Is there a hotter book than James by Percival Everett? Sure, the popularity is waning by now, but there’s still no paperback, and we still keep it on the front table in a tall stack at the bookshop because even a year later, James is selling. It’s being read. People are loving it. And the world nods along to 2024’s assessment of it as “book of the year.” If you haven’t read it yet, you are out of touch. (Kidding, not kidding.)

I actually don’t read the new books quick. Never have. For one, I like to pay paperback prices. For two, I like to see the consensus about a book after some time has passed and various opinions have gelled. When I read a new book, it’s pretty random. But after the excitement of James, I was happy to go ahead. I had been wanting to read Percival Everett after his book, Erasure, was made into what was my favorite movie of 2023, American Fiction. But I was also suspicious that the popularity of James had something to do with the movie’s release (and its Oscar nom right before the book’s publication). Let me see…

James by Percival Everett is a retelling of Mark Twain’s classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But this time, we hear the story through the perspective of the runaway slave, Jim. And it’s not just a perspective change; we realize rather quickly that Jim—or James, as he prefers—has several secrets that run in the story’s background we thought we knew, so that it changes the meaning of much of what we see on the page. Because James isn’t just any ol’ Black man in the antebellum South; no, he’s subversive and motivated and very intelligent. And maybe, perhaps, he isn’t even the only one.

I mean, this book isn’t meant to reflect history, exactly. Nor is it supposed to be realistic, I think. We are supposed to see James as the potential of the Black slaves more than an actual, historical figure. I think. And it’s also a way of turning Twain on its head so that we read new (and deeper) and exciting things into it. After all the hubbub, I still didn’t really know what to expect, so I needed some time to acclimate, to figure out what I was reading, exactly. It had something to say about history, something to contribute to our reading of Twain and our understanding of the times, but through an almost magical-realism shift. Or maybe not magical realism, but an exaggerated child character (Twain’s) with really real foibles and then an exaggerated slave character (Everett’s) with really real foibles. Actually, James ends up being more realistic than Huck, whose naivety and penchant for fables is highlighted in James. Yet I hate to put it that way, because even with the wild, near-magical tea that this story is steeped in, there are also brutal, violent, harsh, very real and historic (and also universal) truths.

On one hand, it’s like a play-by-play re-telling of the whole Huck Finn book, and it only changes in the spaces where Huckleberry’s experience (and tall tales) didn’t go in the original. And I don’t just mean when Huck leaves the room—I also mean in James’ mind-space, in the adult reading of a situation, etc. In that sense, the book is rather clever. And it is also written so neatly. Clean. Clear. Readable. Straightforward. Like Twain with just a touch more flourish. A touch. The only bummer here is that a reader is likely to be affected by the enthusiasm of the surrounding people (and the institutions) before they even pick the book, so that there’s only one way to go with their opinion. I can’t say this was my favorite read of the year. It wasn’t, actually. But it is a good book. And it’s solid. And it should stick around and be read for generations. Yes.

As for the twists, I saw them coming, and I bet that’s one reason people really liked this book. So maybe don’t guess. Just enjoy the ride. But speaking of…

You do not have to read Huckleberry Finn before reading James. You most certainly don’t have to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer before reading Huck Finn before reading James. But I read Huck Finn first and I would recommend it. If you are the type of person who will read a short classic novel before the modern response of a popular literary novel, then you definitely should. If you won’t, then I suppose just read James without, as opposed to missing out altogether. Reading Huck Finn gave me all sorts of perspective and understanding that I wouldn’t have had without it. And it was fun to compare the works basically scene by scene. I had just read it, so I could notice even the minor differences which were always meant to contribute something to the reader’s understanding of this world, of the story, of the history, etc.

I read the oldest copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain in existence. Just kidding; that would be worth a lot of money and I would be selling it, not reading it. But it’s a very beat-up paperback from a 1960s printing. The cover price says 45 cents and sometimes pages would fall out. I have no idea where I got it from.

I almost stopped reading, actually. Sure, the language is a bit archaic, and the accents take like three times as long to read as normal writing, but it wasn’t that. It was the child abuse. I knew the n-word was coming and I knew the book was written in pre-Civil War America, taking place in the South. So I was ready for that. But what no one seems to have mentioned before is the sheer amount of child neglect, abandonment, abuse, kidnapping, imprisonment and torture that takes place in the first few chapters. And delivered with a shrug, with levity and acceptance from the child’s point of view? Quite frankly, I found it brutal in a strange, detached, and I wanted to walk away, especially if it wasn’t going anywhere.

But I asked a friend. He said it would be worth it.

