Booker Prize review: Percival Everett’s ‘James’ is a caustic tale of America’s shape-shifting racism

Percival Everett is back on the Booker Prize shortlist with James. After the success of his 2022 Book Prize nominated The Trees and the 2023 Oscar-winning movie American Fiction based on his novel Erasure (2001), and Pan Macmillan’s specially-designed new editions of his old books, it looks like the Everett brand is finally getting its moment in the sun and is here to say.

Jim and Huck meet again

Everett’s novel James, an energetic retelling of Mark Twain’s biggest hit The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is his latest accomplishment. Keeping the adventurous spirits intact, James is told from Miss Watson’s slave Jim’s perspective who has fled home due to rumours of Watson selling him off and therefore separating him from his family. A short absence would allow Jim to get his affairs in order and free his wife and children from captivity. Meanwhile, Huck’s circumstances have not changed either – an abusive, alcoholic father has made home hell, making Huck flee to the wilderness. The joint absence of a black and white man is bad news. Huck suspects it while Jim knows it – it wouldn’t be long before Jim is accused of getting rid of Huck. If Jim is lucky, he’ll be spared a quick death for this supposed crime and if he’s not – which is more likely – he’ll be lynched by the townsfolk.

When Huck runs into his “friend” Jim, the two set sail on an adventure that takes them along the length of the Mississippi River in their quest to survive, escape odd characters, and hatch last-minute plans out of situations that would quite likely end in death. Gone are Huck’s boyish adventures in Twain’s novel, in this game of survival, Everett’s Jim reveals a rich inner self that has survived a life of humiliation and inhuman hardship. Jim puts on his “slave filter” around the white man but at home and in the company of slaves speaks perfect English, without even the typical Mississippi twang. He has taught himself to read and write by sneaking into his master’s library. A stolen stub of pencil is among his most prized possessions. For what it’s worth, Jim is better “educated” than Huck (and most whites around him) – in his dreams, he chats with Voltaire, Locke, and Rousseau as they bounce their philosophies off each other.

Jim and Huck’s solitude is intruded upon when charlatans, slave-sniffing white men, and tattletale blacks cross their paths. The duo gets caught in scams they have no interest in orchestrating. One particularly funny incident involves two middle-aged men who claim to be a duke and king on the run. Taking the young Huck and Jim into their fold, the four of them end up in a southern town where they perform Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The presence of Shylock – a Jew – among them does not sit well and chaos ensues with a real threat to their lives. The racism on display – the term feels rather benign in comparison – is a peek into America’s savagery. The slaves know to keep out of the white man’s way, but Jim’s frequent close brushes with offending the white man’s sensibilities could prove lethal. As he advises himself and his children, it is necessary to allow the white man to feel important, to play god, to be the first discoverer. Jim is cursed from birth but the white man chooses to be inhuman for a petty upperhand. The slave owners that Jim encounters are neither wealthy nor influential – most are “sour-smelling”, poor white folks who keep slaves because that is the fashion of the times. They can neither feed the slaves well nor themselves yet abuse, rape, and lynching of the blacks keep them on the top rung of the racial ladder.

A legacy of racism and violence

Even when some slave owners are known for their “benevolence” – they do not give hard lashings, still, they refuse to let go of the whip. For Jim, the white man is not the “oppressor” but the “enemy”. When he witnesses Katie’s owner raping her – a slave girl no older than his daughter – Jim loses his carefully maintained cool and serves revenge in a style appropriate to Hollywood Westerns. The revenge fantasy is a delightful detail which I suppose would’ve been almost impossible for a slave to execute in real life.

While the adventures revolve around Jim’s escape and his desire to win his family’s freedom, the real-time relationship we get to witness is that of his and Huck. A well-meaning boy, Huck’s understanding of liberty and justice is coloured by his race. When Jim wants to tread the honest path if he can help it, Huck suggests “stealing” his family as unrest of the civil war grows in southern towns. The affection they share is not negated by the race hierarchy – Jim does not take off his slave filter and puts on the “negro tongue” while talking to Huck. For the safety of passage, Huck has often pretended to be Jim’s owner – even though he’s still too young to own slaves – and Jim addresses him as “massa” in front of other people. Any transgression could prove deadly and Huck’s frequent attempts to rescue Jim from mistreatment invite suspicion on the exact nature of their relationship. Still, Huck is protective of Jim and Jim’s clear-headed grip on the seriousness of the circumstances they are in makes them dependable if unlikely companions on an adventure.

James is caustic and witty, but I would hesitate to call it funny (as some have). The success of the Abolitionist Movement might have freed slaves but it has failed to quench a deeply racist America’s thirst. The unflinchingly violent language and attitudes that the white man subjected to the black slave have not abated. We see its replications in the newer forms of racism against people of colour and America’s long-standing, widespread treatment of Asian and African countries. These acts of violence have evolved with age – sharper, more precise weapons and the opportunities to export war have been gladly utilised. The ongoing, aggravated assaults carried out by troops backed by America reminded me of the white folks that Jim encounters – disillusioned, despised, and ensnared by their own compromised humanity. Like Jim who takes extra care to stay out of the white man’s way, the rest of the world also hopes to escape America’s wrathful, prejudiced gaze. With James, Everett has given us a classic about a classic, and a quiet reminder that racism never dies – it simply changes shape to what is “acceptable” of a time.

James, Percival Everett, Mantle/Pan Macmillan.