I Am Not Sidney Poitier: A Novel Paperback – 6 May 2010

Thoroughly enjoyed this but feel that you either love Everett’s writing or you don’t. Appreciate it thoroughly or irritate you madly ..there is a lot of wordplay and real life characters meld in easily, clever and funny, surreal and unputdownable I find as soon as I’ve finished one Everett book I need another! He has an addictive way of writing on whatever idea he chooses that I can’t get enough of .. if you’ve not read anything by this author before.. try this you’ll know fairly quickly if it’s you and if it is you’ll want more

This is the first book by Percival Everett that I have felt disappointed with. It is, nonetheless, a page-turner and there are some brilliant episodes, such as Not Sidney's visit to his girlfriend's family home for Thanksgiving. However, I found the book as a whole self-indulgent and lacking the tautness of the author's other work. Some of the conceits seemed just that, lacking purpose. If you haven't read any of Everett's work, this is not the one to start with. If you have, then this book is for if you just want to know everything he has written.

Unnecessary sexual content spoilt this for me.

I approached this book with lots of hope on the back of what is in my opinion Everett's most accomplished novel Erasure and i saw sorely disappointed. In short what a load of tripe. The main joke that runs through the entire book,i.e the name Not Sidney Poitier gets a bit tedious after a while and essentially is the only funny aspect of the book;humour was seriously not forthcoming anywhere else. In the end it,the final chapter,was just a number of paragraphs of baffling and nonsensical storytelling predicated on an idea that came from nowhere and went nowhere and made no sense.

I'm sure this is all very clever, and brilliant to write college essays about. As a book to read for pleasure it's rubbish.

I Am Not Sidney Poitier: A Novel by Everett PercivalIn this dizzy, profound merry-go-round of a read, the author initially seduces readers with outrageous humor. Three Stooges “Who’s on First” variety puns spin off “Not Sidney Poitier.”  Given this odd name by his unusual mother and fated to bear an uncanny resemblance to his “not” namesake, Not Sidney remains straightforward and perplexing:  “Really you’re not Sidney Poitier are you?” “Yes, I am.” This wordplay runs throughout as Sidney’s life unfolds, managing to remain an entertaining personal saga as well as a multilevel irreverent exploration of the black experience, the American experience, and the elusiveness of identity in the face of stereotypes and media images. Not Sidney enacts the “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” scenario with his girlfriend’s color conscious black family who distinguish to a nicety the various shades of skin and their meanings. They expect a darker black man to be poorer and less successful than themselves. Wealthy Not Sidney confounds them and ultimately rejects the movie paradigm of begging for their acceptance. The parallels to Poitier movies continue. Not Sidney is bound “Defiant Ones” style to a redneck as they escape from a prison. Later, he uses a hilarious technique called Fesmerism to compel a bigoted sheriff to become his only trustworthy protector (shades of actor Poitier’s “In the Heat of the Night.”)In the end “Not Sidney” seems to become his almost namesake for the space of an evening.I adored this book’s clever, entertaining, existential profundity. The author even “Mary Sues” himself, becoming Not Sidney’s college professor and mentor under his own name and profession. Everyone assumes the professor is being brilliant when they can’t follow his mental leaps—everyone except Not Sidney who calls nonsense, admits he doesn’t understand and shows that the emperor wears no clothes—or does he?The title suggests this book will repudiate the saintly black characters portrayed by actor Sidney Poitier.  My expectations were met, confounded and exceeded all at the same time, perhaps in the same way that Not Sidney Poitier meets and confounds questions about his name and identity throughout the novel. I will be looking at more books by this author. I just got the ebook version of "A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid (A Novel)." I think it's bound to be interesting.https://www.amazon.com/Am-Not-Sidney-Poitier-Novel-ebook/dp/B005EXSNMA/ref=sr_1_1?crid=37XC9FOQS7BCW&dchild=1&keywords=i+am+not+sidney+poitier&qid=1633726529&s=digi

Hillariously funny dialogue, in poignant narrative from behind a black skin. A truly original and gifted creative writer.Tremendously entertaining and at the same time thought provoking. Having looked at some professional and non reviews I see critics and readers referring to their first and second readings of it... I will definitely follow this author.

Un bon "scenario", plutôt bien mené, mais un peu lent par moments et partant un peu dans toutes les directions.Un jeune noir portant le nom de famille "Poitier", que sa mère a appelé "Not Sidney", se trouve confronté à toutes sortes de malentendus lorsqu'il donne son nom, d'autant qu'en vieillissant il finit par ressembler à l'acteur. A ce qui pro quo permanent, s'ajoute ses difficultés en tant que noir + jeune + riche, très riche - jusque là, tout va bien. Là où la lecture devient un peu fastidieuse, c'est lorsque l'auteur met en scène un professeur loufoque à l'université où étudie le jeune Poitier, dont le nom n'est autre qu'Everett, celui-là même qui écrit le roman. Ce personnage pourrait être parfait mais l'auteur change subtilement de ton pour lui, en faisant sans doute trop dans l'auto-dérision.Un livre plaisant, qui se lit facilement, partant d'une excellente idée, mais qui aurait mérité un peu plus de cohérence et de rigueur d'écriture.

Although not up in the stratosphere of greatness with Erasure, this novel was a great read, and very much imbued with the ghost of Percival Everett. Not that he's dead. I mean his spirit, his Everett-ness: smart, wry, sardonic, concise, and lots of compelling characters, including Everett himself! I do hope he's not that cavalier as a teacher; I'm guessing not.My one quibble is the one-dimensional Southern white characters. I do think there's still a lot that's worthy of skewering in the Southern white racial psyche, but some of the characters here are cardboard stereotypes trucked in from Tobacco Road. That seemed too easy.Overall, though, this book is sort of an updating of Ellison's Invisible Man, with an even more absurdist twist. It's also very realistic, in that it exposes many of the absurdities that remain in our ever-raced and -classed society.

Ce roman est attrayant, rafraîchissant, le style loufoque m'a fait sourire souvent, la lecture est aisée. Pourtant, je suis restée un peu sur ma faim...