Having finished it, and especially after having read it and then James (with its adult perspective), I agree. It was worth it. But it was difficult and also felt anachronistic. I mean, you have this feral, childlike child (I’m not going to call him innocent, but there is that element to him) and he’s just casually recounting his abuse and neglect. Then you throw in some of Tom—with his stable home and his pretending to be the ruffian he isn’t. And you throw in the culture’s decades of absorption of Huck and Tom Sawyer and rafting on the Mississippi. The biggest thing I remember about Tom and Huck from my childhood was Tom Sawyer’s Island at Disney World and running through the mine shafts and boating across the water. No child abuse there.

I had a sense, too, that Twain wasn’t just presenting this reality because he saw it as normal and we, as a society, have just changed. I have a sense, instead, that he knew what he was doing giving Huck and Tom these totally opposed perspectives and infusing Huck with both troubles and naivety, for he is really gullible and also very full of stories. In other words, he believes Tom’s stories. And he doesn’t understand Jim’s situation. Because while Huck’s poor and neglected, he’s still white. There is so much going on in this text and it would take a class to truly understand both Samuel Clemmons (Mark Twain) and the history, and what Twain was doing with literature in the history. I felt like I was only beginning to understand what he was doing, and I might have been hugely misinterpreting some things. It was a long time ago. And I don’t know diddly about Twain except all the buzzy, inconsequential stuff.

That might be another suggestion: get some sort of commentary (even a quick one) on Huckleberry Finn. Read that after you read Huck Finn but before you read James. Then watch a video or something where Everett talks about James. I don’t think that the author always knows exactly what their book is truly doing and how it’s interacting with readers and society, but it would give you some idea on the intent. As for Huck Finn, it will only help to have more context and history to accompany it. There is an article HERE which could work. (Full disclosure: I used to work for Gale way back in the day, in one of its iterations as The Gale Group.)

Also note the “the adventures of” in the title. This is a story, and it has a story arc, but it is also a collection of adventures. It gets a little episodic at times, a little off the beaten path. Because it is the adventures of Huck. Not the adventure. You might get a little bored or put the book down now and again. I suppose the original idea was to read a bit at bedtime every night. “What’s that crazy Tom Sawyer and his rowdy friend Huck up to this time?” Like a radio show.

So yeah, James is definitely worth the read. And The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is worth the read as preparation for James. Technically, Huck Finn is children’s literature, but there is a lot more going on there than just for kids. And you will get a lot more out of James if you have read Huck Finn at least once, preferably close in time to reading James. People are loving this book, just as people of the past loved the original. The two of them will go down as American classics (well, one already has), linked by the patched-elbow arms, sucking on a couple of pipes.

PS. James is not funny. Don’t believe the book cover. It is betimes violent and brutal and disturbing, as the South being travelled by a runaway slave would be. The magical nature of it allows Everett to gather in most of the worst scenarios in one text, in fact, so that we have to stare history in the face.

“The only ones you suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us. Perhaps I should say ‘when they don’t feel superior'” (James, p21).

“I could see that anything I thought was good could entail some bad consequences” (p72).

“White people love feeling guilty” (p77).

“Good ain’t got nuttin’ to do wif da law” (p78).

“‘But if you make it,’ Old George said, ‘no whipping in the world could undo the hope you will give us.’ / ‘That’s bullshit,’ Pierre said. ‘A lashing is a lashing. No thought in the world will stop the bleeding and the scarring'” (p94).

“But our sympathetic suffering was nothing like Young George’s. That hurt most” (p96).

“After being cruel, the most notable white attribute was gullibility” (p106).

“‘Yes, but them people liked it, Jim. Did you see their faces? They had to know them was lies, but they wanted to believe …. .’ / ‘Folks be funny like dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em'” (p126).

“A distance you know is shorter den one you don’t” (p138).

“But running and escaping were not the same thing” (p138-139).

“If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning” (p153).

“You might be the reason, but it ain’t your fault” (p179).

“Bad as whites were, they had no monopoly on duplicity, dishonesty or perfidy” (p195).

“And yet, with all that running, no place appeared like a new place. Perhaps that was the nature of escape” (p220).

“Hope? Hope is funny. Hope is not a plan. Actually, it’s just a trick. A ruse” (p276).

“I hated the world that wouldn’t let me apply justice without the certain retaliation of injustice” (p280).

“Was it evil to kill evil?” (p284).

“…If you are anywheres where it don’t do to scratch, why you will itch all over in upward of a thousand places” (p6, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).

“…but I’d druther been bit with a snake than pap’s whisky” (p68).

“…en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head or dey fren’s and makes ’em ashamed” (p109).

“…for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others” (p159).

“…it’s the little things that smooths people’s roads the most…” (p243).

“That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide, it ain’t no disgrace” (p271).

“You can’t pray a lie–I found that out” (p272).

“It shows how a body can see and don’t see at the same time” (p296).