Hey, forgot to mention new Lazy & Entitled Podcast<\/em> last week! Have you ever wondered what Chicagoans think about things? All year, we’ve been asking our Chicago-adjacent guests a series of questions about the city. For this round, we’ve got answers from Bridget Gordon, Kelly Dwyer, H Kapp-Klote, Kathleen Rooney, and Logan Trent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Apple<\/a> | Spotify<\/a> | SoundCloud<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n What I’ve Been Reading This Week<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A re-read, obviously. My second-favorite novel ever? Maybe. It held up on re-read. I heard this book described recently as “literary fiction that reads like a literary thriller,” and that feels right. It’s a book that’s really careful about its words, because there are so few of them for how much story happens. It’s a book that treats magic with respect. It’s one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, even if it is about lynching, which\u2014read the epigraph to this blog, yknow? It’s hard to say much without just gushing, so let’s get to it. I’m talking, of course, about The Trees<\/em> by Percival Everett. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trees<\/em> by Percival Everett:<\/strong> let\u2019s make like Marvin Gaye and do a quick What\u2019s Going On. In maybe the greatest chapter one in all of literature, we meet a \u201clovable\u201d family of fuckup crackers in Mississippi\u2014a man whose only ever job was a truck driver, which he got fired from for driving the truck half off a bridge while drunk. A woman whose children call her Hot Mama Yeller because that\u2019s the CB handle she uses to talk to the truckers with whom she cheats on her husband. A few cousins. Dogs, pigs. And the matriarch of the family, the woman who claimed that Emmett Till catcalled her. Before long, bunch of white supremacists start turning up dead. Well, mutilated. As if they\u2019d been lynched. And there\u2019s a body of a Black man with the victims, but that body has been embalmed and looks suspiciously like Emmett Till. Our main characters are two Black agents from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. On their way to unraveling everything that\u2019s happening in Mississippi, copycat \u201ccrimes\u201d start popping up in California. Illinois. The rest of the South. Wyoming. Except not every crime scene has a Black body\u2014sometimes there are Asian bodies, Indigenous American bodies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s retribution for lynching, coming from all corners. It\u2019s retribution for white supremacy in North America. Is it magic? Is there some shadowy group behind it all? Does it matter? But lemme back up, I wanna talk writer\u2019s toolbox stuff. Almost every chapter is two pages, and the novel is very dialogue-heavy. Actions are sometimes revealed through dialogue. Some actions are left for the readers\u2019 imagination. Yet it still feels careful with its language. Every piece of information is important. Even when a chapter is a list of names, you can\u2019t skip over the names. The text won\u2019t let you. Another effect of such short chapters is how it highlights that there’s no poetry to the ugly history of lynching in the U.S. It was practically a religion. There’s no poem there. There’s very little to say. There’s very little reason to expect things to change\u2014pay attention to how Lulabelle (the eldest child) starts turning into Hot Mama Yeller, pay attention to Red Jetty’s conversation with his wife the one time we see her. Then ask yourself how you’d answer the question at the end of the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just like that, we’re back to retribution. Obviously, I\u2019m not gonna get on here arguing for race-based violence. I am a non-violent person. This novel ends with a provocative, difficult-to-answer question. Sort of like The Golem Of Brooklyn<\/em>. Unlike The Golem Of Brooklyn<\/em>, this novel doesn\u2019t have the specter of, say, Haiti doing a pro-active genocide against Mississippians. In fact, Haiti has been the victim of state-sanctioned racial violence from the Dominican Republic, economic violence from most European countries, and, of course, virulent racism from the current sitting president and vice president of the United States. So yeah, this book has a great ending with a tough question. If you\u2019re making course syllabi, consider putting The Trees<\/em> and The Golem Of Brooklyn<\/em> together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Something to listen to while you browse? Hey, funk isn’t normally my thing, but sometimes YouTube will serve up an enticing video. I’m glad I watched this one. It’s acoustic! Check out The Psycodelics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image-9.png\")