Doctor no
Doctor no -or Dr. No: A Novel, by its original title in English—is a thriller of spies written by the American professor and author Percival Everett. The work was published for the first time in 2022 thanks to the publisher Graywolf Press. Later, it was translated into Spanish by Javier Calvo Perales, in addition to being edited and marketed by De Conatus.
As it happened with The Trees (2021), on this occasion Percival Everett presents a social criticism that is presented through satire and a sophisticated sense of the absurd, which has led the author to receive praise from critics and many of his readers. Doctor no It is an unconventional book, although, in principle, it shows all the clichés of a detective story.
Synopsis of Doctor no
The contradiction of nothing
The thriller tells the life of Wala Kitu, a brilliant mathematics teacher who is dedicated to studying nothing at Brown University. That is to say: his entire academic career has been oriented towards the explanation of total absence. This is something that the reader must take into account at all times, as it could lead to understandable confusion. The protagonist's own name means "nothing".
And yes, to start and keep in mind, Wala in Tagalog means “nothing”, while Kitu in Swahili means the same. His real name, revealed early on, is Ralph Townsend. This very particular man becomes the partner of a billionaire who wants to be a Bond villain. To achieve this, he sets out to enter Fort Knox to steal an empty shoe box.
A critique of the values of today's society
It is not difficult to notice, sometimes with bitter irony, that the world is heading ever faster towards a meaningless destination. In this context, salvation is found in what is closest, which translates as authentic relationships. These may be crazy, but they are extremely relevant. Through this twisted scenario, Percival Everett constructs a clever story.
Furthermore, It is possible to find the most scathing and absurd side of the author, while leaving elegant clues which, in turn, give purpose to each of the pages of Doctor. No. At this point, it's hard to find an American fiction writer other than Thomas Pynchon who's so committed to excavating a novel's themes through cerebral jokes. Everett does it.
The essential word games
Everett derives almost infinite puns from the linguistic absurdity of nothingness as subject. “I just received a grant that I hope is useless,” Kitu tells a fellow teacher at one point. Elsewhere, contemplating his failure to capture the white whale out of nowhere—despite years of study—he says: “I work very hard and I wish I could say I have nothing to show for it.”
It's Kitu's strange area of mathematical interest that brings him into the orbit of John Sill, a billionaire with the explicit desire to become a Bond villain. Sill's Goldfinger-style plan is to break into Fort Knox and steal a shoebox containing a small amount of nothing. which he believes is sealed in a vault.
Is this the height of absurdity?
Thanks to his mathematical ability, the villain offers Kitu three million dollars to act as a kind of consultant for his dastardly project. Sill intends to use this amount of nothing as a weapon of mass nullification, to reduce the United States to nothing., not to destroy it as such, but to make it never have existed.
Herring, whom Kitu describes as “a little racially ambiguous,” Reveals Villain's Origin Story That's Deeply Rooted in Racial Wounds of his country: his father was an innocent collateral victim of the plot to assassinate Martin Luther King and, years later, his mother was murdered by the police. As Sill tells James Earl Ray when he visits him in prison: “I will not take your life. That doesn't have much value. “I’m going to take your world.”
The subversions throughout Doctor no
This justification of his villainy is, like everything else in Everett's novel, gleefully subverted. At one point, Sill is asked if it bothers him that his plan to destroy the country also wipes out a large number of his fellow African Americans. “Sacrifices have to be made,” he says. "If there is something that has made me earn all this money, it is White."
One of Everett's many gifts as a novelist is his ability to balance his wild comic sensibility with an unmistakable seriousness of purpose. The way in which he faces the absurd does not go unnoticed, but neither does the strong message he wants to leave his readers.. Definitely, Doctor no It is more than it seems, but it is necessary to go to the end to discover it.
About the Author
Percival Everett was born on December 22, 1956, in Fort Gordon, Georgia, United States. His father was a sergeant in the US Army, so the author grew up in a strict environment with his older brothers. When he was a baby, his parents moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where the writer attended high school. Later, He graduated in Philosophy.
He studied his degree at the University of Miami, where he was also interested in a wide variety of topics, such as Mathematical Logic and Biochemistry. In 1982, he earned a master's degree in fiction from Brown University., and then wrote his first novel. Since then, she has written about Greek mythology, historical fiction, children's books, and other literary genres.
Other books by Percival Everett
Novels
- Sudder (1983);
- take me to the distance (1985);
- Cutting Lisa (1986);
- Zulu (1990);
- For your dark skin (1990);
- God's country (1994);
- Cuenca (1996);
- The body of Martín Aguilera (1997);
- Frenzy (1997);
- Glyph (1999);
- Grand Canyon (2001);
- Erased (2001);
- American Desert: A Novel (2004);
- Injured (2005);
- The water cure (2007);
- I am not Sidney Poitier: a novel (2009);
- Asunción: a novel (2011);
- Virgil Russell's Percival Everett: A Novel (2013);
- a lot of blue (2017);
- Contact Us (2020);
- The trees (2021);
- James: a novel (2024).
Tales
- The weather and women treat me well: stories (1987);
- Overview: Stories (1996);
- Damned If I Do: Stories (2004);
- Half an inch of water (2015).
Poetry
- Abstraction and empathy (2008);
- Swimming Swimmers Swimming (2010);
- There are no names for red (2010);
- The trout lie (2015).
Children's literature
- The One That Got Away (1992).
Contributions
- My California: travels of great writers (2004).