Reviewed by:

• Jesting in Earnest: Percival Everett and Menippean Satire by Derek C. Maus
• Robert Butler

The problem with writing a book-length study of Percival Everett’s work is that the work resists classification of any kind. As many scholars have observed, Everett’s thirty-five books range over so many different genres and are [End Page 346] so elusive in their meanings that it is unusually difficult, and some would say impossible, to generalize confidently about them. Everett himself is on record in a number of interviews for being outspokenly hostile to any labels being attached to his books and has even rejected the status of being “uncategorizable” as yet another form of false labeling. Derek Maus’s Jesting in Earnest: Percival Everett and Menippean Satire does a remarkable job of productively coping with this problem by reading Everett’s fiction in terms of “an interpretive framework” for examining Everett’s “thirty-volume megawork,” which is centered in Menippean satire, a feisty, unconventional form of classical satire which attacks any simplistic formulations about human experience. This allows Maus to trace coherently important thematic and formal continuities which are threaded throughout Everett’s writing without oversimplifying his vision by putting it into “tidy boxes” (9).

Maus begins by carefully defining Menippean satire, cautioning us that it is “not the sole or even best key to unlock the meaning in any one of Everett’s works” but instead is “an analytical strategy” that can enable us to discern “interpretive insights” while accepting “the deliberate ambiguity” (9) of Everett’s œuvre. Maus makes a clear distinction between Menippean satire and other satiric forms developed by Horace and Juvenal; whereas these latter two propose solutions to the problems which they examine and offer “moral and ethical instruction” (59), Menippus offers “no models of human behavior” (53) and, quite to the contrary, probes irremediable aspects of human folly. Rather than affirming human verities, it seeks to “destabilize existing notions of truth” (59). Another significant feature of this mode is its “tonal multiplicity” (94), dramatic and sudden shifts in tone from wildly comedic to deadly serious, producing uproarious laughter laced with nihilism. Maus bases his understanding of Menippean satire on the work of a broad range of scholars, including Northrup Frye, Carter Kaplan, Theodore Kharpertian, David Musgrave, and Howard Weinbrot. He agrees with Weinbrot that “Menippean satire lives in a precarious universe of broken or fragile national, cultural, religious, political or generally intellectual values” (55) and is therefore an attractive mode for postmodern writers like Thomas Pynchon and Flann O’Brien. But Maus also traces the form back to Laurence Sterne and Jonathan Swift, writers whom Everett has cited as influences.

Jesting in Earnest is structured in five chapters and a postscript, beginning with a very useful and revealing overview of Everett’s life and work. Maus then moves to a carefully researched study of the roots and nature of Menippean satire and how Everett and a number of other writers have used it. The third chapter is a penetrating study of novels such as Erasure, Glyph, and Grand Canyon, Inc., which most completely exemplify the Menippean tradition. This is followed by a chapter focusing on books like Suder, American Desert, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier, which employ Menippean techniques in “more sporadic and diluted” (94) ways. The final chapter explores a series of Everett’s western novels, including Wounded and Assumption. Maus makes a good case for viewing them as “intrinsically satirical and specifically Menippean” (132) because they reduce to absurdity the values of the mythic West of popular culture. The book concludes with a brief postscript in which Maus challenges the view that Everett is a “post-racial writer who seeks to transcend racial issues and who therefore fails to pay sufficient attention to the problems encountered by contemporary African Americans.” Maus argues persuasively that Everett “does not deny his own blackness” (162) but rejects essentialist views of race as well as any other concepts that would limit the scope and complexity of his artistic vision.

The Percival...

审核人：

• 认真开玩笑：Percival Everett和Menippean讽刺，作者Derek C. Maus
• 罗伯特·巴特勒

Ť他问题写珀西瓦尔·埃弗里特工作的一本书长度的研究是工作光刻胶分类中的任何一种。正如许多学者所观察到的那样，埃弗里特（Everett）的三十五本书涵盖了许多不同的体裁，[End Page 346]的含义如此难以捉摸，以至于很难一概而论，甚至有些人说不可能对它们进行自信的概括。埃弗里特本人在许多采访中都记录在案，因为他直言不讳地反对书上贴有的任何标签，甚至拒绝将“无法归类”作为另一种形式的虚假标签。德里克·莫斯（ Derek Maus）的开玩笑：Percival Everett和Menippean Satire通过以检验埃弗里特的“三十卷超大型作品”的“解释框架”的方式阅读埃弗里特的小说，在有效地解决这个问题方面做得非常出色。关于人类经验的简单化表述。这使Maus能够追踪贯穿Everever写作的连贯重要的主题和形式上的连续性，而不会因将其放入“整洁的盒子”而过度简化他的愿景（9）。

