Books: “James” by Percival Everett

The best way to appreciate Percival Everett’s “James” (2024) is to first read (or re-read) the Great American Novel that inspired it—Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” (1880).

“James” flips the script on the original novel and tells the adventures of Huck and Jim from Jim’s point of view. While much of the action parallels that of “Finn”—e.g., plotting escape, evading capture, getting shipwrecked—the Everett work also explores issues of rape, murder, beatings, and above all, racism.

James is no jive-talking stereotype. He is articulate, has imaginary conversations with John Locke, and reads Voltaire. The power of reading, which James has discovered by sneaking into Judge Thatcher’s library, is “completely private, completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.”

Among his fellow enslaved people, James speaks plain English. But when white people are around, he adopts “slave talk” as a survival tactic. When asked by his daughter to explain, he says, “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them.”

As in “Finn,” James’ relationship with Huck is solid. While they’re fiercely loyal to one another, Huck suffers pangs of guilt about “stealing” an enslaved person from his caretaker, Miss Watson. The two con men they meet, who claim to be a Duke and a King, are equally sleazy in “James,” but here they’re cruel, sadistic and vehemently racist as well.

White liberals don’t get off easy in “James.” When James is separated from Huck at one point, he is sold to Daniel Decatur Emmett, the real-life founder of the Virginia Minstrels, the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition. Emmett realizes James has a fine voice and wants him to join the troupe. But he requires the latter to paint white around his eyes, so he can pretend to be a white man pretending to be Black. When James can’t take it any more and escapes, Everett goes into full racist mode.

The finale which takes place during the Civil War is very different from the one in “Finn.” No spoilers here other than it bears an ever-so-slight resemblance to the ending of Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Besterds.” #iykyk.

A finalist for the 2024 Booker Prize, “James” won the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction. As novelist Ann Pachett said: “Who should read this book? Every single person in the country.” That would include you.

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