James // a book pairing

“With my pencil I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself here.”

A modern re-telling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I was a little hesitant to read James by Percival Everett, afraid I wouldn’t really get it, having opted out of Mark Twain’s classic.¹

If anything, my childhood rebellion against assigned reading served me well in my reading. Venturing down the Mississippi River with Huck and James (formerly known as Jim) through James’s eyes was an experience I won’t soon forget. James is a compelling narrator whose weariness, wisdom, fire and humor drew me in and made me want to be a person worthy of his friendship.

As someone with a bad habit of avoiding the classics (they’ll always be there!), I was nervous to pick this up over the summer, especially while solo parenting for several weeks, but James was the perfect literary companion to those lonely weeks as James’s loneliness and uncertainty paired with his devotion to Huck’s wellbeing mirrored my own. To say that feels almost wrong considering basically everything else about our lives and circumstances is totally different and also because he’s a fictional character. But if anything, it only speaks to the power of story in connecting us to the larger human experience across time and cultures.

Photo by Urban Vintage on Unsplash

James by Percival Everett

Feels like a rattlesnake bite, muddy river bottom under your toes, fever dreams, a wool suit that doesn’t fit quite right, shoes that pinch and rub, sweat dripping in your eyes.

Looks like lightning bugs in a summer sky, a summer storm, lightning over the Mississippi River

Smells like smoke from a fire, sweat, a pan of cornbread that smells better than it tastes

Sounds like thunder, a whip scraping the ground, a scream, the ring of a hammer on hot metal, waves on a shore, uneasy laughter, a racing heart.

Tastes like catfish cooked over an open fire, chicken feet and rice, biscuits, dried meat, wild berries.

Pairs well with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

What are you reading?

1. I did, however, watch the corresponding episode of Wishbone on PBS which gave me enough of the story to bullshit my way through discussions and quizzes.