[Reviews] | Lucid Dreaming, by Justin Taylor | Harper's Magazine

[Steven Koteff]

I saw the subject of the email and thought you were asking about Justin
Taylor, not Everett. I wrote an email in response that I'll include anyway,
in case it's worth anything to anyone. Regarding Everett, I think he was
Chris Abani's mentor in some capacity, and I remember Abani telling me a
story about how, when he was insecure that the manuscript he was working on
was not good enough to be published, Everett took him down the aisles of a
bookstore, pulling titles randomly, before showing them to Abani and asking
him to guess how many of those published books were good.

I may have distorted that story slightly. Abani may have told that story on
camera somewhere as well.

Regarding JT:

I read--I think--his first story to be published *The New Yorker. *When I
was in (of all places) George Saunders's class at Syracuse. It's called
"After Ellen," and you can read it here:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/13/after-ellen

I remember thinking it was okay. Kind of light, but fast. Did sort of more
dryly some of the things Lena Dunham does well (and Noah Baumbach does
better): stuff about millennial culture, youth, youth romance specifically.
Not the most compelling thing for me--not weird or ambitious enough for my
taste at the time--but might think differently if I read him now. At least
a few of the small number of people whose literary judgment I trust or find
interesting like him.

On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 7:12 PM, Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm intrigued.
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 7:09 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Anybody read this guy?
>>
>>
>> http://harpers.org/archive/2015/11/two-ways-of-looking-at-percival-everett/?single=1
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPad-
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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