In his latest book, “James,” author Percival Everett retells the story of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” refocusing the narrative on Jim, the novel’s enslaved main character. Everett saw it necessary to portray a more truthful representation of an enslaved person, one free of many of the stereotypes cast upon Black people throughout the American literary canon.
“The depiction of enslaved people is always that they are childlike, simple minded, incapable of second order thinking… even in ‘Huck Finn,’ Jim is portrayed as childlike and incapable of even understanding practical jokes that are played on him,” said Everett. “Of course, no one is like that. Enslaved people aren’t like that.”
Analyzing the Black experience is a common theme in Everett’s work — most famously in his 2001 novel “Erasure,” which was adapted into the award-winning film “American Fiction.”
Everett will be at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on June 4 to discuss “James,” followed by a showing of “American Fiction.” Ahead of his appearance at the Coolidge, Everett sat down with executive arts editor and “The Culture Show” host Jared Bowen to discuss his work.
“American Fiction,” which won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, satirically grapples with the difficulties that Black authors face in publishing their work. Both the film and its source material follow the tribulations of “Monk” Ellison, an erudite novelist who sends his publisher a satirical, stereotypically “Black” book, only for it to prove more financially and critically successful than his other novels.
Everett was glad that the message of his work still resonates years later.
“This is a separate work of art, I like it very much… Cord Jefferson, the director, made something new,” said Everett. “It could well be that someone will make something of mine a new work of art and I don’t like the film, but I still like that it exists as something new, [that] it’s the work finding its own food and surviving.”
In the decades since the release of “Erasure,” the publishing world has changed significantly, but Everett acknowledges many of the issues that Black authors continue to face.
“The world has changed since then, back when I was publishing [‘Erasure’],” said Everett. “The publishing world that I was addressing was already in transition. Some of the problems still exist, they’re a little more insidious, a little more covert, hard to spot. But, the range and depiction of the lives of African-American people has grown and expanded remarkably. There’s so many great writers out there, right now, but some of those expectations linger.”
