# books / James -- Percival Everett
James won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 2024, with a retelling of the Mark Twain classic Huckleberry Finn, from the perspective of Jim, the slave who flees from his master & family to avoid being sold and separated from his family. James breathes new life into the story, handling the appauling realities of slavery in a way that Twain couldn’t.
Retelling with contrast
By seeing many of the same “adventures” through Jim’s eyes, Everett brings into focus how starkly different, harsh & threatening the world is for a black person, in contrast to Huck’s white, and naive point of view. This kind of contrast is undeniably effective in challenging how we each see the world, reminding us that our experience is not universal, and underlining our biases.
This is most evident in the characters Everett reintroduces from the Twain story. In James humerous characters such as the con artists, kind characters like the Judge, are seen quite differently. The con artists exert the control earned why virtue of their skin colour, coercing with physical & mortal risk to Jim. The judge, one of the “good masters”, is not unfamiliar with the whip. To Jim he is just another tormenter, just one that sees his slave-handling style as a virtue, symbolic of the societal moral self-deception that has made slavery feel acceptable.
The racism spectrum
What Everett does best is present the full platter of racist perspectives present at that time, some of which are still prevelant today.
At the top, of course, there is the merciless slave owner, who does not discern between the slaves & the horses he owns, and treats them all as property to be beat to submission. Those who rape without guilt, with pride rather than shame, from the power they wield.
Next are those like the Judge and the Blacksmith, who buy slaves and, they believe, treat them well. They might use the whip, they reason, as a tool for the slave’s benefit. To such people, black people are still animals, even if better treated than they could be. Their virtue such as they feel it, comes only in contrast to the impulses of those who hurt for unmasked personal satisfaction.
These white men scared me. They scared me because they weren’t invested in my being afraid of them.
“You mean youse be abalishnists?” “I wouldn’t go that far. We ain’t working to get
that, did we? I think a dollar a day is fair, don’t you? A dollar a day is a good wage, especially when you’ve never been paid before.” “Dat how much a tenor norm’ly make?” “A nigger tenor, yes.
“Suh, I’s tryin’ to unnerstan’. You sayin’ you is makin’ a ’stinction ’tween chattel slavery ’n’ bonded slavery?” I didn’t think I’d meant to actually ask that question out loud, but I must have, because I said it in proper and appropriate slave diction. Emmett looked at me askance. “Would you mind repeating that?”
The next rung includes those like Emmett, who are “anti-slavery” but not “abolitionist”. They don’t “believe” in owning slaves, but perhaps do anyway. They may not treat them as animals, but they are still property. Emmett wants his “money’s worth” from Jim, whatever his stated ideology. Emmett has no issue with treating black skin as an entertaining costume, that it would be absurd for a white person to be mistaken for a black person & vice versa. Everett’s irony shines. Of course that mistake is exactly what happens. Jim cannot be distinguished from any other black-faced white person in the troop.
ten white men in blackface, one black man passing for white and painted black, and me, a light-brown black man painted black in such a way as to appear like a white man trying to pass for black.
One spectator, suspicious of Jim, highlights the absurd pretence that is race division in one line, when he claims he can smell a black person from a long way off, while standing beside Jim unwittingly. All of the attributes assigned to black people, used to justify slavery, are inventions of a white people that don’t want to hate themselves for their abhorrent treatment, because that would be too expensive.
James demonstrates how all white people are a threat to Jim. They all have the power of the establishment on their side. Even the best meaning, like Huck, put Jim in danger due to his naivety, his innocent ignorance of the difference between their statuses. Huck’s flight is an adventure. He can return without consequence. For Jim, it is all survival.
“Oh, he found some book off the shelves.” I laughed. “What I gone do wif a book?” She laughed, too.
