered the greatest English language novelist of all time. In my experience (many years in the making at the bookmines and through undergrad and grad school), very few people who read a lot have read Joyce…and even less have enjoyed him. That is how I imagine Everett will be remembered and, as such, while I personally give I Am Not Sidney Poitier 5 Unicorns, I also bestow upon it, for the masses, 2 Unicorns.

2/5 - For the already converted ONLY!

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