Percival Everett
Appearances
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
It was, you know, first of all, I have to say that this novel doesn't come out of a dissatisfaction with the adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I imagine myself in a conversation with Twain doing this. And one of the things I think that he and I would both agree on is that he doesn't write Jim's story because he's not capable of writing Jim's story any more than I'm capable of writing Huck's story.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
Right. In fairness to the novel, it has flawed. It is flawed in that Twain stopped in the middle of it and then came back to it. And when he came back to it, I think there were some mercenary considerations at stake, and so it becomes more of an adventure. Tom Sawyer comes back into the novel, and the tone of the novel changes.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
It's less an exploration of Huck's confusion about Jim and his condition, and more of a pure adventure. And so I'm addressing that as well. I'm trying to get past that switch in tone that happens. But more importantly, I'm writing the novel that Twain could not. He was not equipped to do it.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
And apparently the word scares people. Quite frankly, if someone came into my study right now and shouted at me, you dirty N-word, I'd be just as offended as if they actually used that six-letter word that I just said. It's all about intention and meaning.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
It behooves fascists to ban it because there is a proper and direct interrogation of what it's like to live in a world where slavery is prevalent. And where con men and hucksters are running rampant. It's an American story. And that honest depiction is probably what scares some people.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass. The moon was not quite full, but bright, and it was behind them so I could see them as plain as day, though it was deep night. Lightning bugs flashed against the black canvas. I waited at Miss Watson's kitchen door, rocked a loose stepboard with my foot, knew she was going to tell me to fix it tomorrow.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
I was waiting there for her to give me a pan of cornbread that she had made with Sadie's recipe. Waiting is a big part of a slave's life, waiting and waiting to wait some more. Waiting for demands, waiting for food, waiting for the ends of days, waiting for the just and deserved Christian reward at the end of it all. Those white boys, Huck and Tom, watched me.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
They were always playing some kind of pretending game, where I was either a villain or prey, but certainly their toy. They hopped about out there with the chiggers, mosquitoes, and other biting bugs, but never made any progress toward me. It always pays to give white folks what they want, so I stepped into the yard and called out into the night. Who dat dare in dat dark like dat?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
Well, I don't know. The first thing I did to start this was I read Huckleberry Finn 15 times in a row. And I would stop and just go right back to the beginning until it became a blur. You know how when you say a word over and over, it finally sounds like nonsense? Well, I needed it to become nonsense, because I didn't want to merely regurgitate scenes.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
I needed to own the material, and that allowed me to own the material. So I was never saying what I thought Twain had said, because I couldn't remember what Twain had said.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
A couple. Once you've read something, you've read it. And I think after three or four, I was really tired of reading it, but I had to keep reading it.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
You're right. He is not inclined to use the same kinds of terms of endearment that Jim uses in Huck Finn. But it's also because my Jim, he's not simple. The Jim that's represented in Huck Finn is simple, and that's the part that Twain wasn't capable of writing. For Twain, a slave was a simple person. And by simple, I don't mean uncomplicated. I mean not terribly smart.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
When this black man who has been living as best friends and neighbors and coworkers with white America is stolen away from his home and spirited down to a plantation in the South, he's thrown into a situation with slaves. And he can understand what they say. And that can't happen. He does not speak their language.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
People who are oppressed find a way to talk to each other that does not allow the oppressors to understand what they are saying. And he would be as lost as that slave owner would be listening to the slaves talk to each other. And I was offended by that film because it cheated the enslaved people out of their humanity. The other thing about it is just the humor.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
People survive with humor in the most dire of straits and the picture of slavery that's painted in literature and film. the people are all just, how would you put it, bleak. Whereas if they're surviving, they're surviving because of their strength and their irony.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
Well, not funny in that way. And I think naturally I seek to employ humor as a disarming tool. I don't know how to be funny. If I try to write funny... I think I fail. Again, the lesson I've learned from Twain is that humor exists in the irony of the situation. I can't write jokes, but I can find the humor in the human condition.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
I was in Judge Thasher's library, a place where I had spent many afternoons while he was out at work or hunting ducks. I could see books in front of me. I had read them secretly, but this time, in this fever dream, I was able to read without fear of being discovered. I had wondered every time I sneaked in there what white people would do to a slave who had learned how to read.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
What would they do to a slave who had taught the other slaves to read? What would they do to a slave who knew what a hypotenuse was, what irony meant, how retribution was spelled? I was burning up with fever, fading in and out of consciousness, focusing and refocusing on Huck's face. Francois-Marie Acouet de Voltaire put a fat stick into a fire.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
His delicate fingers held the wood for what seemed like too long a time. I'm afraid there's no more wood, I said, which is fine, because I am hot enough. Too hot.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
literature i i suppose it's a way of asking do you think black writers are as confined now as then or or is there just a different kind of confinement well no there's there's there there's a much greater range of work um available now some some really fine writers who've found places in the in the literary world and so things have gotten better um
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
A few months ago, I stayed up late, and I turned on the television at 3 a.m., and there was an Abbott and Costello movie. I don't remember the title of it. It was something like Screams in Africa. And in it were all of these stereotypic black Africans, wide-eyed and afraid of everything, running around carrying stuff for white people.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
And I realized, well, yeah, we have more, but we haven't gotten rid of this baggage yet. The producers or whatever you call the people, the programmers of this network saw no problem with airing this. They had a slot, let's use this. And it's that kind of insidious insertion of the old stuff that caused so much damage to black psyches that persists.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
Well, I think that is true, and I think it was unconscious more than anything else. The U.S. really hasn't changed in character all that much. And what defines us remains the same. You know, the interesting thing about Huck Finn is it's the first novel... It's not that it's about slavery. It's about a man who was enslaved.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Percival Everett’s “James” Wins a Pulitzer
You know, when you think of Stowe's novel or some of the slave narratives, they're about slavery. They're not about white Americans experiencing the shame and the contradictions of the condition of slavery. But here we have this young American, this youth, who's having to reconcile moving through the world as a free person, while this person, the only father figure in the novel, is property.