Percival Everett’s new book ‘James’ revisits ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ He won’t tell you how to read it
CHICAGO -- I’ve had difficult interviews before. I’ve interviewed Lou Reed, who may be the most notoriously difficult interview subject of the past half century. (It went badly.) I once walked out of an interview with John Cusack because he seemed pointlessly combative and I was poorly prepared. I’ve had pleasant conversationalists who call minutes before deadline to claim everything just said is off the record. (“Off the record” does not work like that.) David Mamet once answered my questions with shrugs and mumbles, and when I said the story would appear in the newspaper soon, he responded, his voice as flat as a two-by-four: “Oh goodie gumdrops for me. Oh goodie gumdrops on the gumdrop tree.”
But I have never had an interview subject tell me, up front, he was hard to talk to.
Percival Everrett said this when I met him the other day at Chicago's Fine Arts Building. He was not a jerk — far from it. He was
