Reading Journal 2024: James: A Novel
Author: Percival Everett
Definitely a conversation starter. It is a really strong example of how to write a reimagining of a classic with purpose and craft. Not only that, it is an extremely entertaining read, especially where it weaves the old world language of Twain into a modernist vibe. It felt very much like I was in the world I knew, with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn being significant stories from my childhood, but it also felt entirely unfamiliar and new.
Which I imagine is part of the point of this exercise. There is a whole world, a whole life, that lays buried underneath the language of a time and a place. To tell the same story from the perspective of James, the slave whom accompanies Finn, is to imagine not only how he sees those familiar events once held captive to Finn’s perspective, but to travel with James into a world of his own, a world that is never accounted for in the original book. What makes it so pognant and interesting of course, is the melding of that old story with the new, stories that do in fact stand years apart when it comes to composition. Everett is not revising the old story, rather he uses those untold spaces to write a modern tale informed by our present time, letting it be and become its own natural commentary.
It is as humorous as it is harrowing and insightful. It feels unabashed in its desire to maintain and explore the simple charm of those old river tales, never loosing sight of the childlike whims of Sawyer and Finn’s adolescent escapades. Which is really what impressed me the most. The book pokes, but never condemns. It wants to bring a fervent appreciation and admiration for the classic to the table while evoking the freedom to table one aspect of the conversation. In different hands this could have been an easy swing and a miss, but here Everett has found a way to pen a new classic in its own right, one that belongs alongside Twain’s enduring adventures.
The Stories of my Life 