WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE by Raymond Carver If you've never read Carver

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Listeners, readers, welcome to the Foxed Page, where we dive
deep into the very best books. You'll come away with
a richer understanding of the text at hand, all while
learning to read everything a little better. I'm kimberly Ford,
one time adjunct professor at Berkeley, best selling author and
PhD in Spanish and French literature. I'm also someone who

(00:21):
happens to hold a secondary education teaching credential. I put
it to good use as soon as I graduated from college,
I landed myself a job at a Benedictine boys boarding school.
I was teaching eleventh grade English on all levels of Spanish,
and I thought, what would be better than teaching those
boys Huckleberry Finn. It was my first experience with the novel,

(00:42):
and in some ways I really appreciated it. In others
I understood the difficulties. We really carefully read it.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
As a satire.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
So I had very firmly in hand this idea that
Mark Twain was in fact criticizing slavery in lots of
different ways. But I did not, in fact anticipate that
half of the class, in fact, slightly more than half
of the class were boys who were at the boarding
school from Hong Kong, and let me tell you, Mark
Twain's very liberal use of the vernacular of all of

(01:11):
those dialects in Huckleberry Finn made it very difficult for
those boys, and honestly, I think it was just an
absolute grueling year for them and maybe not my best
choice as a secondary school teacher. So I was really
excited about the idea of returning to the book. Those
of you who've listened to the Fox Page recently know
that we're in We're kind of deep into the adaptations

(01:33):
at the moment, or re envisionings or rewritings, however you
want to think of them. Of course, during Jane Austen
Week recently we took a good look at three of
the rewritings of Pride and Prejudice, and before that, one
of the most popular lectures here at the Fox Page
was a very close look at why knowing a little

(01:54):
bit about David Copperfield would really, in fact enhance your
understanding of demon Copperhead. I really really enjoyed that deep
dive into both Dickens and Barbara King Salver. So I
was very excited about the idea of diving back into
a nineteenth century novel and its contemporary re envisioning.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Little did I know that.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
James was going to be so incredibly, incredibly affecting. I
was so moved by this book. I actually read it
very quickly, in part because it really clips along, but
also because I was just absolutely engrossed in the voice,
and in the language, and in just the virtuosity on
the part of Percival Everett. I had never read anything

(02:38):
by him before, and let me tell you, James will
not be the last book that I have read by
Perceval Everett. What an absolute literary genius. So my experience
of reading James was also deeply inflected by the fact
that I was listening to Huckaberry Finn, read by Elijah Wood,
and so I had both of the novels going sort

(02:58):
of simultaneously. Ry Finn by Mark Twain was always a
bit ahead. I had begun it before I began James,
but it was a really interesting experience to have both
of those novels going at the same time. So I
actually would recommend that I absolutely think James stands on
its own. I do not think that you need to
have recently re read Huckleberry Finn, but I have to

(03:20):
say that I really did enjoy reading Huckleberry Finn more
than I thought I would. At the end, I got very,
very frustrated, and in fact was so kind of distracted
and so kind of dismayed by what was happening in
Huckleberry Finn that I found the.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
End of the novel kind of difficult.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
But up until that point, I really had sort of
new appreciation for what it is that Mark Twain Samuel
Clements is trying to do with the novel. So I
hope that today, as we look at both Huckleberry Finn
and James together, that we'll have a really interesting interplay
between the two, and I'll even if you are not
planning on diving back into Huckleberry Finn, I'll be able

(03:59):
to give you a little appreciation of how an understanding
of the two novels is really going to enrich your
experience of James. Those of you who like an agenda,
here is the agenda. We're going to start with a
brief biography of Percival Everett, as we usually do.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Then I'm going to give you some context.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
We're going to look at very briefly at the adventures
of Tom Sawyer at Huckleberry Finn. It's interesting it's the
Adventures of Tom Sawyer and then Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Then we're going to dive into James the text. We'll
move on to talk about narrative voice. We're going to
talk about language, because it is absolutely fundamental in this book,

