{"id":10817,"date":"2025-05-26T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10817"},"modified":"2025-05-23T21:21:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T01:21:17","slug":"i-am-not-sidney-poitier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/26\/i-am-not-sidney-poitier\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am Not Sidney Poitier."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9781555975272\">I Am Not Sidney Poitier<\/a><\/em> is the seventh of Percival Everett\u2019s books that I\u2019ve read, but the first for which I did some homework, watching four of Poitier\u2019s movies to which I knew Everett alludes in the novel. This was hardly difficult, as only one of the movies (<em>Lilies of the Field<\/em>, for which Poitier won his sole non-honorary Academy Award) failed to hold up. I\u2019m glad I went through the exercise, however, as it made reading Everett\u2019s novel even more enjoyable. It\u2019s a riot, and another incredible feat of imagination, and while it has its serious moments, it is Everett at his least serious among the books I\u2019ve read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The main character in <em>I Am Not Sidney Poitier<\/em> is named Not Sidney Poitier, which, as you may imagine, presents him with all manner of difficulties, including bullying in school. He is, however, quite rich, as his mother invested very early in shares of Ted Turner\u2019s media company, making her one of its largest shareholders and, at her death, putting Not Sidney in Ted\u2019s care, in a way. Turner himself becomes an amusing if caricatured side character, prone to rambling non sequiturs, but he makes for an entertaining conversationalist as Not Sidney tries to make his way through the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I Am Not Sidney Poitier<\/em> proceeds into a sort of modern picaresque, as each chapter is a new adventure modeled after one or two of Poitier\u2019s movies. Early in the book, for example, Not Sidney sets off for California in his car, choosing to avoid the interstates, and finds himself in a hick county in Georgia where he is arrested for the crime of being Black. He\u2019s soon chained to a racist convict, and an accident gives them an opportunity to escape, which, if you haven\u2019t seen it, is the plot of <em>The Defiant Ones<\/em>, which starred Poitier and Tony Curtis. Everett\u2019s trick here is adhering very closely to the plots of several of these movies, often to the point of repeating key quotes (\u201cThey call me Not Sidney\u201d might be the best), but then turning something inside out at the resolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not Sidney drifts back and forth from his home on Ted Turner\u2019s estates, including interactions with Jane Fonda, to these vignettes from films like <em>Guess Who\u2019s Coming to Dinner? <\/em>(but with a family of light-skinned Blacks prejudiced against darker-skinned people), <em>In the Heat of the Night<\/em>, and <em>No Way Out<\/em>, the last of which appears in a dream sequence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<script src=https:\/\/bookshop.org\/widgets.js data-type=\"book\" data-affiliate-id=\"2960\" data-sku=\"9781555975272\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p>Everett\u2019s gift for comedy shows itself more in wordplay and in the humor he mines from absurd situations, rather than some of the more situational and highbrow humor in books like <em>Dr. No<\/em>. The protagonist\u2019s name is obviously a source of repeated gags at his expense, and Everett creates all kinds of improbable interactions that allow him to poke fun at something, whether it\u2019s the movies he\u2019s referencing or Black literature or really anything that crosses his mind. Everett has referred to himself as \u201cpathologically ironic,\u201d and I have never felt that more in his writing than in his novel, even though I think it\u2019s the least serious or thematic of any of the seven I\u2019ve read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I will say I think I enjoyed this novel the most of the seven, but that doesn\u2019t make it the \u201cbest\u201d or my favorite. It\u2019s the funniest, it was probably the fastest to read, and it\u2019s endlessly rewarding if you\u2019ve seen any of the movies involved. I did notice that it was lighter in tone and subject, which isn\u2019t a criticism, but it\u2019s a change of pace from <em><a href=\"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/26\/james\/\">James<\/a> <\/em>or <em><a href=\"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/19\/so-much-blue\/\">So Much Blue<\/a><\/em> or <em><a href=\"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/05\/telephone\/\">Telephone<\/a><\/em>. The guy still hasn\u2019t missed for me, though, and there are very, very few authors about whom I could say that through even four books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Next up: Another of this year\u2019s Pulitzer finalists, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780807030035\">The Unicorn Woman<\/a><\/em> by Gayl Jones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I Am Not Sidney Poitier is the seventh of Percival Everett\u2019s books that I\u2019ve read, but the first for which I did some homework, watching four of Poitier\u2019s movies to which I knew Everett alludes in the novel. This was hardly difficult, as only one of the movies (Lilies of the Field, for which Poitier [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,86,161,215,1453],"class_list":["post-10817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-african-american-literature","tag-comic-novels","tag-highly-recommended","tag-movies","tag-percival-everett","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10818,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10817\/revisions\/10818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}