James, by Percival Everett

I'm not sure why it took me so long to get to reading James. I got my copy in March of 2024 when Percival Everett did a reading and signing at P&T Knitwear in New York. It looks like I went out of town a few days later and when I came back, I read other things. Or I didn't read at all, for a while there. It's sat on my shelf ever since. The fact that it's a hardcover edition didn't help – I always prefer to read paperbacks. And I think part of my hesitation was the subject matter itself. I wasn't sure I wanted to retread Huck Finn, even if I did trust Everett to do it well. It's been a very long time since I read Huckleberry Finn – I'm not even sure I've read it in its entirety. But I'm familiar with it in the way anyone who grew up here (at least when I did) must probably be.

I'm also not sure what led me to pull it out to read just over a week ago. I was about to finish Dooneen and was scanning my shelves and I looked at James and wondered, why haven't I read it yet? So I laid it out and a couple days later, I started it. I read nearly 100 pages in that first sitting. 

One of the things I've always marveled at in Everett's books is the way he can meld comedy and tragedy, with a humor that is often ironic and biting, but James has less of that type of comedy than, for instance, The Trees or Erasure. It's a very tender book. I wrote very little about Telephone when I read it, but it's probably closer in mood to James than the other Everett books I've read.

Once I was into it, there were a few times when my anxiety about reading it did make me pause. The middle section in particular, when Jim and Huck were traveling and running into various risky situations was the most stressful. I found I could often read only one chapter at a time. Oddly, the situation gets arguably worse in the latter third of the book, but I didn't find that as hard going. At the conclusion I felt – and I think this is how one must feel – that Percival Everett made Huckleberry Finn make sense.