Nobody is capable of seeing Jim as a human. When he drops the slave dialect white people struggle to reconcile his intelligence, his undeniable humanity, with their view of black people as much less than human. Jim is not opptomistic about the coming Civil War. While slaves will be emancipated in law, their status will not rise to the level of equal human being for a long time yet. Jim’s experience has brought him this sentience. Legal bills of sale have been faked. “Free” states send slaves back to their owners. Slave owners can be anti-slavery. But nobody sees Jim as human, and he knows a war won’t change that.
“The war won’t do anything for me, Huckleberry.”
“You’re a part of the bank’s assets and so people all over the world are making money off your scarred black hide. Make sense? Nobody wants you free.”
“Maybe you won’t be a slave, but you won’t be free.”
I considered the northern white stance against slavery. How much of the desire to end the institution was fueled by a need to quell and subdue white guilt and pain? Was it just too much to watch? Did it offend Christian sensibilities to live in a society that allowed that practice? I knew that whatever the cause of their war, freeing slaves was an incidental premise and would be an incidental result.
Substance over style
The substantive matter of the book is well presented. I feel that Everett missed a trick in its style. The first few chapters are introductory, with an overwrought elaboration of the concept of the learned slave dialect, which abruptly transitions into a sequence of picaresque adventures, a flow of events that leaves little room for personality or psychology.
“But what are you going to say when she asks you about it?” I asked. Lizzie cleared her throat. “Miss Watson, dat sum conebread lak I neva before et.” “Try ‘dat be,’” I said. “That would be the correct incorrect grammar.”
“Papa, why do we have to learn this?” “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,”
The book, written in the first person, is written in standard English, which immediately provides a contrast to the way Jim speaks to white people. We get another contrast when Jim speaks to other black people, again in standard English. Then there is a chapter where Jim is teaching children how to speak in the way white people expect. This is underlined by Jim explicitly explaining the point:
Safe movement through the world depended on mastery of language, fluency
Slaves must behave as they are expected to behave, and play the part of the sub-human that white people see them for. The language is a good demonstration of the concept. Everett overfeeds the point. In a few similar situations, insights & reflections from Jim are highlighted so heavily it shows through to the other side of the page. Less could be more.
Jim’s flight is perhaps the most important decision he makes, but it is handled with a swiftness that leaves no room to understand what it means to him. He is leaving his family, the life he has known, and it happens in a matter of a couple of pages, based on hearsay. Perhaps Everett is trying to evoke panic, but it feels more like rush. Jim is more impacted by being separated from Huck later on, than the sudden parting from his family, such as we can tell from our exposure to his state of mind. As a consequence the meaning of Jim’s family, the weight of this decision, are lost, and leave a gap for the rest of the novel.
Huck and I had been violently separated, an event that was inevitable, but it was, nonetheless, jarring and unreal.
As the plot moves into the adventure phase, now events happen staccato. And then, and then, and then. Once more, the pace of events might have indicated Jim’s hurry, his panic, but they leave no room for Jim at all. Throughout the book we get little feel for his psychology. In my opinion this is the great miss of the book. We are told he has always been angry, we guess he must feel fear. Yet the matter-of-fact presentation of events give us no insight.
This book, as a psychological thriller, could be superb.
Rather, we get a series of set-piece adventures not too different to the original Huckleberry Finn, and we leave it to the actions of other characters to reveal their sinister significance to Jim.
Jim wants to save his family, but we learn nothing of them. No memories bring them to life.
His intelligence is made obvious in his writing, and the fairly obnoxious discussions with philosophers of the time. Once more, it would’ve been more interesting to see Jim’s intelligence brought out in the conflicts in his own mind. The very fact that Everett needs these imagined characters to show Jim’s mind is evidence of the lack of psychology that is brought to bear in the provocative events of the tale.
I was even more afraid of further unproductive, imagined conversations with Voltaire, Rousseau and Locke about slavery, race and, of all things, albinism.
Like the chains white people have used to bind him, we get no more sense of who Jim is from the ever-progressing chain of events than he must be when hiding his real self. In what must have been a terrifying moment for Jim, hidden under a tarp while Huck is questioned about Jim’s whereabouts, Jim can comment only on Huck’s state of mind:
I could hear the wheel in Huck’s little head turning.