(04:37):
and Everett is doing some really interesting things with language
that I think as the reader you might sort of
overlook if you don't sort of slow down and really
think about what it is, like this feat that he
is pulling off with the novel. We're going to talk
about irony. We're going to talk about his insanely great humor.
The book is so dark in some ways, but it

(04:58):
is so incredibly funny, and it's actually my favorite kind
of humor because it's a very dry, very often sort
of sarcastic.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
It's a very kind of.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Subtle and complex and just really really deft humor.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
I loved the humor in the book.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
We're going to talk about the importance of introtexts, which
are simply all of the different titles that Percival Everett is.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Bringing to James.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Then we're going to talk briefly about the different ways
that James is sort of answering some of the questions
that come up in Huckleberry Finn and also how this novel,
how Perceval Everett clarifies some of the sort of weird
things that are happening in Huckleberry Finn. There will not
be any spoilers until the very end, when there are
going to be some gigantic spoilers, so I will warn

(05:44):
you before we get to that point. But I really
was so so moved and so struck by a few
of the revelations that come toward the end of the
novel that I really wanted to visit those. So anyone
who has finished the novel and is coming to this lecture,
you know, having completed this incredible journey, you know, look

(06:05):
forward to a quick analysis of what is happening at
the end. But again, I will certainly warn you so
you can just like you know, hit pause and then
come back later after you have finished the book. Okay,
I want to dive in with a quick look at
the biography of Percival Everett.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
So.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Everett was born in nineteen fifty six in Georgia. He
was raised for the most part in South Carolina. His
father was in the army, and he was the eldest
of several children. Again, most of my biographical information is
going to come from Wikipedia, so this is stuff that's
very easily accessible. But you know, I'm doing a little
bit of the legwork for you. He went to the

(06:41):
University of Miami and got a degree in philosophy, which
is not at all surprising now that I have finished James,
because this is a book that is steeped in some
really huge questions about philosophy, about ethics, about you know,
just some of the really fundamental questions of what it
is to be human, which of course is the business
of philosophy. But he also in fact studied mathematical logic,

(07:04):
which I don't even really know what that means, but
it certainly sounds impressive, and biochemistry. So this is somebody
who is I mean, when I said genius earlier, I
was not really trying to be hyperbolic. I was really
I mean, this is someone who is really, really bright,
and someone who has immersed himself in some of the
very big questions and really is making sense via language

(07:26):
of a lot of issues that are really really pressing
and really sort of central or should be central in
all of our lives. He then went on to get
a master's degree at Brown in fiction. Because this is
what I wonder about Wikipedia. They say he got a
master's in fiction, and I'm like, was that an MFA?
Was it actually a master's? What does it mean? What
is fiction? And I could have done a little bit
more digging, but honestly, there was so much to say

(07:49):
here about both Percival and Huckleberry Finn that I was like,
I cannot dig into what exactly his master's degree was.
Needless to say, again, this is someone who is really
really educated, and he has done a lot of thinking
about language and philosophy and all of these questions that
he is incorporating into James and all the rest of
his By the way, he's someone who has written I

(08:12):
can't remember if it's thirty six or thirty four books,
and these are wide wide ranging books, everything from poetry.
There's some visual art, there's you know, novella, there is
short story. There is just all of the genres and
all of the different ways that you can be really
really smart, especially given this medium of language. He is
someone who is really doubling down on the importance of

(08:34):
words and how we use them.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
It's my kind of writing. Let me tell you.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
The Trees was published in twenty twenty. It was shortlisted
for the Booker Prize. That might be the next thing
that I read, although I'm also really wanting to read Erasure,
which is the novel that American Fiction was based upon,
so and that was I think early aughts, you know,
like maybe two thousand and two or two thousand and
one or something. So I'm excited to go back and

(08:59):
read both of those because I just can't wait to
hear more of this really smart man digging into some
big questions.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
He now is.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
A Distinguished Professor of something or other at USC, lives
in Los Angeles with his wife, Danzi Senna, and they
have two children. So I think he's like sixty seven
sixty eight years old. He was born in nineteen fifty six.
So again, someone who is really really steeped in all
sorts of education, but who also wears it lightly. This
is not someone whose work is ponderous. It's not someone

