Reading the Booker Prize - James
Percival Everett's James is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim, a character who from what I understand carries a huge amount of cultural weight in America. Twain's original novel is of course known outside of the States but doesn't have anywhere near the same cultural presence, and I've managed to go 38 years without ever reading it or really knowing what it's about. I figured that if I was going to read James and get the most out of it, I first needed to read Huckleberry Finn so I'd have the context that I needed.
Now that I've read both books I think it probably would have been fine to read James without having first read Twain, but I'm also very glad I made the decision to read both books - and specifically to read them back to back. The added context really elevated James from something that I enjoyed into something that feels important. I assume that if you're American and have grown up with Huckleberry Finn that this book lands like an orbital strike for you.
The biggest surprise I had reading Twain was in how funny the book is, and that surprise carried over into James as well. Both books are much funnier than I ever expected either of them to be, but where the humour in Huckleberry Finn is simply there for the same of entertainment, James juxtaposes it against some moments of real horror and anxiety that make those scenes hit even harder.
I think the most interesting decision here is not to simply repeat the plot of Huckleberry Finn from James's perspective but instead to use that as a jumping-off point into a story that's less of a retelling of the original and more of a conversation with it. Readers familiar with Twain's book will see things they recognise - Jim's initial escape to a river island, the characters of the King and the Duke (here rendered as the monsters they always shoild have been) - but it very quickly diverts into a story thst is entirely Jim's, and for me those new scenes are much more powerful than simply being shown familiar moments from a new point of view. A sequence in which James joins a wandering minstrel show, forced to wear boot polish to darken him up but also lighten his skin in the joints so that nobody can tell he's actually the Black man he's pretending to be, is particularly impactful. The ending, too, is incredibly powerful. Everett chooses not to repeat the ending of Huckleberry Finn that would see James close out the book in chains, instead allowing him a reunion with his family and a moment of cathartic revenge that is never even suggested as an option for Twain's Jim.
The full context in which James works may not be entirely available to me, but that doesn't detract from the work in any way. This is very good, and absolutely worth your time.