Suder by Percival L. Everett. New York. 1983. Viking Press. 0670681105. 171 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by David Fe Bland. Jacket design by George W. Sanders, Jr.
DESCRIPTION - With his beloved Charlie Parker record (‘Ornithology') tucked under one arm and a portable phonograph under the other; Craig Suder, black third baseman for the Seattle Mariners, is headed out of town. He has lost touch with his wife, with his friends, with the ball. He is haunted by memories of a ghastly summer years ago when his mother was obsessed with running a full circle around Fayetteville in her winter coat, and he prays that insanity is not passed down through the blood. But Suder has begun to see things a little too clearly, to hear things a little too well. He is, in short, going crazy. On his way to the woods Suder adopts a companion, an elephant whom he wins fair and square and lovingly names Renoir, and is adopted in turn by a nine-year-old runaway named Jincy, sassy, exasperating, and lovable. Together the three friends hole up in a cabin and outfox au intruders - the local sheriff, a drug smuggler, an amateur taxidermist with a longing for Renoir (‘Call me if he dies?'), an overweight homosexual Chinaman, and an amorous barfly. Suder wants peace and quiet; he needs to concentrate on fulfilling a childhood dream: flight. Not running-away flight, but the soaring, swooping, gliding flight of a bird. What happens 2,000 feet in the air above Ezra Pond should come as a surprise to no one. But it will. Percival Everett's is an original and comic voice; he has taken the energies of jazz and transformed them into prose. He has located the heart of the absurd and found it full of tears. SUDER is a funny unsettling, and triumphant first novel by a gifted young writer.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Everett is Professor of English at the University of Southern California. His 13 previous books include FRENZY (1997), WATERSHED (1996), and SUDER (1983).
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Everett (born December 22, 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He is best known for his novels Erasure (2001), I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009), and The Trees (2021), which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. Erasure was adapted as the film American Fiction (2023), written and directed by Cord Jefferson, starring Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Leslie Uggams.
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