Editor's Note
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Editor's Note
What follows is—well, you can see for yourself. Apart from marriage ceremonies, graduation exercises, and prayer, prefaces to collections have got to be the most empty exercise known to humans.
This is a volume inspired by admiration for and puzzlement at the work and being of Percival Everett. Some of the writers collected here are driven to write about Percival by admiration, some by love, some by envy, some by lust, some by having time on their hands, some by wishing to appear in print under any guise even this, some by charity, some by duty, some by fear, some by anger masking itself as geniality, some by pity, some by an indifference to the consequences of what they do, some by being so caught by his work that they wish to keep it going, keep it speaking through them, most by some combination of these. I leave it to you, should you be curious, to decide in each case which apply.
I am about through. I will point out only that, sitting near the ass-end of this volume are some things I did, slavish things too: an interview with Percival, a lying little essay saying what it was like to collaborate with him, and a list of his writings, compiled by ME! I hope never again to be placed in a situation where I spend time subordinating myself to another. I mean, Percival is a splendid writer and a wonderful friend. I admire his work and love him. Still, I'd like to ask who is Number One here? It may be admirable to imagine someone spending time in the Service of Another, but who would ever do it? I mean, c'mon! It's also nice to imagine you can jump forty feet in the air. You take my point.
James Kincaid is Aerol Arnold Professor of English at the University of California. Author of a number of books and essays, he now writes fiction. A History of the African American People by Strom Thurmond as told to Percival Everett and James Kincaid, a book Kincaid co-authored with Percival Everett, was published in 2004 by Akashic Press.
