Percival Everett’s “James.” A classic within a classic.  Literacy and Democracy: The Pygmalion Problem. Overreaching for irony/Undercutting the message?

Percival Everett’s James. A classic within a classic.

Literacy and Democracy: The Pygmalion Problem

Overreaching for irony/Undercutting the message?

Burton Weltman

“The children said together ‘And the better they feel, the safer we are.’

‘February, translate that.’ ‘Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be’ ’Nice.’”

 James teaching a group of enslaved children how to act and speak black as

a means of survival when in the presence of white people.

Huck and Jim/James and Huck.

Percival Everett’s novel James is a brilliant book.  The reviews are in and it is being hailed as an instant classic, which may be going a bit far, but not by much.[1]  A retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim the enslaved companion of Huck, Everett’s novel makes Huck the companion of Jim, now self-renamed James.  In James, their joint adventures become James’ story, not merely because he is the narrator and fictionally the author of the book, but because he is the driving force and determining intelligence behind the adventures of the two companions.

In its basic outline, James follows the story in Huckleberry Finn, as the two protagonists escape from Widow Douglass’ farm in fictional St. Petersburg, Missouri, and make their way down the Mississippi River towards New Orleans.  There are some deviations in James from the plot of Huckleberry Finn, but nothing that detracts from Huck’s story or demeans Twain’s novel. The main difference between the books is that James in James is literate and can speak better English than any of the white people in his book.  It is a secret that James has kept from white people for many years, mumbling a bumbling version of slave-speak in the presence of whites, and that he keeps from Huck until late in the story.

Technically, James is a brilliant complement to Huckleberry Finn.  Thematically, it is an impelling supplement.  The plot of Everett’s book is for the most part inserted into the open spaces of Huck’s narrative in Twain’s book.  Initially, James’ story follows along behind Huckleberry Finn, with James’ narrative complementing Huck’s.  But eventually, James’ story takes the lead, with Huck’s story complementing his.  Everett has turned the drama around so that Huckleberry Finn becomes a complement to James.  James’ is the main story.  Huck’s becomes the background.

It is a remarkable turnaround.  Huck’s story in Huckleberry Finn is engrossing and we feel for him.  But James’ story in James is compelling and we hurt with him.  Huck’s problems are real but pale in comparison with those of James.  Huck is a free and fairly affluent white boy who is fleeing domestication.  If he is caught, he will have to go to school and church and eat with a fork.  James is fleeing enslavement and permanent separation from his family, and he faces torture and death if he is captured.  Given James’ predicament, Huck’s problems seem secondary. 

All kudos to Everett.  It is no mean feat to take a book that is often acclaimed as the “Great American Novel” and successfully make it into the background for your book.  Not to demean Huckleberry Finn, an all-time classic, but Everett’s novel is a remarkable achievement and a contender for classic status.   

For one thing, James is unforgettable.  It grips you while you are reading it and haunts you thereafter.  Its power stems in part from the description of events and characters in the book, but even more from the feelings that it leaves you with.  Everett is a black American.  His book is a chilling description of the pressure that blacks have historically been under in this country to behave in a submissive way toward whites, and often are to this day. 

The book is specifically about enslaved blacks in the ante-bellum South for whom any action that could be conceived by a white person as being uppity might lead to horrible consequences.  Unintendedly saying the wrong thing, glancing the wrong way, almost anything might offend a white person and result in humiliation and beating at the least, torture and lynching at the worst. 

The book makes you feel the chronic anxiety that enslaved people must have felt and that people of color must often feel today, especially in encounters with white police officers.  It did not, I must add, leave me with feelings of guilt or self-loathing as a white person.  It left me with horror, sorrow, anxiety and anger.  There should be no question of the book being banned from schools on account of guilt-tripping white kids.  It does not demean them and should energize them instead.

James is a political book, albeit not in any partisan way.  To the contrary, it is a reminder that the antebellum Republican Party was anti-slavery, the Democratic Party pro-slavery.  And that until the 1960’s, the segregationist South was solidly Democratic.  It is, however, political in the sense of the slogan that “The personal is political,” that treating people with respect is the goal of a humane politics, and that we should respect the respectful but disrespect the disrespectful.

The main thrust of the book is the way James is treated by different people in different contexts along the way downriver.  At one point, he has to put on blackface makeup to pretend he is a white person pretending to be a black person.  Which is something he can do because he can speak English better than any of the whites.  Poignant and hilarious.  One of the surprises in the book, and a source of laugh-out-loud humor, is that James and other blacks can speak perfect English and that they only feign a garbled slave-speak to fool while people.          

