"Sometimes It Just Happens:” A Conversation with Percival Everett by Tyler Hall
Percival Everett is an author with immense range, who creates with formidable productivity. Having published nearly thirty books, spanning twenty novels, four volumes of poetry, four short story collections, and a children’s book his work is both varied and lauded. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California, and is the recipient of the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Believer Book Award, the PEN USA Center Award for Fiction, and was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction in 2015.
In September, Professor Everett visited University of San Francisco as part of the MFA Reading Series. He read from his upcoming novel, So Much Blue, which is slated for publishing in June 2017 through Greywolf Press, and also took time to visit a writing workshop here at USF and answer questions from students. His visit was so impactful, that we here at the Ignatian reached out to Professor Everett for a follow up e-mail interview. He was gracious enough to share more of his time and wisdom with us in the following conversation:
Tyler Hall: To start, how have you managed to maintain this formidable level of production over the years?
Percival Everett: I don’t think much about production. I don’t feel stress about work and I work a lot.
TH: How do you view a writer’s responsibility to their own productivity?
PE: An artist should simply make art. The work will happen.
TH: Building on that, what advice would you give to young writers struggling with inspiration, dedication, or discipline?
PE: Be true to your vision. Trust yourself. Take your art seriously.
TH: Your work is noted for playing with, subverting, and reinventing notions of style and genre. How do you decide which styles or genres to utilize? Do they emerge dependent on the work, or do you have some idea of what you want to experiment with before the story takes shape?
PE: I believe that the story will generate its own style. All novels are experiments. I get bored easily, so I often play with structure to create another level of meaning.
TH: In the years since Erasure, have you noticed any changes in the publishing and literary fields? In your opinion, has the emergence of small publishing houses and digital content provided avenues that could potentially liberate authors from being pigeonholed into these roles and preconceived expectations?
PE: Perhaps. I do not much think about that stuff. I am just pleased when I get to make my next book.
TH: In works like Glyph and Erasure, there is a dark humor to the writing, sometimes satirizing the concept of satire itself, which allows for some stark truths about our society and humanity to be communicated. What opportunities does humor allow a writer?
PE: Humor disarms the reader. Once this is achieved, the story can evoke other emotions. That said, I do not really try to be funny. It simply happens sometimes.
TH: Speaking of Glyph, one of my personal favorites by the way, the character Ralph posits that genius is finding “a way back to the beginning where the truths are uncorrupted and honest and maybe even pure.” Is this what you would look for in quality art and literature? How do writers keep themselves honest, and their work pure?
PE: I would like to think that my work is honest. I do not know exactly what I might be lying about.
TH: Finally, on a serious note and out of personal curiosity, is training mules comparable to teaching English majors?
PE: Nice question. There are a few similarities. English majors are better read. Mules are more fun a parties.