Maus首先仔细定义了Menippean讽刺作品，并告诫我们“这不是释放Everett作品中任何意义的唯一或什至最好的钥匙”，而是“一种分析策略”，可以使我们辨别“解释性见解”。同时接受埃弗里特的“故意”歧义（9）。Maus明确区分了Menippean讽刺作品和Horace和Juvenal提出的其他讽刺形式。后两者为他们研究的问题提供了解决方案，并提供了“道德和道德指导”（59），而梅尼普斯（Menippus）没有提供“人类行为的模型”（53），相反，它探讨了人类愚蠢的不可补救的方面。它不是在肯定人类的真实性，而是在“破坏现有的真理概念”（59）。此模式的另一个重要特征是其“音调多重性”（94），音调从突然的喜剧戏剧性突然转变为致命的严肃表情，产生了虚无的笑声。毛斯对Menippean讽刺作品的理解基于众多学者的著作，包括Northrup Frye，Carter Kaplan，Theodore Kharpertian，David Musgrave和Howard Weinbrot。他同意温布罗特的观点：“墨西哥讽刺作品生活在破碎，脆弱的民族，文化，宗教，政治或一般知识价值观的不稳定的世界中”（55），因此对于诸如托马斯·潘琼和弗兰·奥布赖恩这样的后现代作家来说，这是一种有吸引力的模式。但是Maus的形式也可以追溯到Everett引用其影响力的作家Laurence Sterne和Jonathan Swift。毛斯对Menippean讽刺作品的理解基于众多学者的著作，包括Northrup Frye，Carter Kaplan，Theodore Kharpertian，David Musgrave和Howard Weinbrot。他同意温布罗特的观点：“墨西哥讽刺作品生活在破碎，脆弱的民族，文化，宗教，政治或一般知识价值观的不稳定的世界中”（55），因此对于诸如托马斯·潘琼和弗兰·奥布赖恩这样的后现代作家来说，这是一种有吸引力的模式。但是Maus的形式也可以追溯到Everett引用其影响的作家Laurence Sterne和Jonathan Swift。毛斯对Menippean讽刺作品的理解基于众多学者的著作，包括Northrup Frye，Carter Kaplan，Theodore Kharpertian，David Musgrave和Howard Weinbrot。他同意温布罗特的观点：“墨西哥讽刺作品生活在破碎，脆弱的民族，文化，宗教，政治或一般知识价值观的不稳定的世界中”（55），因此对于诸如托马斯·潘琼和弗兰·奥布赖恩这样的后现代作家来说，这是一种有吸引力的模式。但是Maus的形式也可以追溯到Everett引用其影响的作家Laurence Sterne和Jonathan Swift。文化，宗教，政治或一般知识价值观”（55），因此，对于托马斯·潘琼（Thomas Pynchon）和弗朗·奥布赖恩（Flann O'Brien）等后现代作家而言，这是一种有吸引力的模式。但是Maus的形式也可以追溯到Everett引用其影响的作家Laurence Sterne和Jonathan Swift。文化，宗教，政治或一般知识价值观”（55），因此，对于托马斯·潘琼（Thomas Pynchon）和弗朗·奥布赖恩（Flann O'Brien）等后现代作家而言，这是一种有吸引力的模式。但是Maus的形式也可以追溯到Everett引用其影响的作家Laurence Sterne和Jonathan Swift。

认真开玩笑的内容分为五章和后记，开头是对埃弗里特的生活和工作的非常有用且具有启发性的概述。然后，毛斯着手仔细研究了有关Menippean讽刺作品的根源和性质，以及Everett和许多其他作家如何使用它的研究。第三章是对诸如Erasure，Glyph和Grand Canyon，Inc .等小说的深入研究，这些小说最能充分体现出Menippean的传统。紧随其后的一章着重介绍诸如Suder，American Desert和I Am Sidney Poitier之类的书，它以“更零星和更稀疏”的方式采用了Menippean技术（94）。最后一章探讨了埃弗里特（Everett）的一系列西方小说，包括《受伤的女人》和《假设》。毛斯提出了一个很好的理由，认为它们是“内在的讽刺性的，特别是梅尼皮安式的”（132），因为它们将神话般的西方流行文化的价值降低了，这是荒谬的。该书以简短的结尾结尾，其中毛斯质疑埃弗里特是“后种族作家，他试图超越种族问题，因此未能充分关注当代非裔美国人所遇到的问题。” 毛斯有说服力地辩称，埃弗里特“不否认自己的黑人”（162），但拒绝了本质主义的种族观以及任何其他会限制其艺术视野范围和复杂性的概念。

珀西瓦尔...