Review: Lawrence Jackson on Percival Everett

Veteran, manic, and quirky, Percival Everett over the last three decades seems to have become comfortable with his identity as the indefatigable black satirist of our age. The key conceit of Everett’s recent novel Dr. No, whose plot only vaguely plays on the 1962 James Bond film, is a mildly pedantic double entendre on the words “nothing matters.” It might not be the most original book, but it is funny. Ralph Townsend, the autistic hero of the book, who also calls himself Wala Kitu (Tagalog and Swahili for “Nothing Nothing”), is a mathematician at Brown University, appearing here, it is implied, as a relative backwater in the universe of the Ivy League, a signature note of irony for Everett. Kitu has a one-legged dog who interprets his dreams and an aspirational girlfriend/damsel-in-distress named Eigen Vector whose social greeting is confined to stating whether or not her shoes match.