James (by Percival Everett) - audiobook

January 6, 2025 11:16 PM

Remember Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn", the tale of a raft trip down the Mississippi a few years before the Civil War? This is that yarn, told from the point of view of Jim, the Black slave who befriends Huck and goes on the raft adventure with him.

Percival Everett is a Black writer of fiction based in the United States, and the audiobook's narrator is Dominic Hoffman.

The narrative is at times funny, but it's striking me more as a minutely observed account of how you might conduct yourself as part of a subaltern class in a place where offending the white folks could (and can) get you killed on the spot. For example: at one point, Jim holds a class for slave children on how to interact with white people if, say, their house was on fire. (Clue: make sure to allow the white person to think that they discovered the fire themselves and that they're smarter than you.)

I'm not very far along in the book, but I'll be sticking with it, God willing. Everett has apparently described himself as "pathologically ironic" but to me his work is blessedly free of "pathology"!

Fun detail: Huck is likeable, while his perhaps-better-known fictional counterpart, Tom Sawyer, is more than a bit of a jerk. Fortunately, Everett doesn't spend much time on Tom.

posted by rabia.elizabeth (4 comments total)

I have been reading this side by side with Huckleberry Finn and highly recommend doing so. It helps me see the choices Everett is making. I have a lot of thoughts about this book, whose premise makes enormous sense to me, but whose execution falters in some expected and unexpected ways. My main criticism of it so far is that I think it is unnecessarily heavy-handed. But there is a lot there to explore. Is it diminishing Huck, or does James underestimate Huck just like Huck underestimates and misunderstands James? Is it a criticism of Huckleberry Finn, or in part a love letter to it? Looking forward to seeing what others think about it. I have a little less than half of it left (but this is the part in Huckleberry Finn where I start to feel bogged down and lose some of my motivation to keep reading).
posted by prefpara at 6:15 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]

My main criticism of it so far is that I think it is unnecessarily heavy-handed.

That's disheartening because I really want to read this... But I have only read one other book by Everett, and I found it so heavy-handed that I gave up. As in, "give your readers some credit, they aren't moving their lips while they read" levels of beating me about the head and shoulders with his point.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:04 PM on January 7

I agree that the book is not subtle, but I still thought the experiment was worthwhile. Everett's use of deliberate anachronism reminded me a bit of Charles Johnson's Middle Passage.
posted by thomas j wise at 2:13 PM on January 7

I just finished this! My main takeaway was that I need to reread the original to really see what he’s doing.

Normally Fanfare allows for spoilers, but as a few of you have said you’re not done, I’ll come back in a week or two to check in about the ending!

My recommendation is definitely to read it, and to finish it if you’ve started. I felt puzzled much of the time (by the heavy handedness essentially) but then I sort of imagined it as an internal, dream-like conversation the author’s having with himself - much like James has with various French philosophers.

Lastly, I just watched The American Society of Magical Negroes and I felt it was (accidentally) an excellent pairing.
posted by Isingthebodyelectric at 3:16 PM on January 7