Percival Everett

Author profile

born

Fort Gordon, Georgia, The United States

gender

male

genre

Literature & Fiction, Poetry

About this author

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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 straigh...more

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Books by Percival Everett

Average rating: 3.84 · 3,037 ratings · 494 reviews · 33 distinct works

	Erasure 4.14 avg rating — 837 ratings — 11 editions	My rating:
	I am Not Sidney Poitier 3.78 avg rating — 494 ratings — published 2009 — 5 editions	My rating:
	American Desert 3.62 avg rating — 199 ratings — published 2004 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Wounded 3.85 avg rating — 173 ratings — published 2005 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Glyph 3.81 avg rating — 139 ratings — published 1999 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Assumption 3.55 avg rating — 119 ratings — published 2011 — 3 editions	My rating:
	God's Country by Percival Everett, Madison Smartt Bell (Introduction) 3.97 avg rating — 106 ratings — published 1994 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Damned If I Do 3.82 avg rating — 98 ratings — published 2004	My rating:
	A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond by Percival Everett, James Kincaid (As Told to) 3.89 avg rating — 93 ratings — published 2004 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Watershed by Percival Everett, Sherman Alexie (Introduction) 3.88 avg rating — 69 ratings — published 1996 — 2 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Percival Everett

“Everybody should read fiction… I don’t think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that won’t educate its people to read these things. It would be a much more interesting place if it would. And it’s not just that mechanics and plumbers don’t read literary fiction, it’s that doctors and lawyers don’t read literary fiction. It has nothing to do with class, it has to do with an anti-intellectual culture that doesn’t trust art.”
― Percival Everett

tags: bomb-2004

9 people liked it

“Why will I bury you? So that one day I might disturb your grave.”
― Percival Everett, The Water Cure

6 people liked it

“Linda Mallory is the postmodern fuck.”
― Percival Everett, Erasure

3 people liked it

See all Percival Everett's quotes »

Polls

Vote for May's Graywolf Press Book Club selection! We're doing a quick vote this time around, so you have just this weekend to vote!
The group's decision will be announced on Monday, May 17th, and discussion questions will be posted on Friday, June 18th.

I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett

8 votes 38.1%

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

6 votes 28.6%

Castle by J. Robert Lennon

5 votes 23.8%

Pocketful of Names by Joe Coomer

2 votes 9.5%

21 total votes

5 comments

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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Constant Reader: December is WHAT?	47	141	Jan 24, 2009 04:14pm
Graywolf Press: Percival Everett wins the Believer Book Award!	3	25	May 07, 2010 08:07am
Graywolf Press: Graywolf Press Book Club Pick for May!	1	19	May 17, 2010 07:57am
Graywolf Press: First impressions...	7	25	Jun 23, 2010 05:17am
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Graywolf Press: * The Graywolf Book Club selection for August is...	2	30	Aug 24, 2010 11:32am
Bookish: For 2011, I Hope to Read	592	147	Dec 11, 2011 01:56pm
Literary Fiction ...: Coming Attractions - 2011	55	105	Dec 27, 2011 10:34pm
fiction files redux: Jonathan Franzen	65	69	Mar 17, 2012 11:11am

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