As brilliant as the book is, I think that it was a misstep to have James able to speak better English than any of the white people.  It was unnecessarily reaching too far for contrasts and comedy.  And it exemplifies the widespread attitude that the ability to speak textbook English is a prerequisite for high social standing.  That is an elitist attitude that I think is undemocratic and that works against the overall democratic message of James.

Cultural Literacy: Aristocracy, Meritocracy, and Democracy.

Lincoln famously described democracy as government of, by and for the people.  It is a wonderful description, but it begs the questions of who is to be considered part of the people.  Democracy depends on people being literate within their own culture, being able to understand what are the public issues, evaluate alternate options for dealing with those issues, and work with others to deal with the issues.  If the whole of the population of a society isn’t capable of that, then a democracy of all the populace might not work for that society.   

In the so-called democracies of the ancient Greeks, about one-third of the populace was considered citizens, about one-third was foreign non-citizens, and about one-third was enslaved persons.  It was the citizens for whom government was of, by and for.  And even among the citizens, there were class and status differences in the political rights, duties and powers of individuals.  An elite portion of the populace held the effective power.  Foreigners, slaves and women had no governmental power and had to be satisfied with whatever rights they were given. 

This state of affairs could be rationalized as being as democratic as was possible under the circumstances.  In ancient Greece, language skills were of primary importance.  Many cities were governed by an assembly of the whole citizenry.  Ability to participate in the assembly was largely based on oratorical skill.  One could, therefore, rationalize limiting the citizenry, “the people,” to a small enough number of persons able to meet all together, and to empower only those persons who had sufficient language skills to debate effectively in the assembly.

In Medieval Europe in which most people were serfs and were effectively owned by the neighborhood nobleman, many peasant villages were effectively democratic.  Except for the dues and duties that they owed to the lord, the peasants collectively managed their own affairs on an “of, by and for the people” basis. The villagers elected headmen and allocated tasks and lands based on collective agreements.  It was a democratic base within an aristocratic superstructure.

Being able to read, write and orate was not significant in the medieval village.  The peasants’ problems were unlikely to involve reading and writing, and the villagers’ discussions and negotiations were unlikely to require dramatic oratorical skills.  In sum, the skills required to function as a democracy depend upon the situation.  People who cannot read or write may have cultural literacy in dealing with plants, animals, people and other things that enable them to comprehend and contribute to the discussion of their society’s issues.

The idea of democracy in which “the people” meant everyone is essentially a late-eighteenth century development in Europe and among European Americans.  Previous theories of government, both liberal and conservative, assumed that only some of the people were capable of participating in the social and political system, and many theories still do. 

Conservatives have historically promoted aristocracy, even when the social and political system has been superficially democratic.  Aristocracy is based on the idea that the inheritance of genetic and/or social advantages qualifies a person to belong to the class of leaders and rulers in a society, and hold a status to which others should defer.  Liberals have generally countered with meritocracy.  Meritocracy is based on the idea that having developed and displayed certain abilities, especially high levels of language literacy, qualifies a person to belong to a class of the most competent people who should lead and rule society. 

Neither idea is genuinely democratic. Neither promotes government of and by all of the people even if it promotes government that is ostensibly for the people.  Both doctrines culminate in an elite class of special persons that rules over the mass of ordinary persons.  Slavery was an extreme version of these doctrines.  It rationalized a combination of aristocratic and meritocratic theories taken to an extreme at which point they rebounded on themselves and justified a slave society that was neither conservative nor liberal. 

The theory of racial slavery in this country held that white people were genetically superior to black people and that whites, thereby, justifiably inherited their dominance over blacks.  At the same time, the theory held that the culture of white people, and especially its foundation in English language skills, was superior to the culture of black Africans and their descendant slaves, so that whites were deemed capable of social and political participation whereas blacks were not.

Developments in genetics and in the history of African cultures have long since given the lie to these theories of white superiority.  Scientists have determined that there are no significant biological differences among the so-called races which, in any case, are social-constructions and not genetic distinctions.  In turn, anthropologists have explained that different cultures develop different ways and means in response to different situations, and that so long as different cultures deal adequately with their different circumstances, there is no basis for considering one culture superior to the others.  That goes for slave cultures like that of the enslaved African Americans.

One of the greatest achievements in human history is the culture of freedom developed in slavery by African Americans.  It was a culture that dealt with the fact of their enslavement and their need to protect themselves against brutality from white people.  As a result, blacks developed both a camouflage bumbling English to make themselves seem stupid in front of white people, and also an in-group slang lingo that enabled them to communicate with each other without being understood by their masters.  Enslaved blacks were effectively trilingual.  In this way, they developed behavioral defense mechanisms to keep white people from accusing them of insubordination while allowing them to exercise a degree of independence and insubordination.    

