‘I’d love a scathing review’ says novelist Percival Everett. His work triumphed at the Oscars, but he isn’t interested in acclaim. He talks to the Guardian about race, taking on Mark Twain and why there’s nothing worse than preaching to the choir.
Twain felt that no one was too grand to be satirized. “Irreverence,” he wrote, “is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.”
Twain aims a blast of laughter at a society making itself sick with its consumption of “sweet-smelling, sugar-coated lies,” believing that it is allegiance to the truth and not the flag that rescues the citizens of a democracy from the prisons of their selfishness and greed.
“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long shot.” -- Charlie Chaplin:
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