James, Jim & Huckleberry Finn . . . history reframed

With publication of his latest novel, James, the philosopher, writer and teacher Percival Everett has recharged conversations around race, history and literature. By harnessing that venerable but creaking grandfather of American literature, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Everett has illuminated the space of Black Americans in the historical dialogue of the United States, transcending the silence historically imposed on the enslaved population.

For this study, we will consider some of the sections of Huckleberry Finn that Everett reenvisions in James, but our focus will be on how James centres Black experience in this world of violence and dehumanisation. Twain’s work has been celebrated across generations, but in recent decades the book’s problematic aspects – always present, if we have been attentive – have become the focus of discourse and re-consideration of the text. We have reached the point where a new edition removes all the n-words, as though this might fix the structural racism of that time and of our own. 

Focusing on the distinctive power of his portrayal of characters in James, we will explore how Everett dismantles the dehumanisation of Twain’s portrayal of Jim, Huck’s mentor and friend. We will explore how the strange contradictions of Twain’s writing that sought to normalise the racism and violence of the South are brilliantly addressed in Everett’s work.

Our study of these two works will involve far more than just a backwards glance to the oppression of the past. In James, Percival Everett deftly demonstrates how the act of signifying – a practice described by the American literary scholar and cultural theorist Henry Louis Gates Jr. – draws on formidable writings and representations of the past while establishing a more expansive understanding of human identity through language and creative design. 

JOINING DETAILS:

• Six week study (on Zoom) led by Toby Brothers
• Thursdays, 5.30-7.30 pm (UK), 10 October-14 November 2024
• Recommended editions: James by Percival Everett (hardback), ISBN-13: 9781035031238; The Adventures Huckleberry Finn Penguin Classics 2014, ISBN-13: 978-0142437179.
• £180 for six meeting study