On James by Percival Everett

There has been a lot of hype around James. I wanted to read it. But I hadn't read Huckleberry Finn. (I don't know how I avoided it for so long.). So I read that first.

In truth, I was dreading Huckleberry Finn a bit; it felt very high school literature assignment. But I had to eat my broccoli before dessert. It perhaps shouldn't have been a surprise, but Huckleberry Finn was terrific. I devoured it. The text was rich, Twain is funny, and the social commentary was sharp. I'm still thinking about it.

I cracked open James next.

I liked it. Everett's depiction of Jim--James--is empathetic and gripping. The prose is pretty solid--it has a good beat; you can dance to it. Maybe I mean to say I enjoyed the plotting. Every now and then you get some compelling imagery, too Brock shoveling coal on the steamboat / metaphor for the Union was well done. And you also get some appropriately horrifying imagery, befitting a novel that interrogates slavery.

But several aspects of the book left me unsatisfied.

• My biggest complaint: the commentary in James was pretty heavy handed. This was especially jarring having reading Huckleberry Finn immediately before reading James. Jim constantly explained the meaning of things to us: for example, it did not matter if he was in the free or the unfree part of the country; a slave is a slave. We get this exact observation spelled out several times. I think the code switching suffered from a similar issue. I got the sense that Everett did not trust the reader.
  
• I was hoping to get some sort of take on the weird part of Huckleberry Finn--the end, where some feel the book goes off the rails. Some readers take the reintroduction of Tom Sawyer in the final part of Huckleberry Finn to be a scathing critique of Tom and a reminder that, notwithstanding his legal freedom, Jim still lived at the pleasure of white people. Others think Twain blew it after stewing on an ending for several years. Far be it from me to dictate what direction Everett takes James, but it felt like a missed opportunity.
• What was that twist. You know the one. His father? Why? I would love a take on what this adds.
• The ending of James ... was cathartic. Definitely. But a very odd tonal shift. I think, maybe, this was purposeful, and could be read as an inversion of the tonal shift at the end of Huckleberry Finn. For a book about fleshing out Jim's interiority, intelligence, and sensitivity, though, theDjango-style shift felt strange (although not unearned, given some of the horrors).
  

I'm glad I read James. I'm not sure I understand the critical acclaim, though. I would love to hear some takes on what makes the book a notch above the rest.