When it’s all over Jim only comments “Closer den I like”. Even if he feels he must hide his terror from Huck, hiding it from the reader is to rob us of knowing & understanding Jim more deeply. Neither his anger or fear or dispair are available for the reader to inspect. We are told he feels these things, but we see little, and feel none.
Open questions about the plot
The retelling closely follows the original, taking opportunity when Jim & Huck are separated to develop new scenarios for Jim. Twain’s ending, with Tom’s aunt, is entirely removed, instead taking Jim with Huck back to where they had started.
Jim’s plan evolves over the book, looking for ways to buy his own family. Later he changes his mind, simply taking them by force. Once more, Jim’s psychology could help the reader to understand this change of heart.
An addition of Everett’s is that Huck is in fact Jim’s son. I liked this particular twist, but it ultimately serves little point. Huck considers what it means for him. Jim shows ambivalence, which is understandable given the privilege Huck has to choose. Perhaps this is the purpose of the twist. It comes to little, as Jim leaves Huck behind without any thought and no further reflection.
Final thoughts
The concept of this retelling, the re-presenting of known characters, and the smorgasbord of racism that we witness, are excellent. When I picked up James having read Huck Finn years ago, I had no idea that this was a retelling, and I enjoyed seeing that old story through fresh eyes. It was a good read.
I feel there was more that could have been done, but this detracts nothing from Everett’s work.
Highlights
“I’ll be sure to take this towel back to her tomorrow. White folks always remember things like that. I swear, I believe they set aside time every day to count towels and spoons and cups and such.”
“There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.”
“I kilt myself,” the boy said. I looked him over. “You din’t do a good job.” “Well, Miss Watson, that damn judge and Pap think I’m dead and that’s all that matters. They think I was murdered.”
“Not me,” Huck said. “I told the judge to take all that money I found.” “How much you reckon it be?” “Thousands,” Huck said. “Money ain’t nothing but trouble. Don’t you think, Jim?”
I had wondered every time I sneaked in there what white people would do to a slave who had learned how to read. What would they do to a slave who had taught the other slaves to read? What would they do to a slave who knew what a hypotenuse was, what irony meant, how retribution was spelled?
Huck nodded. “You know where we goin’?” the boy asked. “Ain’t got no idee. But we’s on our way.”
Entertaining such discussions in character was exhausting,
“Dat be my name. ‘Golightly.’” “Jim Golightly,” Huck said. “Sounds good.” “James Golightly.”
The pencil lead was soft and made a dark mark. I resolved to use it with a light touch to have it last as long as possible. Stamped on it was the name FABER. Perhaps that would be my last name. James Faber. That didn’t sound too bad.
Golightly. Press lightly. Jim must make no impression, leave no mark, to survive.
“But I didn’t give you back to her, did I?” “No, you din’t.” “So, that’s like stealin’, right? If’n I took a mule from the side of the road and I knowed who it belonged to, wouldn’t that be stealin’?” “I ain’t a mule, Huck.”
Drowning to death always made a person more interesting, but I wanted, at that moment, to be, to remain, as boring as possible.
“You’re in Illinois,” the old man said. “So, I’m in a free state?” The men laughed. “Boy, you’re in America,” a muscular man said.
I read and read, but I found what I needed was to write. I needed that pencil. I could not keep track of my thoughts. I could not follow my own reasoning after a while.
the Bible itself was the least interesting of all. I could not enter it, did not want to enter it, and then understood that I recognized it as a tool of my enemy. I chose the word enemy, and still do, as oppressor necessarily supposes a victim.
“Can you believe it?” Huck said. “We lose a canoe, we find a canoe. Everythin’ evens out, don’t it?”
Huck’s innocence contrasted with Jim’s reality.
It turned out that con men are the easiest people to con.
“They even do the cakewalk.” “But that’s how we make fun of them,” I said. “Yes, but they don’t get that—it’s lost on them. It’s never occurred to them that we might find them mockable.”
