Tom McKone“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway wrote in 1935. Twain’s masterpiece, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” which was written in the 1870s and 1880s set along the Mississippi River in the 1840s, a generation before the Civil War and emancipation of enslaved Americans, is still affecting us today.
One of the novel’s strengths and innovations is that Twain writes in the vernacular. So, rather than all speaking “proper” English, each character speaks differently, according to their position in society and the region they are from. Twain has an exceptional ear for dialect, and uses many different ones.
Twain’s authentic use of everyday 19th century language can be offensive. He uses the “n-word” 219 times. Every time I see that word, in any context, it gets harder to take. Combined with the book’s historically accurate depiction of the way many white people treated Black people, I understand why some parents have tried to have the book banned from libraries or school curricula.
We can’t ban the book and pretend that’s not our history. However, we could acknowledge the offensiveness of the n-word and soften it by using “n—–” in the text. We would not expect students or members of sometimes-maligned groups (women, Jews, Christians, Muslims, migrants, Indigenous Americans, etc.) to repeatedly read highly offensive words used to describe them, so why do we expect Black and brown Americans to do so?
Huck was already unhappy with what he considers an oppressive life with Miss Watson, and the return of his abusive father spurs him to run away. At the same time, after Jim, an enslaved man owned by Miss Watson, learns he is going to be sold downriver and separated from his wife and daughter, he also decides to run away, with the hope of getting to a free state, making money, and buying them.
Meeting up by chance, the two decide to run away together, putting them on a river journey that cements the already good relationship between the 12-year old (ish) white boy and 30-something Black man.
In one tense, tender incident, Jim hides in the tent on their raft and then in the water, as two armed men looking for runaway slaves approach them. Huck hesitates, when one asks, “Is your man white or black?”
Protecting Jim goes against everything he has been taught, and he thinks doing so is sinful; however, he cares a lot about Jim, and he thinks slavery is wrong. He lies, saying his “Pap” is white; and, to keep the men from looking in the tent to check, he further lies by saying he has smallpox. He is also worried about lying, which is another sin.
Published last year and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Percival Everett’s “James” is a genius re-imagining of “Huckleberry Finn,” from Jim’s perspective. As Huck narrates Twain’s book, Jim narrates Everett’s, and he does it with warmth, intelligence, and humor. I immediately liked this deeper, more complex Jim, who by the end of the book becomes James. The first two-thirds of the book loosely parallel the original; the last third is completely Jim’s story.
Everett, as a 21st century Black writer, can take the stories to places Twain couldn’t in his time. Jim is well read, and has sophisticated observations about many topics, such as different kinds of irony.
“So, when we see him staggering around later acting the fool,” Luke, another enslaved man, asks Jim, “will that be an example of proleptic irony or dramatic irony?”
All the foolish talk that both Twain’s and Everett’s characters use? Everett says Blacks are just trying to keep whites off their backs. His Black characters are no fools, except when pretending to be, in front of whites.
In his acknowledgements, Everett gives a nod to Twain: “His humor and humanity affected me long before I became a writer. Heaven for climate; hell for my long-awaited lunch with Mark Twain.” That, of course, is a play on Twain’s saying, “Heaven for climate; hell for society.”
Reading these two books together is a great coupling. It’s a reminder that there are many stories to tell, and many perspectives from which to tell them. Each time, we gain a slightly better understanding of the marvelous, horrifying, confusing, frustrating mysteries of being human. But, if I could read only one, I would take Everett’s.
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