His work triumphed at the Oscars, but the Booker-shortlisted author isn’t interested in acclaim. He talks to the Guardian about race, taking on Mark Twain and why there’s nothing worse than preaching to the choir
It’s 10am on the morning of the Oscars, and Percival Everett is nowhere to be seen. We’re supposed to be meeting at his neighbourhood coffee shop in leafy South Pasadena, a suburb of Los Angeles, before he makes his way across the city for the ceremony, which begins its long march towards best picture just after lunch.
American Fiction, the film of his novel Erasure, is nominated for best adapted screenplay, up against Barbie, but tipped to win. The hour went forward last night, but surely he knows that? At 10.25am I WhatsApp him, but the message remains unread. Eventually I call. “Yes, this is Percival Everett. We’re meeting in half an hour?” The clocks, Percival, the clocks. “Ah,” he chuckles, “my fault.” He’s there in a couple of minutes, in khaki pants, grey shirt and a baseball cap, looking as if he has nothing much on today – a man not only in his own world, but his own time. When I ask why his phone didn’t update like they all do now, he says he never looks at it, and raises his wrist to flaunt a distinctively analogue watch. Hasn’t he got quite an important date later? “Oh,” he shrugs, “my wife would’ve made sure I got there on time.” That’s the novelist Danzy Senna, with whom he has two sons, aged 17 and 15.
