Voicing His Objections: Narrative Voice as Racial Critique in Percival Everett's God's Country

Donahue, James J.

doi:10.1353/afa.2019.0006

African American Review

2019

DOI: 10.1353/afa.2019.0006

|View full text |Cite

Voicing His Objections: Narrative Voice as Racial Critique in Percival Everett's God's Country

James J. Donahue¹

Help me understand this report

Search citation statements

Order By: Relevance

Paper Sections

Select...

Citation Types

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Year Published

2023

Publication Types

Select...

Article1

Relationship

Self Cite0

Independent1

Authors

Journals

Cited by 1 publication

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

Impossible Chess, Close Reading, and Inattention as Disability in Percival Everett’s Telephone

Eve,

Eve

2023

Orbit: A Journal of American Literature

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Percival Everett’s Telephone (2021) is a novel published, by deliberate design, in three very different versions. Ostensibly, the author has claimed in interview, this choice was to test the boundaries of authorial authority and to delegate interpretative control to the reader. In this article, I argue that such a stance is disingenuous. Telephone is, instead, a novel that continually withholds information from the reader and that ultimately frustrates close reading techniques. In doing so, the text casts the reader into the mental viewpoint of the terminally ill child in the novel, Sarah, who suffers from the progressive neurological condition Batten disease. The outcome is that Telephone should be read as a novel that pathologizes readerly inattention but that, as a result, passes innovative comment on disability narratives in fiction more broadly.

show abstract

Impossible Chess, Close Reading, and Inattention as Disability in Percival Everett’s Telephone

Eve,

Eve

2023

Orbit: A Journal of American Literature

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact Info

customersupport@researchsolutions.com

10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614

Henderson, NV 89052, USA

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Blog Terms and Conditions API Terms Privacy Policy Contact Cookie Preferences Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Made with 💙 for researchers

Part of the Research Solutions Family.

Voicing His Objections: Narrative Voice as Racial Critique in Percival Everett's God's Country

Cited by 1 publication

References 14 publications

Impossible Chess, Close Reading, and Inattention as Disability in Percival Everett’s Telephone

Impossible Chess, Close Reading, and Inattention as Disability in Percival Everett’s Telephone

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About