'James' by Percival Everett
'Maybe you won't be a slave, but you won't be free.'—Review #250
I was unfamiliar with Percival Everett’s work until Donna and I went to see ‘American Fiction,’ a movie adaptation of his novel ‘Erasure,’ ahead of last year’s Academy Awards. We enjoyed the film, and I was excited to add Everett’s books to my endless TBR, starting with his 2024 novel, ‘James,’ which has since won the National Book Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, among other accolades. ‘James’ retells Mark Twain’s novel ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,’ which I also am unfamiliar with. Though it’s often required reading for young people, I don’t remember reading it in school or on my own as a kid, and I have only a dim idea of the gist. Huck Finn is the rapscallion friend of Tom Sawyer, and he goes on a journey down the Mississippi River with an enslaved man named Jim, or something like that. Everett’s novel reimagines Twain’s story from Jim’s perspective, and I was intrigued by the premise. I was waiting for it to come out in paperback when Donna borrowed a copy from a friend. I don’t like hardcovers, but I was like:
Donna is wonderful, as you all know, and she let me read ‘James’ first. (She read ‘The Nickel Boys’ by Colson Whitehead instead, and now we’re swapping.) So I put the annoying dust jacket aside and dove in.
Here’s the book’s cover:
Jim lives in a Missouri town called Hannibal, is owned by a woman named Miss Watson, and is tormented by the barely teenaged pranksters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He also is bilingual. When at home or exclusively among other black people, he and the other slaves speak with an elevated diction; when they are addressed by white people, they reply in a performative slave-speak meant to disguise their intelligence and to put the slave owners at ease. Jim hides the fact that he can read and write as well. He enjoys books, but he must read them in secret snippets during stolen moments as the shadows of the whip and the noose loom constantly. When Jim learns that Miss Watson plans to sell him and separate him from his beloved wife and daughter, he runs away, planning to evade capture long enough to find a way to free his family. Jim makes it to an island where he runs into Huck, who also is on the run. The boy has faked his own death to escape an abusive father. Jim is wary of Huck, though Huck appears to respect and even revere him. Jim knows he’ll be blamed for Huck’s apparent murder and wonders: Will Huck eventually betray him? But he also knows neither of them can go back. Not Huck to a violent father and not Jim to almost-certain death. Jim’s like:
Jim and Huck sneak along the Mississippi—sometimes on foot, sometimes on improvised watercraft, almost always at night—trying to get to a free state. Along the way, they encounter poisonous snakes, treacherous paddlewheel boats, angry mobs, minstrels, hucksters, slavers and other evil men. Their journey is harrowing and terrifying—especially for Jim, who’s under constant threat of re-enslavement, beatings and murder—and the boy and the man grow close through their shared experiences. Huck also learns important lessons about human dignity and the profound injustice of slavery as Jim’s mind clashes between hope and despair. The whole world seems out to get him, and even if he escapes the slave states, he wonders if his quest has any meaning at all—can he ever be truly free in the United States? But he knows he doesn’t want to face that question without his family, so he presses on. Will he free them? Will he be betrayed? Captured? Killed? I won’t spoil it, of course, but the story had me on the edge of my seat and frequently like:
His journey is also dotted with moments of kindness and sacrifice. During a time when Jim is briefly separated from Huck, he encounters a group of slaves who offer to help. Among the provisions he asks for is a pencil, and they are stunned both by the request and that Jim can read and write. He tells them he wants the writing tool so he can record his story on bits of paper and notebooks he finds along the way. One of the slaves then risks his life to get the pencil. I love the idea of the pencil as a token of solidarity among people in an impossible situation. And as Jim carries it with him through thick and thin, always checking that it’s there in his pocket, it becomes a vital symbol of the stories and histories that can be recorded and preserved by his using it, that could be lost if he drops it or if it’s taken from him. The violent response from the slave’s owner to the pencil’s disappearance shows how potent the written word can be, how dangerous it is to the oppressor who will always try to ban or erase it. I’ll be thinking about this for a long time:
‘James’ is a tremendous novel, and I’m so happy Donna borrowed the book in time for me to feature it for my 250th review. I briefly was worried that the Twain gap in my reading might somehow hinder me, but it didn’t. You’ll be fine if you haven’t already read ‘Huckleberry Finn’—‘James’ stands on its own. It speaks to the ongoing legacy of slavery in the United States and to our current issues, and it deserves to be taught and widely read. Everett’s writing is propulsive, evocative, thought-provoking, satirical and slyly funny—I flew through it, and I won’t soon forget it. I can’t wait to read more of his novels, and I can’t recommend ‘James’ enough. You should read it.
An opening excerpt:
Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass. The moon was not quite full, but bright, and it was behind them, so I could see them as plain as day, though it was deep night. Lightning bugs flashed against the black canvas. I waited at Miss Watson’s kitchen door, rocked a loose step board with my foot, knew she was going to tell me to fix it tomorrow. I was waiting there for her to give me a pan of corn bread that she had made with my Sadie’s recipe. Waiting is a big part of a slave’s life, waiting and waiting to wait some more. Waiting for demands. Waiting for food. Waiting for the ends of days. Waiting for the just and deserved Christian reward at the end of it all.
Those white boys, Huck and Tom, watched me. They were always playing some kind of pretending game where I was either a villain or prey, but certainly their toy. They hopped about out there with the chiggers, mosquitoes and other biting bugs, but never made any progress toward me. It always pays to give white folks what they want, so I stepped into the yard and called out into the night,
“Who dat dere in da dark lak dat?”
They rustled clumsily about, giggled. Those boys couldn’t sneak up on a blind and deaf man while a band was playing. I would rather have been wasting time counting lightning bugs than bothering with them.
Who Percival Everett thanked:
After thanking family members, editors and colleagues in his acknowledgements, Percival Everett calls out Jim’s and Huck Finn’s creator. ‘Finally, a nod to Mark Twain,’ he writes. ‘His humor and humanity affected me long before I became a writer. Heaven for the climate; hell for my long-awaited lunch with Mark Twain.’ Lots to unpack there!
My rating:
‘James’ by Percival Everett was published by Doubleday in 2024. 303 pages. $26.04 at Bookshop.org.
What’s next:
Before you go:
ICYMI: Review #249
Read this: You absolutely MUST read ‘Memento Mori: An interview with Hanif Abdurraqib on his early career’ by
in her newsletter Delivery & Acceptance. There are so many wonderful moments in this Q&A, but the one I love most is the one where he found a heavily annotated poetry book at a used bookstore and used the previous owner’s notes and the poets acknowledgements as a guide to understanding and writing poetry, and to discovering the work of other poets.Watch this: Last night, Donna and I took a break from trying to see all of this year’s Academy Award-nominated films and streamed on Hulu Questlove’s latest documentary, ‘Sly Lives!’ It’s about the music and legacy of Sly Stone, and it’s definitely worth checking out.
Thanks for the shoutout:
, who writes the awesome newsletter The Subverse, had really nice things to say about BoG. She writes:Mike at Books on GIF has the most eclectic book taste, and I mean that as an absolute compliment. He is in a league of his own when it comes to weird and obscure book trendsetting.
Thanks so much, Natalie! I have a few obscure books on deck for later this year that I’m excited to share.
If you enjoyed this review:
Thanks for reading, and thanks especially to Donna for editing this newsletter!
Until next time,
MPV
Good god I loved this book. Great review! I agree with the rating: Magnificent ✨
Great review as always, Mike! James made it on my TBR after seeing it on so many lists at the end of last year, and I loved reading your take on it. Also good to know it's fine to read without Huck Finn—I'm pretty sure I read it years ago, but only have a vague recollection.