I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett
Published 2009 · 65,333 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Fiction, Literary Fiction, Satire, Picaresque
How hard is I Am Not Sidney Poitier to read?
I Am Not Sidney Poitier scores 58 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 40 out of 100
- Everett writes in fluent contemporary American English, accessible to general readers. The text sprinkles in literary allusions (Althusser, Habermas, Muybridge) and comic invented proper nouns (Dr. Fesmer, passive carriage manipulation), but none demand specialized knowledge. Compared to Lolita's French phrases and rare wordplay (score 65), this sits notably lower.
- Sentence structure: 38 out of 100
- The novel's sentences are generally clear and direct, though Ted Turner's rambling monologues cascade through loosely joined clauses in extended comic riffs. The narrator's voice is measured and slightly formal — 'thusly,' 'percipient,' 'Fesmerian' — but syntax never becomes a barrier. Closer to Fitzgerald's balanced rhythms (40) than to Woolf's interior flow (70).
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Metafictional questions about identity, race, and representation underlie the novel, but they arrive through comic performance rather than philosophical discourse. Professor Everett's classroom gibberish ('a radical and formidable contextualism that derives from a hypostatization of language') is satirized as empty abstraction. The novel thinks hard but wears its thinking lightly — grounded in picaresque incident rather than sustained philosophical digression.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- The text layers historical and cultural references densely — Ted Turner's media empire, specific Sidney Poitier films (In the Heat of the Night, For the Love of Ivy), Bill Cosby's convocation speech, allusions to Huckleberry Finn and Don Quixote — but these accumulate naturally through the narrative rather than demanding study. Readers who miss the Poitier film parallels lose one meaning layer but not the novel's propulsive surface.
- Narrative indirection: 62 out of 100
- Not Sidney is an earnest, deadpan narrator who describes events without fully interpreting their satirical weight — the reader must understand the Poitier film parallels, the racial politics of the black bourgeoisie, and the comedy of the Fesmer power as ironic commentary. His naivety is strategic: 'I am not terribly bright, but I turned out to be extremely well educated.' The text requires reading against its narrator.
- Symbolic density: 68 out of 100
- The novel's central symbol is its protagonist's name — Not Sidney Poitier — which encodes the book's entire argument about identity, representation, and Black dignity in American culture. His physical resemblance to Poitier pulls him through re-enactments of the actor's most famous films, each a tableau about race and power. The Fesmerian gaze, the hysterical pregnancy, the headstone inscription 'I AM NOT MYSELF TODAY' all carry symbolic freight beyond their narrative function.
- Ironic distance: 78 out of 100
- The satire operates on multiple levels simultaneously: the protagonist blunders through parodies of Sidney Poitier films without recognizing them; the Bill Cosby convocation speech becomes devastating in retrospect; Professor Everett's philosophy-of-nonsense lectures mock academic pretension while performing it. Like Ishmael's humor in Moby-Dick (45) but more consistently satirical, the gap between what the novel shows and what characters understand is the primary engine of meaning.
- Resolution withholding: 65 out of 100
- The novel ends with Not Sidney accepting the 'Most Dignified Figure' award clearly meant for the real Sidney Poitier, delivering a speech that concludes 'I AM NOT MYSELF TODAY.' The murder of his doppelganger remains in ambiguous territory — did Not Sidney die and continue as someone else? The protagonist's identity is never resolved into stable selfhood. Less open than 2666 (92), but more resistant to closure than most comic novels.
- Structural complexity: 52 out of 100
- The novel follows a loose picaresque chronology — childhood in Atlanta, road trip, prison farm escape, Morehouse, Washington DC, Alabama, Los Angeles — but each episode shadows a specific Poitier film (Lilies of the Field, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner). A sustained antebellum dream sequence in Chapter 2 interrupts the main timeline. Readers who recognize the film parallels discover a second structural layer invisible to those who don't.
How I Am Not Sidney Poitier is regarded
I Am Not Sidney Poitier holds a literary regard score of 52 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.