Percival+Everett

[|"You Always Want the Heartwood..."]

 * "You Always Want the Heartwood": Woodworking in Percival Everett’s Erasure**

Wood is organic but woodworking isn’t. It is nothing more than a manipulation performed by a person. The existence of the hardwood store—where the wood is harbored —serves as a reminder of the remove at which modern craftsmen find themselves in relation to their ancestor woodworkers of centuries past. Today, wood is offered in an assortment of strange shapes that don’t resemble any natural log formations at all but are instead packaged to facilitate our daily building projects (Green xxvi). We can look at countless woodworking magazines and see that woodworkers are interested in making many of the same things, tables, clocks, ducks, etc. They put their personal stamp on their creations through ornament.
 * Adam Robinson**

What appears to be more important for many woodworkers is the feeling of nostalgia that is evoked by the thought of creating something by hand from organic material.

However, Harvey Green—a professor of History at Northwestern—points out that our relation to more ‘ancient’ practices of working wood is not really a distant one. He reminds us in his book, //Wood: Craft, Culture, History//, that the organic nature of wood made it the significant material in the early part of the Industrial Revolution:

//Before 1850, most machines—spinning wheels, looms, plows, rakes, shovels, hoes, churns—were made entirely of wood. Even at the outset of the age of steel, machines for home and factory production were mostly made of wood, with iron and steel fittings attached at areas of greatest friction and where the cutting took place” (xxv). The Revolution does change our relationship to wood, the lumber industry making wood another “machined mass-produced commodity// (xxvi). What’s good wood? Monk correctly tells us that the good wood is the heartwood (13). It is the center of the tree, a strong essentially dead piece of wood resistant decay. Finding it can prove tricky for it resembles its counterpart, the sapwood. The sapwood is the outer rings of the tree, the absorber of nutrients, but ultimately susceptible to infestation and decay. Monk wants the heartwood because of its consistency. Writers, too, want the stuff that will last a long time, or at least writers like Monk do. However, heartwood has its problems, at least metaphorically speaking, in that we don’t want everything that is created to stick around. Some things need to go away. Monk obviously shares this sentiment. We should also keep in mind one thing about heartwood, and wood in general, that Monk forgets to tell us: for the woodworker interested in visual presentation, as many are, consistency is not enough, //color// is what is key. Apparently, the same principle applies to booksellers as well. Monk, while browsing through Border’s, searches for his books. He cannot find his experimental, academic books—re-workings of Ancient Greek tales—in the literature or contemporary fiction sections as he expected them to be. They are instead grouped in African American Studies. //Someone interested in African American Studies would have little interest in my books and would be confused by their presence in the section. Someone looking for an obscure reworking of a Greek tragedy would not consider looking in that section any more than the gardening section. The result in either case, no sale. That fucking store was taking food from my table// (28). This is Monk’s mood when he discovers the latest bestselling novel, a novel so popular that Hollywood has paid 3 million to the author for the book rights. I am referring to Juanita Mae Jenkins’s //We’s Lives in Da Ghetto//. Angered at what he sees as a stereotypical portrayal of Black America that has garnered undeserved success, Monk sets out to parody Jenkins’s novel and others like it. He produces //My Pafology//, later to be called //Fuck//, an over the top exaggeration of Jenkins’s novel. Margaret Russett hits on a key idea that Everett’s novel is asserting: “Everett unhinges ‘black’ subject matter from a lingering stereotype of ‘black’ style, while challenging the assumption that a single or consensual African-American Experience exists to be represented” (360). From his interviews about //Erasure// and the politics set forth in the novel, we can see that Everett is concerned with the double standard set for white and black writers. White writers freely, and often unconsciously, write on a wide range of experiences, while black writers are expected to write to some single idea of a ‘black experience.’ The public defers complete authority to a black writer, who may not feel comfortable speaking authoritatively about entire group of people. What some might perceive as a respectful gesture is in fact an insult. Parody aside, it is interesting how a novel like //Fuck//, set in a Modern American city, is marketed and received as an exotic artifact. This relationship between reader and artifact is reminiscent of what Harvey Green considers the pre-industrial society’s superstitious, cautious relationship with the wilderness (230). The ‘hood’ is stigmatized as a wilderness or as the clichéd concrete jungle, something that should be entered with great caution. Portraying this particular experience becomes a benchmark for authenticity. Russett asks the right question: “When can we say with confidence that a work of fiction has, or has not, met this obligation (dealing with racial themes)?” (361). The bar needed for authenticity appears to reside somewhere in the extreme. For publishers, writers, or even teachers looking to maximize their delivery of authentic literature, they need to—based on these assumptions—find works that go heavy on the culture. Here a certain kind of language determines authenticity, so the work that includes the most cultural eccentricities, no