James: A Novel by Percival Everett published by Doubleday (2024)
I read a lot of books. Right before my stroke, I was reading more than fifty books every year. Many of my friends think that I re-read my favorite books often, but except for two books, I have never read a book more than once. One of the two books is Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I read it once in high school, once as a college student, and I read it out loud to my son Tim when he was a little boy. I left out a few of the N– Words in the book. For all the problems with Huck Finn, like the bizarre ending in which Tom Sawyer makes his magical appearance, I was intrigued by the relationship between Huck and Jim, the escaped slave. Even as a teenager growing up in the Civil Rights Era, their interactions seemed way ahead of their time, and mine. Still, Twain succumbed to the conventions of his day and left parts of the relationship unexplored.
“James” is the proper name of the enslaved Jim. The book by master novelist Percival Everett begins in Hannibal, Missouri just as James makes his break for freedom and Huck leaves white society behind to accompany James on his escape. The novel captures the voices of many of Twain’s characters; The Duke, The King, The Grangerfords, and many others. But what Everett does is give James an interior life that is the focus of the book. While the plot follows Twain’s sketches, James explains why he is doing what he is doing. He also tells us why he and Huck are so attached.
After escaping, with the law and vigilantes chasing after him, James enters into a series of alliances with Black people along the way to free them and to help him free his wife and daughter. Along the way, some of Jim’s allies wind up at the bottom of the Mississippi, but Jim perseveres and he and Huck form a common bond of suffering.
Novelist Everett does change the time period of the story. James’s escape is right before the Civil War and during Huck and Jim’s running, Fort Sumter is subdued by the Confederacy. James encounters Union soldiers in the Border States and white refugees compete with escaped slaves heading North. James is standing at before an unknown future for himself and his family, and Huck and the United States.
Percival Everett novel Erasure was turned into an Academy Award winning film American Fiction last year. His newest work is an excellent retelling of Twain’s story from an enslaved African American’s perspective. It is a realistic look at a country on the edge of war, and one man’s thoughts about it.
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