Mark and Percival and Jim and James

James. Percival Everett. 2024.

I like to say about Mark Twain that he was the greatest American writer who never wrote a great novel. He could write two-thirds or three-quarters of a great novel, no problem. He was great for funny lines. Pithy observations. He started so many great novels because he had so many good ideas. He understood America and Americans as well as any writer the country has yet produced. He was it.

His novels have an unfortunate tendency to completely collapse. It’s too bad - they start strong. This is the most common complaint people have about Huckleberry Finn - that it falls apart in the last act. This is also true of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and Pudd’nhead Wilson. I don’t know if it was boredom or depression or cynicism, but Twain seemed to lose interest in his own plots and characters, and that meant that the darkness present in all of his work could end up taking over. It’s almost, sometimes, like he wanted to punish his creations for putting him in this position.

I was about thirteen when I first read Huck Finn, and I was as frustrated at the last act as anyone. I think what bothered me most at the time was Tom Sawyer, and his refusal to treat Jim with any respect or treat the danger that Jim was in with any seriousness. I believed Jim to be loving, and good, and brave, and his predicament was the most horrifying thing in the world - why couldn’t Tom see that, and why was Huck going along with it? Jim wasn’t given any dignity - I hated that.

I wonder if Percival Everett felt a similar frustration as a young person, because his primary aim in writing James appears to be to give Twain’s Jim back some of his dignity. And thank God for that, because the three-quarters of a great book that is Huck Finn has finally produced a book that is great all the way through. I loved James without reservation, and I loved the transformation of Jim into James, with all of his dignity intact.

Because James is still Jim; Everett has, despite everything, respect for Mark Twain and his characters. Little is exactly changed from Twain’s novel before the end, but instead the edges are filled in and moved to the center. Jim’s exaggerated, oft-parodied patois is shown to be the performance of a literate, curious, highly intelligent man who understands to his bones the desire of whites to feel superior. His love for Huck is not servile or automatic, but particular - James loves Huck for specific reasons, and would not treat any young white boy the same. Jim’s mistakes of trust or judgment are the result of being pulled in too many impossible directions.

There’s been a trend of retellings of classics or myths in the last few decades. James belongs with the best of them; like Wide Sargasso Sea, it deepens and expands your appreciation of what came before. It’s a masterpiece.