matter how stereotypical or insignificant, is deemed the more authentic. If you want to hear about street life, you want to hear it from a street thug, problem being your preconceived ideas about what happens on the streets. It is easy to see how things went awry so easily, but Monk does not help his cause. Readers needed to see Stagg Leigh to ‘authenticate’ the book. His physical appearance hidden behind a white veil, Monk appears as Leigh on the Kenya Dunston Show. Monk as Leigh does not cooperate during the interview, refusing to talk much, but this does not damage the book’s reputation as an insightful look into the African American experience. Moreover, the identity of the creator is revealed / confirmed allowing readers to fully invest in the novel and its back story. Exotic objects require a good back story whether it is the novel written by an author with a felony or the wooden chair proudly displayed as the work of an Amish carpenter. These stories make ordinary creations extraordinary. We have alchemy. Harvey Green writes: //Artifice is the alchemy of woodworking. Hustlers, hucksters, and true believers once thought they could find a “science” for transforming base materials into gold, but they were mistaken. But wood can be transformed, if not in composition then in appearance and shape….We carve or otherwise transform the wood into shapes and forms that in turn motivate further activity, whether it is contemplation, awe, or obeisance to the Divine// (229). I credit fellow University of Louisville grad student, Chris Hoerter, for clarifying a point concerning the headings for the pages of Everett’s novel. The heading spells Erasure, but each letter is crossed out except for the ‘A’ and ‘U’. Chris reminded me that the ‘A’ and ‘U’ can mean many things, one thing being the abbreviation for Gold on the periodic table. Though Monk is certainly playing with strange materials and formulas, the authentic act of alchemy is performed by the media who have taken a base object, an academic parody that is of no interest to anyone, and elevated it to ‘pure gold’ status. Monk’s only defense against this brand of alchemy would have been to label his work as a parody. It points to a woodworking passage in the novel. Monk is in Washington D.C. caring for his mother, whose dementia is worsening each day. He builds her a nightstand. As he works the wood, he envisions his ailing mother injuring herself on the table’s corner and so he sands that corner down, creating two new corners. He keeps sanding until he has nothing more than a wobbly stool. Monk makes adjustments for his mother, but not for his readership. Labeling a book as parody would make the attempt at parody no longer effective. That’s the serious artist side of Monk. However, when we reflect back on that encounter at Border’s, we are reminded that Monk has a vindictive side and isn’t above financial reward. Is he surprised by the world’s reaction to his novel? We can’t know. We do know that Percival Everett has convincingly challenged ideas about authenticity and authority through the actions of his protagonist. Yet Everett's questions and challenges have been countered. In a review of //Erasure// that is both favorable and critical, Bernard Bell disapproves of Everett’s position: //Contrary to the popularity in the academies of anti-essentialist arguments by postmodern critics, the authority, authenticity, and agency identities of most African Americans emanate most distinctively and innovatively from the particularity of our historical struggle against slavery and its legacy of anti-black racism in the United States.// I don’t think that Bell and Everett are polar opposites per se, but they do speak from different positions. Everett feels little connection to the common experience posited by Bell, while Bell’s comments point to a feeling of disappointment in Everett’s political stance. Both sides offer convincing arguments. There is surely a middle ground, but if one were to choose a side (if sides exist) it would be based solely on preference or belief. Today I have gone with Everett, trying to determine the difficulty of confronting and overcoming issues of authenticity, authority, and race. My final thoughts are directed toward Monk’s mother, whose “health and authentic identity,” according Bernard Bell, are being rapidly erased by dementia. As her condition worsens, her perceptions increasingly transcend our boundaries of thought, though they don’t yield any particular gain. But in a way, her unfortunate condition begs the question: Does it take a complete dissolution of our sense of self to see beyond constructed ideas like race and authenticity?
 * I quote Monk’s reaction:**

Works Cited - Bell, Bernard. “Erasure.” //African American Review// 37.2 (Summer 2003): 474-477. - Green, Harvey. //Wood: Craft, Culture, History//. New York: Viking, 2006. - Everett, Percival. //Erasure//. New York: Hyperion, 2001. - Russett, Margaret. “RACE UNDER ERASURE for Percival Everett, ‘a piece of fiction’.” //Callaloo// 28.2 (Spring 2005): 358-368.

- I thought I'd look up some stuff on Everett like interviews etc...

=__**Everett and Monk**__=

[|Everett Interview UP New England] --> Some of the questions I found particularly interesting because we have addressed/are about to address them:

**The reader is tempted to see something of the author mirrored in the protagonist of Erasure: an African American writer of literary, "experimental" novels (even the subjects of the novels are similar). To what degree is Monk's character (if not his circumstances) rooted in your own experience? Have you yourself encountered the criticism of not being "black enough" as a writer?** Monk's experience is very much my own, though he of course is not me at all. Yes, I have been hit with the "not black enough" complaint, but always from white editors and critics. I find that curious.

