Why Percival Everett won the Pulitzer with “James”
In the renowned words of Ernest Hemingway, if AMERICAN literature springs from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, then it certainly requires immense courage and talent to measure up to the timeless work of Mark Twain. The legendary adventures of the adolescent Huck – a recurring theme of young protagonists in American literature, from Twain to Salinger – have deeply affected Americans who, by navigating the adult world of injustice, have honed their own resistance skills. Huck, the trickster, tramp, and former innocent, as well as Tom Sawyer’s infamous companion, has set his own version of the American standard – but who has ever dared to challenge him?
In a symbolic move that speaks volumes about his current position in American literature, Persival Everett takes on this challenge and emerges victorious. Using Mark Twain’s celebrated narrative as his guide, he shifts the spotlight from the protagonist, Huck Finn, to his sidekick, Jim. However, this transition is not merely following in Huck’s footsteps, but rather a creative dialogue with him: a dialogue with the suppressed aspects of an America still grappling with racist obsessions and violence; with a narrative style of youthful spontaneity that remains untarnished despite the original wordplay; and with a firm belief that no narrative can be crafted without a profound understanding of the past and the great canon.
Considerable credit is due to Myrsini Ghana’s translation, which successfully translates the slang into Greek, unlike other versions that resort to the outdated language of 1950s Greece.
Moreover, Everett calls upon every touchstone of the literary canon, from Shakespearean irony to the introspective dialogue of classics like Moby Dick, to shape his own masterpiece. He not only centers his narrative around his hero, James, but also innovates at every turn. He draws from the minutest details of the minor characters, scrutinizes all societal realities, documents every aspect of the river as though it were a living entity, and even transcends the acceptable boundaries of imagination, breathing life into Enlightenment figures like John Locke, thereby holding them accountable for their lofty, impractical ideals.
In a world deeply scarred by racism and violence, crafting literary realms without unmasking the ostensibly noble principles that have sustained civilization for centuries is no easy feat.
Philosophers and noble heroes are not scrutinized in vain, as the lofty ideals they espoused often concealed profound transgressions. The absurdity, after all, arises from the imposition of a reality that purports to be rational, yet accepts the commodification of human beings.
“Never has a situation appeared so absurdly unrealistic and ludicrous to me. And I have lived my life as a slave,” says James, who has passed himself off as a white man and, at one point, is compelled to impersonate a “negro” to perform a song by Daniel Emmett, a character who plays a crucial role, his lyrics permeating the early part of the book. Emmett was a real figure, the founder of the first blackface touring troupe, whose members would paint their faces black in a caricatured fashion. As in his other works, Everett employs this setup to project a satirical reflection of the most outrageous, comical aspects of reality, a style we’ve seen in his more “hard-hitting” books, Trees (Gutenberg Press) and Extinction (City), the latter of which was adapted into the 2023 Oscar-winning film, American Fiction.
The journey of Jim, as others knew him, to James, a fully formed character, is far from linear. It begins with his awakening to his status as a slave and a family man yearning for freedom, and his plan to escape, culminating in revenge, a prerogative that the ruling religions and whites have traditionally claimed for themselves. It all starts in the blood-stained southern region that is intrinsically tied to the most heinous racist crimes, a reality that South Carolina native Percival Everett – where the American Civil War erupted – knows all too well.
But unlike Mark Twain, from whom he draws his spatio-temporal framework, Everett does not gloss over the social realities. He meticulously chronicles the atrocities committed by white men, the bodies hanging from trees reminiscent of the song “Strange Fruit”, and the most egregious racist practices that were commonplace. However, all this is presented not in a realistic narrative, but rather as part of a vibrant adventure. Along their journey, the two protagonists encounter a variety of comic mishaps and peculiar characters, such as the Duke and the King, figures familiar to readers of Mark Twain – though not always without a heavy cost.
This marks the end of the shared elements between Everett and his favorite author, from whom he borrows narrative flair and sarcasm, and the beginning of his own unique literary prowess that rightfully won him the Pulitzer. Apart from the submission of a text that aspires to become a classic in its own right, the American author and academic’s manipulation of language is strikingly adept. The dialogues that the “Negroes” engage in are particularly noteworthy – he consciously repeats the term “Negro”, mirroring Twain’s usage in his book, to emphasize that the memory of language must be preserved, even if it appears shocking. These dialogues are encoded in a unique slang, difficult for whites to comprehend.
As Everett’s protagonist points out, this is not because the slaves belong to a less linguistically evolved community, but because this distinct language aids them in concealment and survival. After all, no one has ever truly tried to understand the thoughts, fantasies, or desires of slaves, even in classic texts like the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In this case, James, before becoming an active vigilante, resorts to the only weapons he has managed to acquire in his life – writing, reading, and language. “If I could look at words, no one could control those words or what I got out of them. No one could even know if I was just looking at them or reading them, if I could pronounce them or understand them. It was an entirely personal affair and entirely free and, consequently, entirely subversive,” Everett writes in the first person through his protagonist. The term ‘lathe experiencer’ did not mean that he was hiding on the wild banks of the river, but that he was concealed, speaking a language normalized by whites as the language of negroes.
What could be more revolutionary than this, than for slave Jim to be able to craft his own language at will, the one he shares with the children of his own people, whom he teaches that this is the only way they can hide from their ruthless masters? This, after all, is the ultimate freedom, just as today the humanities are the only response to entrenched cynicism. “There is nothing more frightening than human sounds,” James reflects towards the end of the book, declaring his own decision to distance himself from humans precisely because he seeks to express humanity in different terms. “Il faut cultiver notre jardin,” he writes in the book, referencing Voltaire’s Candide, implying that even if we live in a less than perfect world, we should strive for the best, each according to our capacity.
This is perhaps the most pressing demand today, one that only literature can truly highlight. It is also an approach to life and expression that rightfully earned Everett and his highly ambitious project the US National Literary Award and the Pulitzer for fiction, and a place on the shortlist for the Booker Prize. Our sole criticism of James lies in the somewhat clumsy revelation at the book’s conclusion about the fundamental ties between James and Finn. This realism feels out of place in a genre that typically leaves room for reader interpretation. Translator Myrsini Ghana deserves commendation for her successful rendition of the slang into Greek, a feat not achieved by other translations that resort to the outdated language of 1950s Greece. However, after listening to the audiobook, narrated by an actor proficient in the dialect of African-American Southerners, it becomes clear that a perfect translation is nearly impossible due to the lack of a direct equivalent in our language. This is perhaps why books like James may be less comprehensible to a European audience, and specifically in a country like Greece, despite their inherent merits.
This article was originally published in the print edition of LiFO.
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