Baby Book

A diagram from Glyph lays out a simple formula for literary success

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More About

• Percival Everett
• Ralph Ellison
• Robert Grudin
• David Lodge
• Madame Nanna

If such theory bashing seems too easy--well, it is. But thankfully it's far from the main impulse behind Glyph. As Ralph puts it: "My depiction of the stories of my life, if you will, is not mere hedonistic practice, no mere anarchism. Nor am I about a self-serving and uncomplex upbraiding of any poststructuralist thinking, however bedazzled such thinking might be by its own reflection." So what is the novelist of this heady novel trying to do? you ask. If the answer is allowed to be something as simple as "entertain," Percival Everett has indeed succeeded.