Hi, I'm LeVar Burton, and this is LeVar Burton reads.

In every episode I handpick a different piece of short fiction and I read it to you.

The only thing these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will too.

Y'all I find today's story completely fascinating.

I mean, it's funny, it's beautifully spare, and it is very complicated.

In fact, I actually don't want to say much more about it before we begin.

I think it's better to let Percival get his hooks into you first. It's from Percival Everett's collection

of stories entitled, Damned If I Do, published by Grey Wolf Press. Now, you might remember

Percival's name from two other stories that we have

read on the pod or maybe you've even seen the new movie directed by Cord Jefferson

called American Fiction one of my favorite movies of the year which was based on

the book Erasure, one of Percival's novels.

Then, so, now, if you're ready let's take a deep breath And begin.

The appropriation of cultures by Percival Everett. had money left to him by his mother.

He had a house that had been left to him by his mother.

He had a degree in American Studies from Brown University that he had in some way earned but that had not yet earned anything for him.

He played a 1940 Martin guitar with a Barkus Berry pickup and drove a 1976 Jensen Interceptor,

which she had purchased after his mother's sister had died and left him her money because she had no children of her own.

Daniel Barclay didn't work and didn't pretend to need to, spending most of his time reading.

Some nights he went to a joint near the campus of the University of South Carolina and played jazz with some old guys who all worked very hard during the day but didn't hold Daniel's condition against him.

Daniel played standards with the old guys, but what he loved to play were old time slide tunes.

One night, some white boys from a fraternity yelled forward to the stage

...