But black culture was not merely a defense mechanism.  It was also a way of living that tapped the energy and creativity of enslaved black people to produce a wealth of stories that became a keystone of American literature and a torrent of songs that became the foundation of American music – the Gospel, blues and jazz which are America’s major contribution to world music.[2]  And they did this despite being largely illiterate.  It has been estimated that some ten percent of enslaved blacks could read and write as compared with some eighty percent of ante-bellum whites.  But that did not stop blacks from developing a high level of their own cultural literacy.  A culture of freedom and free expression, albeit often disguised.      

Open rebellion by enslaved blacks was rare.  Although there were some heroic uprisings, there were very few attempted rebellions and they failed badly.  There was, in reality, almost no chance that a slave revolution could succeed in the United States given the relatively small number of enslaved blacks compared to white freemen.  Violent resistance would have been deadly to the blacks. 

At the same time, the relatively peaceful response of blacks to slavery should not be seen as a passive response and somehow a weakness in the enslaved people.  The paucity of slave uprisings should instead, I think, be seen as largely a result of the success of enslaved people in building their own cultures and communities within slavery.  This should not be seen as a failure but as a tremendous achievement.  It is for this reason that I think it was a misstep for Everett to have portrayed James and other blacks as being secretly more perfectly literate than their masters.  It isn’t plausible.  It isn’t democratic.  And it diminishes the actual achievements of the enslaved people.   

The Pygmalion Problem.

In George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, Professor Higgins believes that he is doing the flower girl Eliza a favor by teaching her to abandon her hackneyed lower class Cockney English and speak the King’s English, the idiom spoken by the upper classes.  But having taught her to speak and behave like a princess, he has essentially turned her into a fish out of water.  She is not recognized as a colleague by her lower-class former comrades and she is not actually a member of the upper classes that she now resembles.  She belongs nowhere and to no one.  It is a conundrum that Shaw does not actually resolve at the end of the play.  The same seems to go for James in James. 

Irony goes best when it is plausible.  James is clearly the most intelligent and resourceful person in the book, which is quite plausible.  The seemingly submissive slave who pretends to be dumb, but is really smarter than the fools to whom he bows, is plausible, ironic, and very funny.  James will occasionally forget himself and say something in correct English, sometimes even correcting a white person, rather than mumbling in slave-talk.  The white characters will do a double-take at what they just heard and James will have to double back to slave-talk in order to save the situation.  It is hilarious and it highlights the contrast between him and the white people. 

It is a brilliant stroke and it is plausible up to a point.  It is plausible that James could speak as well as the best-spoken whites in the book and better than most of the whites.  But it is not plausible that he could secretly speak English better than any of the whites.  From whom could James have learned this perfect English?  And given the frequent lapses he has in the course of the book, how is it plausible that he could have kept his language proficiency a secret for his whole life? 

I think Everett has unnecessarily gone too far in search of contrast and comedy.  The extent of this trope is not necessary to establish that the slaves are more intelligent and more knowledgeable about the world than their masters.  It is perfectly plausible that since the slaves do almost everything that needs doing, they would be more capable and competent, when they wanted to be, than their masters.  But inflating James’ knowledge of English seems to equate English language literacy with intelligence and competence, and this invites blowback from the fact that most slaves did not in reality have better language skills than their masters.  

In portraying enslaved people as conventionally literate, Everett seems to be implying that if a person was not conventionally literate, the person was inferior.  And since we know that most enslaved blacks were not literate, Everett, in equating language skills with intelligence and competence, seems, despite himself, to be implying that real-life enslaved blacks were inferior. 

The focus on conventional literacy undermines the point that enslaved blacks could be considered more knowledgeable than whites about things that were important in their society.  They did the work.  They were the ones who most deserved to be fully empowered members of the society.  They were the ones most capable of living in a democracy, unlike the autocratic and ignorant whites who reveled in ordering blacks around, cheating each other, and fighting duels.

Making the world safer for whites and blacks: An Irony.

I think that both the best of the book and what I think is a misstep by Everett are exemplified in the short dialogue from James that I have included above as the epilogue to this essay and that I repeat here below.  In this early scene in the book, James is conducting a class for enslaved black children in the neighborhood of Widow Douglass’ farm.  He is teaching them how to avoid antagonizing white people, including how to mumble in slave-speak.  The goal is to appear as stupid and unthreatening as possible.  For these kids, this lesson is not a game.  It is a lesson in survival strategies.  If a white person feels threatened or upstaged in any way by an enslaved person, even by a child, it can be a disaster for that enslaved person.  Safety through the appearance of subservience is the curriculum for this lesson.

