Parnassus Presents: Percival Everett with Ann Patchett

[Music] hi everybody this is Anne patchet at Parnassus books thank you for listening to Parnassus presents your support allows us to keep bringing you fantastic events so please consider purchasing a copy of tonight's featured book at the link below we hope you enjoy the event recorded live from the parasa stage it is great to see all of you out here I'm Alise Adler the Director of Events and it's just absolutely my pleasure to say thanks for coming and welcome to parnassa books and turn off your phones and get ready for a fabulous evening um we are really just honestly we are thrilled the books that you have and I hope you have bought a copy for yourself cuz I'm reading into October I say that first because it's the best book I've read all year and maybe my entire life and that is not being too dramatic it's really wonderful so buy yourself a copy and you're going to want to give copies away so they're all many of them are on that desk just for that purpose so pel Everett he's the author of over 30 books I hope that you have all seen American fiction and if you haven't you need to see it and if you you know it's based on eraser peral's book eraser if you haven't read it get that one too it's over at the desk he has um been on the short list for the booker prize he has been a finalist for the Pulitzer he is a distinguished professor of English at University of Southern California and I also want to say that in the past because I found out today while he was doing the signing that he has also lived on a ranch he has owned a ranch he has trained horses he trained donkeys and then I found out later that he's also a painter I'm feeling a little bit of a slagger myself right now um and tonight I don't know if you saw the email but khil ulona was unable to make it and we are sorry that he's not here but we are thrilled because awardwinning author New York Times bestselling author happens to be the owner of this fabulous independent bookstore and patchet will be in conversation with him with um peral t I also want to give a shout out to Highland books which is an independent bookstore in North Carolina there you are okay Bard North Carolina so yay independent bookstores thank you guys for being here too so without further Ado help me welcome pel Everett and an Patrick here we go oh hi everybody all right before we start I have a I have a PSA which is Lori Moore just won the national book critic Circle award for this unbelievable book that I love so much and Lori kept telling me you're out of your mind why do you love that book what is wrong with you this is such a great book and it's just a really wonderful well-deserved award and Hometown girl we love you and we are so proud of you so hooray um okay so I'm the understudy tonight I I spent today rereading this book which I read I don't even know how I'm Lee this is Lee bu this is peral's or how long ago like how long ago did I read this book six or seven months ago when did you turn it in I think I read it about 15 minutes after you turned it in I don't know it was the summer maybe oh definitely the summer but then I went on book tour and I was on book tour for four months and people every night was like what are you reading what should we read and I was like well you should read this book called James that you're not going to be able to read until March of 2024 and I was like I just remember that I said this uh because it it really is it's astonishing and it's just the best thing I've read as Elise said maybe period but certainly in a very long time and no I'm not just saying it it's an astonishing book and it's as a book seller so frustrating to read things so far ahead that you want to give to people and then finally it's out and you're here so thank you thank you that's a wonderful thing um let's start by talking about Mark Twain and now we'll both open our Waters how do you how do you feel about Mark Twain and how do you feel about Huckleberry Finn and how do you feel about Tom Sawyer I love Mark Twain um I hate Tom Sawyer do you hate Tom Sawyer as a book or a character as a well both actually um um uh and Huck Finn is is an interesting novel it's it's a flawed novel but it's really a an important novel um you know it's Huck is an adolescent America wandering through his own landscape dealing with that thing that um that has defined this country which is race um so in that way it's it's it's um a deeply affecting book um unfortunately Twain had to stop halfway through it and then come back to it and you can feel that demarcation where um Tom Sawyer comes back into it and and sort of makes it a purely an adventure again but the novel for its exploration of the of that the conflict that Huck feels about slavery is is is fascinating um and Twain the four I have four sources the four influences on my sense of humor My Father Mark Twain Groucho Marx and Bullwinkle I know Bullwinkle I love Bullwinkle which would bring us to a conversation about Rocky the squirrel but we won't we won't go there I one of my favorite puns is from Bullwinkle where there's a small boat covered with jewels and is the Ruby yacht of Omar kayam that's awfully good Bullwinkle is um I okay now just to back up a second I didn't know that Twain stopped in the middle of Huck fin see if I was really interviewing you for real I would have reread huckin which I don't think I've read since graduate school when did you read it for the first time well I read in a bridge version when I was very young um reader Digest