My name is James. I wish I could tell my story with a sense of history as much as industry. I was sold when I was born and then sold again. My mother’s mother was from someplace on the continent of Africa, I have been told or perhaps simply assumed. I cannot claim to any knowledge of that world or those people, whether my people were kings or beggars…I can tell you that I am a man who is cognizant of his world, a man who has a family, who loves a family, who has been torn from his family, a man who can read and write, a man who will not let his story be self-related, but self-written.
I absolutely loved The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and thought that, by the end, Mark Twain had done a remarkable job of humanising runaway Jim (to the white audience of his day) through his developing relationship with young Huck on a raft down the Mississippi (and that Twain had also done a remarkable job of demonstrating how sociopathic Tom Sawyer [and by extension, white society in general] was, in that he never once acted as though Jim was a fellow human being). And as someone who has enjoyed other retellings of classic literature that give voice to marginalised characters, I was very excited to be given an early review copy of Percival Everett’s James. And what a retelling it is! Starting off in the familiar territory of Hannibal, Missouri, Everett gives us a peek inside the enslaved’s quarters — where life is not exactly what the overseers might expect — and as the narrative unfurls in ways both familiar and unexpected, we are experiencing life from the POV of James: a justifiably wary man who knows how to stay invisible to white people while surreptitiously reading Voltaire, debating Locke in his dreams, and developing his thoughts on paper whenever he gets the chance. What Everett does most masterfully (and arguably, most necessarily) is to upend Twain’s narrative: the reader doesn’t need a perilous adventure story (or a white author, or a protective relationship with an outsider white child) to explain that James is a moral, intelligent, and altruistic bulwark against the violent chaos of his society; Everett gives James agency and a voice, and James tells us what kind of man he is himself, through his deeds and in his own words. James doesn’t stick exactly to the storyline of Huckleberry Finn, and that was just fine with me: this is James’ story, and I am delighted to have heard it from the man himself. (Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Night fell like a different animal, its own season. My voice, even in my head, had found its root in my diaphragm, had become sonorous and round. My pencil had more firmly grasped the pages of my newly dried notebook. I saw more clearly, farther, further. My name became my own.
James doesn’t have the satire or the humour of The Trees (the only other book I’ve read, and loved, by Everett), but it does indulge in self-aware irony (James even discusses with a friend early on whether a white man getting drunk because Black men can’t would be “an example of proleptic irony or dramatic irony”... “could be both.”) And it doesn’t shy away from describing the brutality the enslaved faced; even the so-called “good” white people are self-serving hypocrites (and in one of James’ dream debates, he makes the case that there is no such thing as a good member of the citizenry who lives in a society that employs slavery). I appreciated where Everett imagined new adventures for James (and especially when he joined a minstrel show as a commentary on the songs they performed: I did not know that songs like Turkey in the Straw and the Blue Tail Fly were written by white men as appropriative entertainment), but I was more challenged by the ways in which Everett changed the relationship between James and Huckleberry. Challenged, but I grew to appreciate it: this is James’ story, and we really don’t need to view him through the lens of a white character to see that he’s a good man.
“To fight in a war,” he said. “Can you imagine?”
“Would that mean facing death every day and doing what other people tell you to do?”
“I reckon.”
“Yes, Huck, I can imagine.”
Yes, James and Huck float down the Mighty Mississip, having adventures and facing dangers along the way, but Everett has a different ending in mind than Twain’s: as the Civil War dawns, James’ main priority is to make it back to his wife and daughter in Hannibal, and Everett gives the man more grit and agency than a punk kid like Tom Sawyer could have imagined:
My name is James. I’m going to get my family. You can come with me or you can stay here. You can come and try freedom or you can stay here. You can die with me trying to find freedom or you can stay here and be dead anyway. My name is James.
I still think that Huckleberry Finn was a perfect novel for its day, and by giving voice and agency to that novel’s heart and soul, Percival Everett has written a perfect novel for our own times. I flew through James and can imagine reading it again more slowly: this is, obviously, going to be huge in 2024.
