About this item
A new high point for a master novelist, an emotionally charged reckoning with art, marriage, and the pastKevin Pace is working on a painting that he won't allow anyone to see: not his children; not his best friend, Richard; not even his wife, Linda. The painting is a canvas of twelve feet by twenty-one feet (and three inches) that is covered entirely in shades of blue. It may be his masterpiece or it may not; he doesn't know or, more accurately, doesn't care.What Kevin does care about are the events of the past. Ten years ago he had an affair with a young watercolorist in Paris. Kevin relates this event with a dispassionate air, even a bit of puzzlement. It's not clear to him why he had the affair, but he can't let it go. In the more distant past of the late seventies, Kevin and Richard traveled to El Salvador on the verge of war to retrieve Richard's drug-dealing brother, who had gone missing without explanation. As the events of the past intersect with the present, Kevin struggles to justify the sacrifices he's made for his art and the secrets he's kept from his wife.So Much Blue features Percival Everett at his best, and his deadpan humor and insightful commentary about the artistic life culminate in a brilliantly readable new novel.
About the Author
Percival L. Everett (born 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. There might not be a more fertile mind in American fiction today than Everett's. In 22 years, he has written 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children's story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old. has called Everett "one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists. " And according to , "He's literature's NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next. " Everett, who teaches courses in creative writing, American studies and critical theory, says he writes about what interests him, which explains his prolific output and the range of subjects he has tackled. He also describes himself as a demanding teacher who learns from his students as much as they learn from him. Everett's writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, Wounded) , the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, ) , the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, ) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, ) . He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991.