condensed it could have been I don't know and um it was I guess mildly entertained I wouldn't have I wouldn't say it was one of the more important books for me then then as a teenager I read it and it was problematic because of um the unfortunate word and but also um I could see the importance of it because of what I just mentioned about America dealing with with um the aspect of of of race so I appreciate it then and I still do the um all that tension that that comes in the novel and also as the first use of the vernacular in in literature in the in the US and um so but still I wouldn't say it was my favorite Twain work I as a kid I read life in the Mississippi and roughing it and those were fantastic when did you first start thinking about writing a book around Huf fin just three years ago um I I was playing tennis and and because you know I how I work I think and but I was playing tennis and I think I just hit a a remarkable backand that was out um um and I thought has anyone ever told the story of Huck fin from Jim's point of view and um which is why I hit usually hit balls out and um and I um and so I started looking into that no one had and I thought why why hasn't anyone ever done this and I and I realized that at 65 I hadn't done it um or thought of it and so then I I did and how closely did you want to Hue to the text well I stopped thinking of it as a text and I thought of it as a world um and so I read the novel hug fin 15 times in a row W oh in a row like you didn't you didn't read something else I would pause no I I went from the end to the beginning and kept going until it was a blur uh and then I didn't look at it again I bet is that sort of like when you smoke a cigarette as a kid and your parents catch you and they make you smoke the whole pack um well that didn't happen to me I'm sorry um no but it is a lot like repeating a word over and over again until it it doesn't make any sense until it feels like nonsense and that's what I was going for was I was trying to make it nonsense so I wouldn't in my mind refer to the text and so just repeat it because you really do obviously go off in a lot of different ways and boy this is something that I can't talk about because I haven't read the book in 40 years but there you make a lot of different choices for Jim James well yeah well part of it is that Jim and and and Huck aren't together for the entire novel of of hug fin um and well there you go yeah and so there's a lot of space in that way but also they're observing um the same things from uh different ages and different Vantage points and so that that makes it different but some of the peripheral characters and and many of them and um the circumstances remain the same um but I never went back to the novel to see if I was getting anything right just curious did you read demon Copperhead yes what did you think I think it's great yeah yeah I loved it um but I don't know if you know the story that that she plotted the whole thing she charted it so she wrote a synopsis of every chapter oh really and and then had demon follow that and it's why when I read it I was never worried because I knew how David Copperfield ends and I knew that he was okay so I knew it was okay you know it just I could see what she was doing and it was following and so it's not a similar sort of thing but it seems like a question that must come up yeah and I thought about doing it that way um mapping out hu fin but I didn't I'm really glad um I'm really glad talk about the language and the whole code switching of the language in the book and explain to our friends well oppress people and present people ensave people um create language for themselves they use a language and they find a way to communicate with each other in ways that won't allow their oppressors to have inry everyone does this and there there's and my there's a film that that's a nice have you ever noticed how beautiful slaves are in movies like really those are good-looking people those slaves um but as 12 Years a Slave uh there's a uh a black man is is kidnapped from his idyllic home in Vermont where he lives side by side with his his ch white neighbors because it's America and um but he's kidnapped and taken to a plantation in the South and thrown in with with enslaved people and he immediately understands what they're saying to each other and that irritated me because he would not have the knowledge and the experience nor the language to communicate with these people around him and so the fil film was cheating the characters the enslaved people out of their Humanity um language is is is really important to me that's what I study it's that's that's pretty much the only thing that keeps me writing and so in in James um the slaves speak what they call slave in front of white people it makes the slave owners and the and the white people around them more comfortable because they're fulfilling the expectations because they have to fulfill these expectations to navigate and survive in this world um but when they're alone they speak at least in my novel in standard English um they speak in English that if their slave owners heard them would terrify them um and and that's and that's the code switching I I never thought of the term code switching this is what's been applied to it I guess it makes sense but it sounds awfully um jargony to me so I I avoid it that's what we're here forg there you go um all right I've got one great insightful thing to say now it's going to be downhill from here eraser and American fiction does the same