2024-03-20 06:00:00
The slave from Missouri only played a minor role in Mark Twain’s novel. But his story is more than just a detail in a children’s book.
Roman.
“Hey there, who’s it? I’m going to kill myself, I heard something! But Jim, don’t be so stupid! Jim sit here and wait!” The man Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are stalking in the dark is actually not stupid at all. And his name isn’t even Jim, that’s just what his white owner calls him. The slave with the self-chosen name James acts stupid out of self-protection. Because nothing enrages white people more than the knowledge of others. That’s why author Mark Twain didn’t realize that he should have told “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” differently. Because it is actually about the adventures of the slave James – and his liberation. At least that’s what Percival Everett claims, who wrote “James,” a key novel in US literary history. He succeeds in updating and paying homage at the same time.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1884, is still misinterpreted today as a harmless children’s book. As a rule, socially critical content was cut from German editions, which is why only mischievous pranks remained. Mark Twain’s radical new approach became unrecognizable. He wrote about the common people, while other US literature, trained in British mannerisms, turned to the privileged. Instead of writing about English mansions or Victorian London, he sent two tramps down the Mississippi. Ernest Hemingway saw the adventures as a kind of declaration of independence from which “all modern American literature” descends.
The journey begins sometime after 1835, when the first steamboat plied the river. In the fictional St. Petersburg, Missouri, the slave James learns that he is to be sold. He flees at the risk of his life in order to survive and somehow be able to buy his family’s freedom. He also fears that he will be mistaken for the murderer of Huckleberry – Huck – Finn, who has also run away. Both share an unequal friendship that becomes even closer as they flee together.
In terms of content, Everett sticks to the original as long as the two protagonists are traveling together. He retains all the familiar stages such as discovering the houseboat, Huck’s disguise as a girl and the encounter with the fraudulent couple Duke and King. He only describes it from the perspective of the slave James, which is expanded to include new episodes in further chapters. In doing so, Everett repeats the unheard-of innovation that Twain undertook: the decision to tell the story from the point of view and, even more, in the language of a person from the social margins.
The US writer Percival Everett, like Twain, describes this journey as liberation. Huck escapes his supposed civilization. The half-orphan is supposed to become what Widow Douglas sees as a decent boy. Everett deliberately twists this further when he puts James at the center. Because the uncivilized nature of black people has historically been used as an argument for owning, selling, torturing and killing them as slaves. In fever dreams, James has passionate discussions with the philosopher Voltaire, who rejected slavery and yet made money from it. “How can a person belong to someone else?” comments Huck with a sincere question.
If Twain gave the supposedly stupid boy a voice, James receives the power of the narrative, which finally breaks his chains – James unchained. The character experiences empowerment. If Twain played with the southern dialects, here is the expression of the slaves of the experimental field. They speak to each other in understandable language, but are misprinted and pretend as soon as they come within earshot of the white people. Because they “expect us to sound a certain way, and it can only be useful not to disappoint them,” explains James. For him, the simulation of the simpleton sounds like this: “I think there are a lot of footprints in the snow. People always leave them behind.” “Can you keep it there?” And: “It was sad how she stormed.” Translator Nikolaus Stingl did an excellent job.
James can read and write, something else unheard of. When he finds a blank piece of paper and picks up a pen, a kind of inflection begins: “My name is James.” Nothing is romanticized. Because James is often simply lucky. The slave who gets him the pen for the symbolic freedom of the screaming movement is whipped for the theft. An underage black woman he wants to free dies.
The brutality of the story and the racism described are not mitigated and yet, like the original, the book reads as an entertaining adventure. His change of perspective not only frees his character, but also enables him to write easily, liberatingly about the dark chapter of US history. This book reads like a brisk river cruise on the Mississippi.
The book Percival Everett: James. Translated from English by Nikolaus Stingl. Hanser: Munich 2024. 336 pages, €26
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