“We came back and found you gone and all of a sudden Emmett sounded like every slaver I ever met. He was cursing darkies and yelling about how he was going to get a bully and beat you just before he hanged you from a oak.”
Across the water was a town and I guessed, from all I’d heard, that it might be Cairo. I wished that had mattered. A fugitive slave was a slave in a free state just the same.
“You know, dull tools are much more dangerous than sharp ones.”
“…least she’d be a live slave. Not just another dead runaway.”
“The boat is packed with people. Stuffed. People are trying to get home to the north because there’s a war.” “War?” “The slave states are trying to leave the union. That’s what I heard. I’m not certain what it all means. Anyway, they’re scared.”
They both called to me, one, and then the other. They were equidistant from me but not near each other. I felt I was in some poor philosopher’s example. Huck slipped under and came back up, slapping the water. Norman struggled with his plank. I was frozen there, moving in neither direction, but needing to choose one.
“You know there’s a war comin’.” “What kinda war?” “North agin the south,” Huck said. “Folks on the boat said the north wants to free you slaves.”
“Because, Huck, and I hope you hear this without thinking I’m crazy or joking, you are my son.”
“Jim?” “Yes, Huck?” “So, I am a nigger?” “You can be what you want to be,” I told him. “Am I a slave?” “Who cares what the law says you are?”
You can be white or black. Nobody will question you.” “What should I be?” “Just keep living,” I said. “Just remember, once they see you, or see me in you, you’ve been seen. I know you don’t understand. But you will one day.”
“You been keepin’ a mess of secrets.”
“And you always talked like this?” “Yes.” “You’ve been lying to me this whole time? You been lying to me my whole life?” “I suppose I have.”
“Where fo we be headin’?” Huck went on. “Why are you talking like that?” “I be yo son, so by law I be a slave.” “Like I said, I don’t know what the law
“Belief has nothing to do with truth. Believe what you like. Believe I’m lying and move through the world as a white boy. Believe I’m telling the truth and move through the world as a white boy anyway. Either way, no difference.” I looked at the boy’s face and I could see that he had feelings for me and that was the root of his anger. He had always felt affection for me, if not actual love. He had always looked to me for protection, even when he thought he was trying to protect me.
It pained me to think that without a white person with me, without a white-looking face, I could not travel safely through the light of the world, but was relegated to the dense woods. Without someone white to claim me as property, there was no justification for my presence, perhaps for my existence.
Huck followed. “What is that?” He pointed at my notebook. “It’s a book,” I said. “And you can read? I knew it. Ain’t we been friends forever? And you never trusted me enough to tell me that. What kind of book?” “It’s blank. I write in it.” “It’s soaked.” “It will dry.” “You can write? I cain’t hardly write. What else can you do? Can you fly? What else you ain’t told me, Jim?”
White people often spent time admiring their survival of one thing or another. I imagined it was because so often they had no need to survive, but only to live.
“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 asked. “I reckon.” “Yes, Huck, I can imagine.”
“A father’s job is make sure his children are safe, right?” I felt bad offering such platitudes. I, in fact, had no idea what I or anyone else was supposed to do.
My sleep was bothered by the scene of Katie’s rape. I hated that man. I hated myself for not intervening. I hated the world that wouldn’t let me apply justice without the certain retaliation of injustice.
Of course, on one level it was all too simple. I had exacted revenge. But for whom? For one act, or many? Against one man, many men or the world? I wondered if I should feel guilty. Should I have felt some pride in my action? Had I done a brave thing? Had I done an evil thing? Was it evil to kill evil? The truth was that I didn’t care.
“Any of you named Nigger Jim?” I pointed to each of us. “Sadie, Lizzie, Morris, Buck.” “And who are you?” “I am James.” “James what?” “Just James.”
Open ends
You hear about that Denmark Vesey? He almost took over there in South Carolina. Had guns and organization.”
I’ve never heard about this before, but is a story I will learn more about.