thing I tend to repeat myself so don't we all uh but is that something thematically that you're like yeah I'm linking I'm linking this um not conscious but but certainly um uh there are repeating themes in in my work and and they're repeating themes in everybody that's true um and the um the um I'll back up the most interesting thing to me about language is so rudimentary that it's one can't even write about it and that is I that I can utter these phones these these sounds and put them together in a way or make marks on a page that really are you know just ink or graphite and that you can look at that or hear me and make sense of it but more importantly you can make a different sense than I mean and I love that that's what's really thrilling about what we do I don't think um as much as I love dogs and I do think they communicate I don't think that when one dog is barking the other one gets it wrong but but people do I often think that people become writers because they long to be understood but there's nothing that makes you feel more misunderstood than being a writer yeah oh that's right I except I also think that we we tend to write because we like being misunderstood oh well yeah I'm going to be up late tonight thinking about that well don't misunderstand [Laughter] me uh it is really a mystery how you get so much done you've written a lot of books and sorry no I know I know it's not it's not about me um but you teach and there are the horses and you paint and you I watch the CBS Sunday Morning you're tying your own flies um how how is it Red Bull is there something that we can buy well drugs are important um well I I'm no longer with the horses and and um because I decided to stop training horses and be trained by children um how old are your children 15 and 17 wow okay um and I I don't know you know you just do stuff um that's really helpful well yeah that's what I tell my kids to and and I'm really helpful um I don't I don't feel stress as part of it um I don't have a schedule to write about I um if someone says let's go to a movie I always go to a movie um if I work tomorrow and write two sentences that's two sentences I didn't have if I write 20 Pages well that's great but work will happen how is it being married to a writer and a good really good writer too yeah well um I I didn't know I did I didn't follow the advice I give my students which is marry money um she doesn't have any money she's a writer um no it's it's great you know she under we understand what what the other we we work completely differently um um which is fine and we there's no uh no competition at all so it's it's very comfortable and and she I understand what she's in when she's in her head and and um and she can live with me because I'm always in my head and it's not a good neighborhood um but mostly we're chasing a 15 and 17y old around so when I read colored television which is dany's new novel which I am now going to be talking about that book all the time until it comes out in September I loved that book I loved it while I was reading it but it's one of those books that the farther away I get from it the more I'm thinking about it and it's so wellmade but I found myself when I was watching the CBS Sunday Morning clip this morning like worrying a little bit about you being a painter if you follow me oh because the her character yeah yeah the husband yeah well that's one of the way we work differently if if something happens in our kitchen I'm pretty sure it's going to show up in in a book um uh nothing shows up in in my work but um so I have to be very careful is that true that nothing shows up in your work or is it true that you're just really really good at hiding it probably both um I mean we only have our experience to draw from so there's that but I but I tend not to try to transmute experience actual events into the into the into my world does teaching help your writing or does it make it harder or what does teaching do for your writing well I get paid to hang around with smart young people that's great um and they remind me why I ever started to do this much of what I read is well um but they're trying and and that's exciting and they have and they and they have great ideas and they think and they and they'll want to do things they can't do yet that's remarkable are they undergraduates or graduates both both I prefer teaching undergraduates because they're a lot more adventurous right um and and and I though I love my graduate students they're desperate yeah and scared and they think there's a right way to do something and and I and I tell them I'm there to disabuse them of this this notion and do you think being a graduate student in writing in in Los Angeles is harder does it have a whole other layer of film and everything on it or is it just like you might as well be in Vermont um I I don't think they think film about film too much when when um they're pretty literary um that's nice yeah that's I I I worry sometimes that everybody's trying to get a job at Netflix but no no no I in fact I've had very few few students go on to be um TV or or screenwriters so let's talk about film this has been a good year for you in film tell us about that experience and how you felt about the film I love that film we had a we had a a bookstore field trip and we all went to see American fiction together and I laughed from my knees like it was just so involuntary I was doubled over it's not supposed to be funny yeah right um yeah I liked it a lot I I I didn't have anything to do with the with making the