Dr. No

Dr. No by Percival Everett (2022)  It’s the first book I’ve read by the author, Percival Everett, and now I want to read more—he’s written a lot of books. A weird and very funny yarn that immediately drew me in, as the sense of humor—I felt—was oddly aligned with my own—meaning, kind of odd, a little dorky. The best example of this (and, to me, the book’s funniest detail) is when, at one point, the villain uses his secret weapon (the concept of “nothing”) to reduce the entire community of Quincy, Massachusetts to nothing—not destroyed—just never existed. His reason is because he’s annoyed by the way people there pronounce it—like “Quinzy.” This rather tragic event cracked me up because I’m familiar with that particular town and pronunciation due to Mike Mitchell and the Doughboys podcast! (There may be other cultural references to that regional oddity that I don’t know—but the connection of this book and that podcast—which otherwise don’t have a lot in common—delighted me.) Besides that, the main character is a mathematics professor with a unique approach to life, so even though there are a lot of math and philosophy references that may have sailed over my head, that didn’t bother me. (I always like knowing there is more—that I’m not necessarily getting—and there were some pretty esoteric references I did get.) His name is Wala Kitu and he’s an expert on “nothing”—the concept of nothing—and he’s hired by (and later kidnapped by) John Sill, a wealthy man with ambitions to be a “James Bond” super-villain, who wants to use nothing to nullify the world (or something like that—it’s a tricky concept to explain, but we get it fed over and over until it starts to feel second nature). The story is roughly modeled after the James Bond 007 adventures, and I’m much more proficient in Bond (the movies, anyway) than, say, Derrida. Wala has a one-legged dog named Trigo and a socially awkward mathematician friend named Eigen Vector, who falls under the spell of John Sill. Wala is concerned with the safety of these two, which adds some human stakes to the story—but like Bond, you don’t worry about him so much—he’s almost imperturbable. The episode where he decides he needs a car, even though he’s never driven before—and then his first experiences driving—is particularly hilarious. There are plenty of location changes, ala Bond, as well as gaudy wealth and gadgets—and there is danger and violence, but mostly there’s the ongoing joke about the concept of “nothing”—which made me readjust a bit, mentally, every time I heard it. I mean, the whole book, like any good novel, makes you shift your perspective a little—and in this case more than a little—to go along with the ride. So, of course, there is more than just humor—there’s skewed ways of looking at wealth and power structures, history and race, this messed up country and this messed up time of living in it—and even friendship and love—without it being “about” those things. But, of course, it is, too.

5.30.23