(09:30):
whose work is you know, feels really heavy handed. I mean,
in James, we have Voltaire, and we have Locke, and
we have these huge philosophers arriving, but none of it
feels it doesn't feel name droppy, it doesn't feel contrived,
even though honestly, some of the ways that he works
these philosophers in are highly highly unusual, but it's really
really just impressive and just absolutely delightful, which it's really

(09:54):
hard to work in philosophers in a way that is delightful. Okay,
so we've done our little bio Perceval Everett. We're now
moving on to context. So I want to talk quickly
about Mark Twain. Of course, he was born Samuel Clemens.
I think most of you know that he was born
in eighteen thirty five, so you want to think about
his fiction as happening at the end of the nineteenth century.

(10:16):
He was raised, in fact, in Hannibal, Missouri, which is
where a lot of Huckleberry Finn goes down.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
And I really like, in fact.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
The melding in both Huckleberry Finn and in James of
sort of real world elements, elements that feel familiar. I mean,
I have only been to Missouri once in my life,
and I don't even think I saw the Mississippi River,
but you have a sense of what that would look like,
and the descriptions are so strong certainly of the River.
In both of these novels that we have a sense

(10:43):
of stories that are really based in a reality that
we can imagine, and yet both are again asking some
very very big questions. And you know, in Huckleberry Finn,
certainly we have all sorts of adventures and all sorts
of crazy stuff happening, but there's really this sense of
being ground in a place that is real and in
fact the place where Mark Twain was born. So very famously,

(11:06):
William Faulkner, whose novels were mostly in sort of the
twenties and thirties, he called Mark Twain the father of
American literature. Hemingway said something I don't have the quote
directly here, but it was something like basically like there
was nothing before and nothing good after the Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn or sorry, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I'm really

(11:28):
stuck on the idea of that definite article like the
Adventures of Tom Sawyer and then just Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
I'm just like, really like, what is the difference there?
Like it's clearly, you know, a very intentional thing, but
also you know, a very minor thing. So we have
this idea of really revered American writers as seeing Mark
Twain as doing something that was really foundational, And of

(11:51):
course part of me is like, wait a minute. This
guy is the father of American literature, and his books,
you know, Tom Sawyer and Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer and
Huckleberry Finn most importantly, were published in eighteen seventy six
and eighteen eighty four.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
So of course I was like, wait a minute.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
There were certainly important American writers that were doing very
important work before those times.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
My mind went to Melville. I thought of Edith Wharton.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
We have Hawthorne, we have Edgar Allan Poe, we have
a lot of poets, we have Walt Whitman, and a
lot of Emily Dickinson, some very very important people of
letters who were all doing work before Mark Twain. And
yet I think what people are responding to, and you know,
you have to take coming away with a grain of
salt because he had that real macho thing going on.

(12:39):
But he and Fitzgerald, that whole Lost generation. I think
they were looking to what Mark Twain was doing, in
particular with the vernacular. So I think what might be different,
And this idea of like the birth of American literature
is that we were really hearing the voices of distinctly
American people. So someone like Henry James, who had come

(12:59):
before for or someone even like Edith Wharton, you're hearing
American voices, but they really do share a lot with
their European counterpoints. I used to always get confused. In fact,
to be honest, I still sometimes do. I would be like, wait,
Henry James is an American, right Like I would get
confused because he feels very European, and in fact, he
wrote a lot of books that took place in Europe.

(13:22):
So you have this idea of people who were working
in the United States but who had a very sort
of European air. Whereas Mark Twain, because he used the
dialect and really leaned into the idea, it became a
very important piece of both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
So I want to take a quick look.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
In fact, at the beginning of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
he says this notice, persons attempting to find a motive
in this narrative will be prosecuted. Person's attempting to find
a moral in it will be banished. Persons attempting to
find a plot in it will be shot by order
of the author per g. G. Chief of Ordinance. So

