A storyteller leaves you with the story. There were people who lived, who knew or came to know each other, something or some things went on that had to be, and were, dealt with, and that was the way it happened.
Percival Everett is a storyteller. He is black, but he is not a “black storyteller.” He does not deny his blackness. He just tells stories. Recently those stories have been about a black author who does not find success until he starts writing “ghetto,” Erasure; about what happens when a man (who might be black) is beheaded and comes back to life, American Desert.
I am a country boy. I grew up in Louisiana, in a little town; Opelousas. I grew up “in town” but “in town” was still “the country.” Friends of the family and our relatives lived on farms with chickens, cows, pigs, horses and all that. Still, even in town, next door to our house, our neighbor Mr. Reuben had pigs and chickens. Like I said, I am a country boy.
Somebody’s killing white men. But not just any white men. These are men who 40 years ago were accused of killing a black person. Yet though accused under the weight of overwhelming evidence, these white men were never punished or even found guilty. Now in Mississippi where the original racial murders occurred, 40 years later, one after another these white men are being killed. And these white men are not just being murdered. No. They are being killed in precisely the same manner as was the black person they are accused of killing. If the black person was lynched, the white man is found lynched. If the black person was strangled with barbed wire, the white man is found strangled with barbed wire. No doubt then, the killings are acts of vengeance. But whose vengeance is it?
Race riots aboard Navy ships carrying weapons of mass destruction.
Hannibal Barca has been raised from the dead.
John Ed Bradley and I grew up in the same Louisiana small town; Opelousas. Yet we have never met. The reason John Ed and I had no chance to meet is race. John Ed is white of Cajun heritage, and I am a black-Creole. Where John Ed would have gone either to the all-white (until 1968) Catholic school or the all-white (until 1970) public school, I went to the all-black Catholic school. John Ed would have lived in one of the white sections of Opelousas, and I in one of the black sections. But to this racial structure John Ed was not oblivious. He could not have been and have written his book, “Restoration,” which is a captivating, mysterious, rare novel of diversity.
Sometimes you should read a book just because it is well written. A book with carefully crafted sentences, with drama in its presentation, with poetry in its rhythm is a book that will take you on a trip you do not expect, to a destination you would not have chosen.