The protagonists in Percival Everett’s newly published short story collection include a closet romantic novelist, a man whose marriage is saved by a giant talking trout and a sandwich bar owner who takes in a handyman with an uncanny knack for fixing things. They share plenty in common – these are men who live in the American west or south, are often fond of fly fishing and are appealingly frank. They also happen to be black, though in all but two of the dozen tales here, race is backgrounded in a way that feels downright subversive.
The exceptions are Alluvial Deposits and The Appropriation of Cultures. In the first, a hydrologist (Robert Hawks from Everett’s novel Watershed) comes up against an n-word-flinging, gun-firing old lady. In the end, he feels sorry for her – and then feels silly for doing so. What he doesn’t do is get angry about racism any longer. “It doesn’t do any good to get mad at a tornado or a striking snake; you just stay clear,” he says.
In The Appropriation of Cultures, Daniel Barkley has an Ivy League degree, an inheritance large enough to live off and a guitar he likes to play in a bar loved by college kids. When some white frat boys ask him to play Dixie, the Confederate anthem, he surprises everyone, himself included, with a heartfelt rendition, claiming it as his own. He goes on to do the same with the Confederate flag. “Don’t take it down, just take it,” he declares.
Damned If I Do first appeared in the US in 2004 but the passing of time seems to have made it only more necessary. In the main, its stories are about race only to the extent that they highlight some of the more reductive, restrictive aspects of identity politics. Rooted in a profound sense of rural place, they’re original and subtle, canny and soulful – full, too, of sublimely sardonic humour. As for its characters, they’re so multidimensional that their ethnicity is but one item on a long list of expectation-dashing attributes.
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