Just finished Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Percival Everett's James
Hello again,
I posted in the August 7, 2026 Free Talk Friday that I was reading Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn so that I could read Percival Everett's James. I finished Huck and now I have also finished James. I was prepared, in theory, to encounter racism from Mark Twain. I did not expect to see the "N" word as many times as I did. The way Twain's characters treated Black people was so condescending and in many cases - inhuman. If you ignore the way that Twain writes about Black people and put him into the context of being an equal opportunity offender (he dings many majority stereotypes, too) the book is actually well written. My sole purpose for reading it, though, was so I could have context when I read James.
James is my second Percival Everett book. I listened to Erasure in my audiobook app a couple of months ago. I have to say I enjoyed James far more than I enjoyed Erasure. I actually finished reading James far more quickly than I finished listening to Erasure. What I liked about James: Huck and Jim (James') relationship was far more palatable. The relationship of James and his wife, Sadie and daughter Liz was also more palatable. The relationship between James and the other enslaved people felt more real and true. The code switching was one of my favorite things in the book.
Mark Twain did this awful scene where Jim relates to Huck that he beat his hearing impaired daughter because he didn't understand her disability. I was wondering, while I read that, how Everett was going to handle that scene. He left it out entirely, and I'm glad. There were other scenes that diverged from the original but it didn't take away from the story. I'm glad I read Huck, because I did have some context for James. But I'm glad I read James and it's a good novel that you don't necessarily have to read Twain to get the drift.
The endings are not the same. Something I am also very happy about.