My Thoughts:
I wanted to read The Trees first. But my first Everett's book was Dr. No, and I had fun.
Wala Kitu is a brilliant mathematics professor. He is an expert on nothing. Seriously, his area of expertise is nothing. Even his name, Wala, means nothing in Tagalog. But Kitu in Swahili means something. John Sill is a very rich supervillain who thinks Wala can help him with his evil plan. That is to steal nothing.
There’s a lot of wordplay on nothing. I assume the author had a great time writing this. But some might not like the repetition of the same word - nothing. I liked the first half best, where some would say nothing is going on. The second half is faster-paced.
Dr. No is also the title of the first James Bond movie, made in 1962. Although, the plot doesn’t resemble this movie. Dr. No is a parody of the whole James Bond series. But for me, much more interesting than that was how you can write a complete novel based on nothing. There it is again.
An author I will read again.
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.
The Washington Post has called Everett “one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.” And according to The Boston Globe,
“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, Erasure), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, Big Picture) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, Zulus).
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.
