A New Name, A New Story
On Percival Everett’s JAMES (2024).
The premise, when I first came across it, was simple: the same adventure story that Huckleberry Finn told, but now from the perspective of Jim, the friend, co-adventurer, and slave. I was fresh off my first encounter with this about-to-publish author, Percival Everett, after having seen 2023’s AMERICAN FICTION, a feature-film written and directed by Cord Jefferson, adapted from Everett’s 2001 novel ERASURE. I didn’t completely love the film, but I was certainly ensnared by its blend of bluntness, artifice, and levity while taking on some seriously heavy shit. I could feel a distance between what was finalized on-screen and what felt like the ideas were within the novel, which I had not read let alone even heard or read about, which is frequently the feeling I get from most novel-to-film adaptations that I watch, except maybe the films that pick the pieces of the book that they like only to leave the rest behind and create a kind of frankenstein from parts of an author’s mind and parts of their own. Frankensteins are what I typically fall in love with.
The simple premise of JAMES, Everett’s then impending book, was enough to catch me hook, line, and sinker. I next caught sight of Everett in Maya Binyam’s profiling of the author in The New Yorker this past March, days before JAMES was hitting shelves. I devoured Binyam’s words, lovingly and mysteriously painting a picture of this old coldboy, having another moment in the sun that he didn’t seem particularly interested in. Within the profile was a quote from the book, a line that shot through my body, propelling me to my feet, back through the balcony door, into a box in my bedroom where I keep old and/or unused notebooks, to find something pocket-sized that I could write this quote into.
“‘My interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all,’ he writes. ‘If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.’”
There are seven Little Free Libraries that I visit in a regular rotation, giving me my steps, my time away from people and screens, my time alone with myself, and many opportunities to stumble upon something great. I’ve gotten books by Steve Martin, JD Salinger, Michael Crighton, Robert Louis Stevenson, and, a few weeks after reading about the twist on his novel, Mark Twain. THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN was in great condition for a Little Free Library, and for a book signed by a grandmother and grandfather, addressed to a Hannah on their 8th birthday. I wonder if Hannah ever read the book. I wonder if giving an eight year old a copy of THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN was age appropriate. I wonder if I ever read it before, its story and its mythos certainly having lived with me for what feels like all of my life. I wonder if we read it in class, out loud, like everyone seems to think they remember having to do, or if that is an amalgamation of memories and hearsay.
I already knew I wanted to read THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN and JAMES back-to-back, but I didn’t expect it to happen so naturally, so organically. I hopped over to Powell’s on Burnside the next chance I had, and I secured my hardcover copy of Everett’s novel, placing it in the reverential position of the top of the stack of my “to be read” pile on my bed-side table. (Looking over there now, from bottom to top, I have Aaron Brown’s ACACIA ROAD, Kareem Abdul-Jabar’s COACH WOODEN AND ME, Mark Harris’ FIVE CAME BACK, Hanif Abdurraquib’s THERE’S ALWAYS THIS YEAR, and Ross Thomas’ THE EIGHTH DWARF, all of which I’ve started reading, none of which I’ve finished. That’s just a free look into what I’ve got going on over here.)
I jumped right in, and felt pangs of identification straight away. I also felt the weight of the language and terminology and spelling, having to tip-toe and push through strange dialect and silly logic, the book being an attempt at telling a story from a kid’s perspective in an already dated American South. While slow to get going, and hard to get on a parallel level with, I also felt the relief of superficial criticisms melting away as I could see what Twain was doing, which was more than provocation and senseless romping. I meandered through the book, sometimes raced, other times slogged, and after two 48-hour train rides in the span of ten days, I finished it, eager to move on to its mirror, its update, its retelling, its iteration.
The surprise and exhilaration of JAMES’s central change, that there is, very specifically, much more to these people than our previously white narrator could see or surmise, is thrilling. It shatters a narrative long held as seemingly singular, and unlocks so much possibility in the pages to come. I raced through the first half of the book, starving to know where this might go. The narrative parallels between the two novels were, for a while, in lock step, except when a character’s perception could be elaborated upon and explored: what Huck describes in “his” book, James describes in different colors. The central change lends us no reason not to believe James knows exactly what he is talking about, and that his perception is razor sharp. He doesn’t have all the answers, but he has a morality and an intelligence that he will use to carry him forward, and to guide us through ideas and questions and horrors in his life.
The first half, or so, of JAMES, follows the same story as ADVENTURES. When James finds himself separated from Huck and the two dangerous grifters, the King and the Duke, we have our first opportunity for something new, and Everett delivers devastating comedy and despair. The ending of ADVENTURES is abandoned, and Huck himself left behind for a good while, and the story leans into more specifics of the time, placing us squarely in certain days of the country’s history. This includes a traveling minstrel show, a desperate money-making scheme, clear and terrifying identification of the depths of the people around James beyond their binaries, and, most notably, a massive character detail that disrupts every idea of Twain’s novel. The final scene is something so cinematic and huge, deeply sad and cathartic, and is certainly something I won’t forget, the picture painted so clearly in my mind’s eye.
Everett arranges all of these cutting philosophical quandaries and brutal observations into a propulsive adventure, one that introduces us to large numbers of characters and places, just as HUCK FINN did. The pendulum swings between quick-pulse danger and excitement to heart-sinking singular paragraphs and sentences that required me to put the book down for the night, to stew in my own brain for a couple of hours, a couple of days. Everett is so light on his feet when the ideas could have been buried in something much heavier. The clarity of the vision, and of the narrator and central character, far surpasses that of AMERICAN FICTION, which is Everett through a filter. I can see why one would, and why many have, latched on to this person’s work.
Reading JAMES made me feel like a kid again; not just because I was given a page-turning adventure, which I was, but because I felt as if someone had grabbed me by the shoulders, had shaken me awake, and had told me, effectively, how other people actually think and feel and see and live. HUCK FINN does show how a part of the world used to look for some people. JAMES shows the same snapshot, but in deeper colors. I am never more thankful for art than when it bends me away from the existence I know towards ones that I don’t, even when it points its finger in my direction.
Everett has written something that feels canonical, feels “Important”. It’s not every day that someone takes on a historical and cultural icon like Twain and HUCK, and when they do, they frequently pale in comparison. James, and JAMES, shine through, and stand tall on their own, and have successfully created a second narrative when previously we operated with one. One from a child, one from a man, one from a son, one from a father; both a fiction, both with something real to say. JAMES is not a Frankenstein. Rather, it exists wholecloth, the singular product of a singular mind. And I love it for what it is, what it isn’t, and what it isn’t afraid to try to be.
Thank you, as always, for reading. It has been a while. I’m glad to be back. I hope you have read a great book that someone published recently. There’s a singular joy to enjoying something in its moment, though also plenty of joy to be had enjoying something after its moment, in a retrospect. We should enjoy all joys.
I hope to see you soon, on these pages or in a cocktail bar or in the park or on a telephone call (we’re bringing those back).
TTFN,
bobby
definitely read Huck Finn out loud in class, n-word and all