movie I mean realize it's my novel but uh Corey Jefferson showed up at my door um and said he would like to uh try to develop this into a film but he had no money and for some reason I didn't slam the door in his face I liked him and I said and I I said well why don't you just take the option for for a while and he did and he wrote the screenplay and and he did raise some money and um and he read it in 2020 and had a film in 2023 that's that's remarkable that's unbelievable so he's pretty remarkable he's he's a and he's extremely handsome and I hate him um though not as handsome as the movie stars in the in the actual movie ah he's pretty goodl looking but um um but the and then the actors were were that's what I enjoyed the most about the film where was the acting the script is really good um but I thought these these people inhabited these characters so beautifully um and it and it looked nice the film did look nice yeah anything else in the film World up ahead well you know people are always threatening to make stuff um you know buying options and things and you never know when when something will happen but a few things are under option and you have also you teach film every now and then I teach a film course on the American Western talk about that um well it's it's it's about um what what I this got a long title types and stereotypes in the in American Western film um and we watch pre-1970 westerns when westerns are about how America would like to see itself um and um after that westerns become about westerns and um and so we and and a lot of westerns um ostensibly deal with the idea of American racism like the Searchers The Unforgiven um films like that and and but we always end with Blazing Saddles um Blazing Saddles visits every Trope of of of of the western and then quite nicely breaks down the fourth wall and and and brings us back to um reality I have to apologize for the film with the students beforehand um because the film is uh homophobic homophobic homophobic and um misogynistic but as far as race goes it's much smarter than anything we have now and ironically we wouldn't be able to make that film now sure and and that's that's a sadness what year did that come out I think it's 73 um what traditional westerns do you like if you were going to say here's a western that you should see what would you recommend oh well first of all they're all really kind of weird and sick that's what I like about them um Shane is is a great western um um and what you have is uh the sexuality of Shane is so strange this the the a Man shows up at the ranch and there's all this sexual tension between um Shane and the and the wife and the family but the father and Shane are really close and at the end the little boy is screaming out to Shane who's riding into the mountains away wounded come back mother wants [Laughter] you um and um and and the Searchers which is is is about um uh again John Ford was trying to interrogate American racism on the frontier but yet the film can't because it's a product of of of America it can't help but practice the very racism it it tends to it it it poor tends to address um so that um the evil um uh Scar the uh the chief of the of the Renegade band of native people is played by a white man um and and Natalie Wood is isn't that right Natalie Wood is the is the is the daughter who's kidnapped she The Stolen the stolen daughter yeah but on that note The Unforgiven stars um Bert Lancaster and as a native person Audrey heurn I remember that yes yeah yeah when Bert Landcaster wasn't doing the leopard in Italian do you remember that yes I I did okay that was a bit of a dead end once you once you go to the leopard once you go to the leopard in a Tong and it's that's it did you grow up watching Westerns on television as a kid no you didn't watch gunm smoke uh no I well I I I wrote a in in the early 90s I wrote a novel called God's country which is a parody of of the western but in order to write it I read 150 westerns and watched as many films um because I didn't really know the form um and this is why I teach this course after that um and well and I wrote the novel I was invited this is a here's a good TV story I was invited uh to um to the Cowboy Symposium at the Buffalo Bill wild at the wild at the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum Historical Center in Cody Wyoming um and it was about black cowboys particularly and uh someone from some morning program and I don't remember what it was this woman called me she wanted to interview me there about black cowboys um I said well I I would be happy to talk to you but I don't know a lot about that subject and the person you should talk to is a friend of mine named Todd Gunther who's done lots of research and actually has written a book on it so she said thank you and she hung up this is back when phones had wires and came out of the wall uh this will come in in a second and she called me um back and said well I much rather talk to you and I realized which way the wind was blowing Todd is white and she wanted this was television and and I said okay well if you read his book and I named another book then maybe we'll have something to talk about and this woman said to me a writer she said I don't do paper and then I slammed the phone down and never talk to her again did you really did you hang up on wow wow it's that's that's such a laugh yes yeah yeah yeah yeah um thank you and thank all of you and you will remember for this and fabulous thank you you are so good at this thank you I do it a [Music] lot