Feature Review of “James” by Percival Everett

By Guest Contributing Writer Marc Friedman

Funny. Brilliant. Horrifying. Audacious. Tragic. Ingenious. Captivating. Inspiring. 

These words describe a new novel called James by the immensely gifted Percival Everett, the author who had previously written “Erasure,” a highly acclaimed novel, which was recently made into the movie “American Fiction” and other well-known works.

In “James,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Everett ingeniously brings Jim, the enslaved character from Mark Twain's classic, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, into the center of the story as the book’s narrator and hero.  

Jim’s narrative begins with his desperate escape from Hannibal, Missouri, upon learning he's to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans, which would separate him by hundreds of miles from Sadie, his enslaved wife, and his beloved daughter, Lizzie.

Jim, age 27, makes a daring decision to flee alone, seeking refuge on Jackson Island in the Mississippi River. At the same time, Huck Finn, who Jim knows from Hannibal, stages his own gruesome death to escape his father, a drunkard who is physically abusive toward Huck. 

They are later surprised to find each other on the island and agree to begin their journey together, Huck seeking to start a new life elsewhere free of his father and Jim determined to find a way to reunite with his family. Thus begins their perilous journey down the Mississippi River, fraught with dangers yet brimming with possibilities.

While iconic elements from Twain's tale remain—a backdrop of natural calamities, encounters with both fortune and tragedy along the river's edge, and run-ins with fraudulent characters like the Duke and the King— “James” presents Jim in a new light, emphasizing his intelligence, resourcefulness, wit, and empathy. 

Unlike Twain's portrayal, Jim in “James” is literate, having secretly read books in local Judge Thatcher’s library. He can engage in thought-provoking debates, even in feverish dreams with the likes of Voltaire and John Locke. Jim knows that with literacy comes freedom.

However, Everett does not shy away from the harsh realities of slavery, depicting the stomach-turning brutality of white enslavers. But this is not a book about slavery. Rather, in “James,” slavery exists as a horrifying backdrop to Jim’s inspiring emergence of his own agency.  Jim, and not the conditions of slavery, is the novel’s centerpiece. Jim is at the helm of this story. 

To paraphrase “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley, Jim understands that his “head is bloody but unbowed” and that he alone is “the master of [his] fate” and “the captain of [his] soul.”   With a small nubby pencil that George, a fellow enslaved man, stole for Jim (George was beaten to death for it), and some paper in a notebook that he stole, Jim movingly writes his first words, writing himself into being:

“I am called Jim. I have yet to choose a name. In the religious preachings of my white captors I am a victim of the curse of Ham. The white so-called masters cannot embrace their cruelty and greed, but must look to that lying Dominican friar for religious justification. 

But I will not let this condition define me. I will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage. I will be outraged as a matter of course. But my interest is how these marks that I am scratching on this page mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.”

In a Washington Post interview, Everett explains why he wrote “James.” The author states, “it was a longstanding dissatisfaction with the representation of enslaved people in literature and film…this portrayal of a simple-minded beast, more or less, is unfair to the really complicated human beings that obviously people, of course, were.”  Jim’s character in “James” is a powerful rebuke to that objectionable depiction of enslaved people.

One of the most interesting aspects of “James” is a language-switching technique (known as “code-switching”) that enslaved people would employ to survive. That is when enslaved people used a servile “slave dialect” in the presence of a white person, and then switched to regular speech when speaking among themselves.   

For example, in a conversation with Huck, who is white, about the Duke and the King, Jim states “you be almos’ thinkin’ dey be preachers.”  No doubt Jim could make this statement in clear, crisp English but that is not what an enslaved person did around a white person.

Jim's encounters with brutality to himself and others serve as a stark reminder of the powerlessness faced by the enslaved. Yet, the novel is imbued with hope, particularly in Jim's unwavering determination to reunite with his family and gain freedom. “James” takes many twists and turns and has several surprises that I will leave to readers to discover.

“James” is a monumental novel that carries within it important messages. Through Jim's perilous journey, Everett presents a compelling reimagining of Twain’s character that delves deep into Jim’s humanity, intellect, and love. It is a deeply insightful work by a brilliant author. “James” is a page-turner, a story that the reader will long remember. I guarantee it.

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Reviewer Marc Friedman was a trial lawyer for five decades and is now an Executive Coach. He graduated with a B.A degree in Philosophy from The Johns Hopkins University and a Juris Doctor degree, with Honors, from The George Washington University Law School.

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