Pulitzer Prize Winner Percival Everett (‘James’)

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Lemonada Media

Society & Culture, Film Interviews, Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Earlier this month, writer Percival Everett was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for James, his subversive and singular reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

At the top, we discuss the philosophical problem that led to James (5:50), what repeated readings of Twain’s classic unlocked in Percival (7:56), the influence of his father’s sense of humor (16:20), how he arrived at writing growing up in South Carolina (19:40), and his relationship to the publishing industry, as depicted in Erasure and later the Oscar-winning film American Fiction (21:59).

On the back-half, we talk about teaching in the digital age (32:26), why Everett still assigns Blazing Saddles to his students (34:22), the “bad neighborhood” of his own mind (46:08), and what he’s chasing—or trying to excavate—each time he sits down to write (47:04).

This conversation was recorded live in Los Angeles in partnership with the Aspen Society.

If you’d like to come to our next live show, it will be Saturday, June 14th at the Tribeca Audio Festival in NYC with actor Sam Rockwell. Tickets here!

Thoughts, future guest ideas, or your favorite one-liner from this talk with Percival? Comment below or email us at [email protected].

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Lemonada.
0:02.7	Lemonada.
0:04.7	This is Talk Easy. I'm San Francisco. Welcome to the show.
0:44.6	Today, writer Percival Everett. He's the author of more than 30 books across fiction,
0:51.5	poetry, and criticism, a feat that is so impressive that I'm tired just saying it. He's also the recent recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his latest novel, James,
0:56.3	a funny and bold reimagining of the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but this time told from
1:02.4	Jim's perspective. Of course, Twain's Southern Classic follows Huck and Jim down the Mississippi,
1:08.7	or at least that's how I remember it reading it as a kid.
1:11.8	But a few years back, while Percival was rereading the book, he kept running into the same
1:17.5	questions. What happens when Huck isn't with Jim? What does freedom mean when you're seen as
1:24.8	someone else's property? And so, in the absence of answers from Twain,
1:29.9	Everett produced James. For those unfamiliar, Everett has been a quiet but steady literary force
1:36.7	since 1983, with many first discovering him around his 2001 novel, Arasure, a biting satire
1:44.0	of the publishing world and the narrow
1:46.0	expectations often placed on black authors. The book was then adapted into the Oscar-winning
1:52.4	film, American Fiction, which introduced Everett's singularly sardonic voice to a wider audience.
1:59.6	I sat with Percival recently at Christie's Auction House in Los Angeles
2:03.8	as part of an intimate live event hosted by the Aspen Society. The Aspen Institute is celebrating its
2:10.7	75th anniversary this year. They do a ton of good work, which you can learn about on our website.
2:17.2	And I'm excited to share that we'll be returning to the annual Ideas Festival this summer.
2:21.9	We went last year with Julia Louis Dreyfus.
2:25.0	We're also going to be coming to New York City for a live show at the Tribeca Audio Festival with none other than Sam Rockwell.
	...

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