REVIEW: Percival Everett's Damned If I Do

Damned If I Do (Graywolf Press, 2004) is a story collection about transactions -- the chafing encounters of negotiation; the risk and strategy of ordinary and un-ordinary days. Among these twelve tales, there is, for example, a hydrologist who needs the signature of a Utah woman to do work on her property, only to find himself shot at. There is the young black musician in South Carolina who purchases a vehicle with an enormous Confederate flag decal, as an attempt to turn it into a symbol of black power. There is another man, a romance novelist living outside of Taos. who is offered extraordinary amounts of money by a Hollywood producer for the use of his land and truck -- but he doesn't want it. And in the opening story, "The Fix," the owner of a sandwich shop encounters Sherman, a man who can fix anything -- the busted refrigerator, kids' toy trucks, your parking tickets, and the dead.

These are transactions of people pushing against one another, and of people pushing against the (usually) Western landscape populated by fish and lions, things seen and unseen, sensical and non. Racial presumption is juxtaposed with talking fish in Damned If I Do, and they appear equally absurd (albeit intriguing). Everett's humor and ease in moving into irrealities is tempered by a darkness in these stories -- a sort of grim abruptness in their telling. The endings of these stories often feel like abandonments, as if it is just no use to look any longer into these little worlds.

Everett's imagination is a powerful engine. Altogether, this is an engaging collection of stories that is fearless and evocative, easy to like if, for me, not particularly loved. Why not loved? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the tight portals of these tales did not gain altitude, to paraphrase Flannery O'Connor. They situate themselves in an uncommon and fidgety place, and they stay there. While it's still a joy to meet them, I'm not taking them with me when I move elsewhere. Two brilliant stories are the exception to my withheld love: "The Fix" and "The Reappropriation of Cultures" -- the last of which was read by Reuben Santiago Hudson on PRI's wonderful "Selected Shorts" program, alongside "Bible" by Tobias Wolff and under the theme "Passions Run Deep."

Percival Everett continues his fierce literary journey with nearly two dozen books, including his most recent novel, I Am Not Sidney Poitier and the particularly celebrated Erasure. Everett (b. 1956) grew up in South Carolina, attended college in Florida and Miami, earned his MFA in writing from Brown University, and now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, author Danzy Senna. He teaches writing at the University of Southern California.

Related:

• Identity Theory interview with Percival Everett (2003)
• "Pericival Everett, in and out of fiction" - Los Angeles Times (2009)
• The Observer interview with Percival Everett (2003)
• BOMB Magazine interview with Percival Everett (2004)
• "Mules, Men, and Barthes: Percival Everett Talks with Bookform" (2005)
• "Phenomenologically Fucked" - London Review of Books (2009)

Comments

[Dan Wickett]

While I might add two or three more stories to the list of those that I continued to carry after completing the collection, I do understand the issue you take with Everett's stories. I'd heavily recommend his novels though, if you found the stories above average. And good news, his production level is being maintained--a new poetry collection just hit stores recently and Graywolf has another novel coming in the Fall.

[Anna Clark]

Wow, I'd be FASCINATED to see what his poetry is like. Good tip -- thanks! And yeah, I've only read his stories so far, despite meaning to read "Erasure" for the last five years or so... maybe thenew novel presents a review opportunity? Anyways, I am bowled over by how productive he is... makes me feel lazy for sleeping at night.