The dialogue goes as follows: 

The children said together ‘And the better they feel, the safer we are.’

‘February, translate that.’

‘Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be’

’Nice.’

There are at least two key aspects of this bit of dialogue.  First, it is heartbreakingly plausible that such classes would have existed then, and it is chilling to realize that parents of color often feel they have to teach similar things to their kids today.  “Having the Conversation” is what some people call it today.  The contrast is stark between what going to school means for Huck, a lot of useless book-learning, and the schooling in life and death tactics that these kids are getting from James.   

Second, it is not plausible that the children already seem to know how to speak correct English but don’t know slave-speak.  Their opening comment that “the better they feel, the safer we are” is perfect, even eloquent, English.  How could it be that they know how to speak correct English? They could have had only very limited opportunity for hearing people speak correct English. And how could it be that they did not already know slave-speak, which James was teaching them? These kids had to have grown up hearing slave-speak from their families and friends. 

There is a plausibility problem here.  But, also, a thematic issue.  Making English literacy a measure of merit undercuts the book’s overall point about the intelligence, knowledge and skills of blacks who aren’t language literate but who are culturally literate, that is, who can effectively cope, cooperate and communicate within the dominant culture. Cultural literacy means being able to understand the traditions, regular activities and history of a group of people from a given culture, and being able to engage with these traditions and in these activities.  Cultural literacy means having sufficient knowledge, judgment and skills to be able to understand and participate in the democratic governing of a society.  Language literacy may or may not be necessary, depending on the culture.

James would have been culturally literate, and would have seemed superior to his white masters, even if he was not English language literate.  And given that he was language literate, which is plausible, he need not have known perfect English in order to make a sharp and humorous contrast with the white characters in the book.  I think that in this case “less is more.”  Everett goes too far and, in doing so, makes a mistake that undermines his argument in favor of an inclusive and expansive democracy. 

Bigots often like to demean people based on their accents and modes of speech.  At times, James seems, despite the best intentions of the author, to be doing this, albeit doing it to bigoted whites. But the book’s underlying message is that if you are making sense with what you are saying, it doesn’t matter how correctly you say it, whether you are black or white.  And if what you are saying is pernicious nonsense and lies, it doesn’t matter how well you say it.      

The overall message of the book is that whether you are black or white, slave or free, farmer or factory worker, rural resident or city dweller, educated in schools or in the fields and on the streets, filled with book learning or practical experience, you can acquire the cultural literacy to be able to participate fully as an equal among equals in your society.

Everett and Empathy.

It has been said that the function of meaningful communication is to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange.  That is, to convey something new in conventional terms to the recipient of the message, thereby making it familiar, but also to question the conventional terms and, thereby, make them strange.  It is a process that opens things up to more communications that make things familiar, then strange, then familiar, ad infinitum.  Making familiar things strange and strange things familiar is a function of fiction but also the other arts, the humanities, and the social and physical sciences.  It is a dynamic that MAGA supporters, who want to bind us all permanently in some oppressive ideology, abhor and oppose.  It is a dynamic we can see in James which challenges our complacency and makes us feel like enslaved persons.

In a similar way, it is said that fiction at its best is an exercise in empathy, an expansion of our ability to see and feel the world as others do.  This is something that can, in turn, be said of all the arts, the humanities, and the social and physical sciences.  Trying to see the world as the world sees itself.  Empathy has, however, somehow become controversial among right-wing politicians and polemicists, willful ignoramuses who reject both the creative arts and the rational sciences.  These MAGA idiots deride empathy as “woke,” as though there is something wrong with awakening yourself and understanding others.  So be it.  If the best in fiction is “woke,” then James is a classic example of the best in fiction.

                                                                                                                        BW 5/24

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[1] “Huck Finn Is a Masterpiece.  This Retelling Just Might Be, Too.” Dwight Garner. New York Times. 3/29/24.   “James by Percival Everett review – A gripping reimagining of Huckelberry Finn.”  Anthony Cummins. The Guardian. 4/8/24.  “James Review: Percival Everett’s Retelling of Twain.” Sam Sacks. Wall Street Journal. 3/13/24.

[2] Eugene Genovese. Roll, Jordan, Roll. The World the Slaves Made.  New York: Vintage Books, 1974.