The Title For The New Book By Percival Everett Will Not Be Very Hard To Remember

For a long time I would start my sentences with “In a more perfect world,” but as my inexorable march toward death has collected celerity I have found myself considerably more likely to accept the inevitable and do my part to glean the good in things, no matter how difficult they are to discover and ultimately unsatisfying they may be, which means I am making many more declarations front-loaded with resignation and grudging acceptance about how “I guess we should be happy that we live in a world where.” Which is to say that while in a more perfect world the novelist Percival Everett would dominate the bestseller list to such a degree that they would need to give him his own category, Harry Potter style, I guess we should be happy that we live in a would where the novels of Percival Everett still get published on a regular schedule and we’re all able to read them, the latest case in point being Percival Everett by Virgil Russell: A Novel, which Lydia Millet says is “like a carnival ride, but not the kind where you vomit.” If that’s not enough for you, I don’t know what is. Seriously, reconsider your life choices. (This, this or this may be easier entry points, but the man is practically A Goddamn National Treasure so you can’t really go wrong wherever you begin.)