JAMES rating: five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.
My favorite book of 2024 so far is JAMES by Percival Everett (Doubleday/Penguin Random House, March 19, 2024), a retelling of Mark Twain‘s classic THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN from the point of view of Jim, Huckleberry Finn’s companion on that legendary raft trip down the Mississippi River.
I can’t claim I was “unable to put this book down.” I put it down to cry, to laugh, and to reflect. In JAMES, the gruesome realities of slavery are interspersed with humor and action, so that this reader (I don’t pretend to speak for Black readers at all) was not overwhelmed with horror, grief, and generational guilt and shame. I needed to work through some of that before blogging.
The complex relationship between James and Huck centers the novel. James must keep Huck at a safe remove, yet he feels both fearful of him and protective of him. Stuck in a childlike posture, James is nevertheless, while a father himself, on an escape/adventure with a naive and reckless child. They become too close for James’s comfort when Huck catches James not using his fake slave dialect.
Along with their speech patterns, much of the behavior of James’s Black community is actually performance art for white people, especially their feigned superstition, laziness, and gullibility. Black enslaved men who appear to be sleeping deeply are listening and waiting, gathering information. If a white person pranks them, even in an abusive or potentially harmful manner, they play along to make white people feel clever. Conversations among Black men and women about “devils” and “witches” are–unlike in Twain–ironic rather than simply funny.
Many of Jim’s ideas and talents from Twain, such as building shelter and fixing the raft, are preserved and expanded upon by Everett, but lent a grim survivalist flavor instead of increasing the sense of adventure. The stakes for James if the two fugitives are caught are far higher. Jim is depicted by Twain as a clueless and abusive father to his disabled daughter when she was four years old, emotively confessing this to Huck for no imaginable reason, except possibly to contradict Huck’s characterization right before Jim’s outburst as a “good n****r.” Everett’s JAMES is a far better father and human being. Huck comes across as a much better kid as well.
There is an epic twist. I will say no more.
Reading in context:
Compare-and-contrast with THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN is included above.
The code-switching of the enslaved population in JAMES–speaking differently to one another than to (or within earshot of) their white captors–surprised me, but check out this article on African American Vernacular. Our Black fellow Americans have had a their own distinct and evolving dialect ever since arriving in this country in chains. In this interview, Columbia professor Dr. John McWhorter explains that in many ways, Black English is more sophisticated than Standard American English. He wrote a whole book on the subject which I have not read yet, entitled TALKING BACK, TALKING BLACK: TRUTHS ABOUT AMERICA’S LINGUA FRANCA (Bellevue Literary Press, 2017).
Finally, from the Will inventory of William Greer, 1802: “Listing: Slaves Cloey and child, Raner, Ester, and other chattel.” I am descended from this enslaving scum twice. He is both my 5th and my 6th great-grandfather. This blog is dedicated to Cloey and her children. A complete list of my documented ancestors who enslaved Black people would take a new blog–a lengthy one.
What I’m reading right now:
THE SIRENS by Emilia Hart (St. Martin’s/Macmillan, March 4, 2025). Off and on, I’m dipping into CUTTING FOR STONE by Abraham Verghese (Knopf/Penguin Random House, 2009).
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