**What about the label "African American writer"? What sort of expectations or assumptions have you found go along with this tag? Are they different for black and non-black readers?** I am a writer. I am a man. I am black man in this culture. Of course my experience as a black man in America influences my art; it influences the way I drive down the street. But certainly John Updike's work is influenced by his being white in America, but we never really discuss that. I think readers, black and white, are sophisticated enough to be engaged by a range of black experience, informed by economic situation, religion (or lack thereof) or geography, just as one accepts a range of so-called white experience. I don't know. Talk shows are not the work of the devil. They are the work of greedy, stupid people. That's too easy. There is a lot to dislike about most talk shows and little to admire, but I don't find them all that important one way or another. They do serve as a window to the basement of our culture, putting on display the more disgusting human traits and behaviors. But that stuff is out there; what better place for it than TV.
 * As a novel about race and publishing, Erasure arrives at an opportune moment: there have been a number of stories recently in the media (three or four in the New York Times alone) about black writers, readers, and the growing market for African American books. Do you think there is truly something new here? Or is it merely ever-changing literary fashion?**
 * Both the frame story in Erasure and the novel-within-the-novel take note of the effect of television talk shows on American popular culture. Is this an issue that concerns you? Do you feel that talk show television has had a negative effect on American public discourse?**

-

This is an article on the guardian.co.uk that I stumbled across due to the title:

=Colour bind -= =His new novel satirises ghetto culture and white attitudes - but Percival Everett's books still end up on the Black Fiction shelf=

[|guardian article]

paragraphs I found very interesting for discussion:


 * Like his creator, Monk is an academic engaged in a one-man war against the reduction of black experience to a set of stereotypical fictional tropes: the ghetto, the deep South, the angry pimp, the street hustler, the triumphant victim.
 * 'I see it essentially as a book about the creation of art and all the impediments placed in front of some of us as we set out to do that within this culture,'
 * 'What is most interesting to me about Monk is not his colour, but his selfless examination of himself. He does not want to be constrained or reduced by society's demands or expectations. He's alert to that all the time.' Monk Ellison is indeed a fascinating and not altogether sympathetic character, as indicative of his time and place as Ralph Ellison's Rinehart was to Fifties America.
 * If Ellison's Invisible Man is an obvious influence, formally and politically, so too is Mark Twain, who provides the book's cryptic epigraph: 'I could never tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anyone would believe.'
 * These intertwining narratives are constantly fractured by a series of odd, and seemingly random, imagined conversations - with Rothko and Resnais, Rauschenberg and De Kooning, Wittgenstein and Derrida - which parody the kind of post-structuralist novels that Monk himself writes. Fortunately, Everett is one of those rare writers who can indulge in all manner of formal boldness while still seducing the reader with his storytelling.
 * More surreally disturbing still was the initial response to the book from certain American publishing houses. 'Doubleday came in with an eleventh-hour offer for the paperback rights,' Everett says, grinning mischievously. 'My agent rang me and said, "You're not going to believe this, but they want to publish Erasure as the inaugural book of an Afro-American imprint called, wait for it, Harlem Moon." I mean, did they read the book?' Did he not, even for a moment, I ask, consider taking up their offer and running with the prank as far as he could. 'I actually thought of it. It was tempting to have them invalidate themselves with their first publication but, you know, I really couldn't do that to my work.'
 * 'I think I represent an impulse that is essentially modernist and is certainly not unique to African-Americans - a desire for a certain standard of creative excellence. I think that has all but disappeared - in music, in fiction, in culture generally. Once, to be a writer or a musician, you needed to learn your craft and have a certain talent, and then you needed to prove yourself and improve your craft each time you created something. That's gone now. It's been replaced by other impulses like this bogus notion of authenticity that bedevils music and fiction made by black people.
 * 'I have nothing against ghetto novels or rural Southern novels,' he continues, warming to his subject, 'except that they are the only representations out there. When I see my books in the Black Fiction or Black Studies section, I feel baffled. I really don't know what those terms mean. Especially, when I look around the store and there is no corresponding White Fiction section.' (Everett's original title for Erasure was How Much is That Negro In The Window?; he's not saying whether he, or the publishers, balked at it.)
 * He pauses for a moment. 'But, here we are again,' he says, 'talking about race. I don't want to talk about race, I just want to make art.' He has succeeded in the latter, if not the former, which, ultimately, is all that really matters.

- Ulrike - ___