(14:04):
this is so interesting. It's got this kind of a
nice meta thing, like we're talking here, he's sort of
pointing to the fact that Mark Twain has in fact
created this sort of fiction, but that then he's trying
to guide us as to how we should be interpreting it.
And it is a book that because it's episodic, and
because there are lots of holes in the plot and

(14:25):
it's sort of difficult at times to really understand a
through line. He's anticipating all of that and saying, don't
look for a moral, don't look for a narrative, don't
look for a plot. So even at the very beginning,
he is being satirical. I think a lot of the
controversy that arises over Mark Twain it has to do
with the idea that people are reading it at face

(14:46):
value instead of reading it like a satire. So this
was something that came up when we were talking about
Jane Austen, because Pride and Prejudice is a very different
book if you read it at face value than if
you read it as a satire. So it's important to
remember that Mark Twain throughout Huckleberry Finn is satirizing people
like Judge Thatcher and Miss Watson, and he's really satirizing

(15:08):
a lot of the you know, the stereotypes that are
brought up about black people and about enslavement. It's very
important to read it as a satire. It is, of course,
also very important to look at the controversial elements of
the book. I mean that the stereotyping is really awful,
and you know, there's very very liberal use of like
the worst of the racial slurs. So I think there

(15:30):
are some very warranted concerns about the novel. But I
also think it's very important to read it as a satire.
So we have to keep in mind the satire. But
again I want to return to this idea of dialect
with the following.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
So he has the notice about.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
Like don't look for a narrative or a plot or
a moral and then we have this explanatory note. It
says explanatory. In this book, a number of dialects are
used to wit the Missouri Negro dialect, the extremist form
of the backwoods Southwestern dialect, the ordinary Pike County dialect,

(16:05):
and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have
not been done in a haphazard fashion or by guesswork,
but painstakingly and with the trustworthy guidance and support of
personal familiarity with the several forms of speech. I make
this explanation for the reason that without it, many writers

(16:25):
would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk
alike and not succeeding the author. So Mark Twain, the
author in this case, is sort of owning up to
the fact that he is the one telling us as
opposed to this more tongue in cheek notice that has
come just before. But what he's saying is extremely important.
What he is putting into the novel is dialect. We

(16:46):
are hearing actual voices, And in fact, he's pointing to
all of these different dialects that are incorporated into the novel.
He's delineating them, and he's talking about how painstakingly they
have been put down. And you know, for someone who
is not familiar with these dialects, you could see where
they would be hard to sort of separate and hard
to discern.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
But this is enough.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
This sort of notice at the beginning is enough to
remind us of all of the different ways that language
is being used and all of the different dialects. So again,
it was revolutionary. And this is I think what Faulkner
and Hamingway in particular are responding to.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
It's really important to be able.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
To have all of these voices heard in a novel
that really is seeking to show the American life in
a way that perhaps Henry James was not. Okay, So
now I want to dive in to the text itself.
I love this cover art. I found it so really compelling.
I mean, this was a book that really called to
me from all of those tables in all of those

(17:46):
bookshops that I frequent. In terms of the cover art,
it's important to remember that authors don't usually have much
to do with in fact the cover art. But I
think this is really really very It's bold, it's important,
and it's putting lots in line of weight on the
fact that the name that James is so important, and
we have this idea here down at the bottom. I

(18:07):
love the inclusion of the of the Pulitzer Prize finalist.
He's also a Booker Prize finalist. I really hope that
this book gets the attention it deserves when the next
round of these awards come out.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
And I think it's important too that we have this
very small.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Illustration here that would have been taken it looks to
me from some sort of depiction of black people at
the time, But certainly we have this idea of an
enslaved person who is running away or who at least
is in motion, which really, you know, is.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
At the heart of the book.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
But what is truly impressive to me is the way
that the cover art in fact, is underscoring the title.
The title of the book, I think is amazing. Names
are very very important, I mean in general, but certainly
all throughout this book. So you know, even with the
with Tom Sawyer and Hulckleberry Finn, the fact that those
novels that sort of the source material was pointing, you know,

(19:01):
to a name, it was pointing to a single person,
and it was focusing our attention on alternately Tom Sawyer
and Huckleberry Finn. So here we're very clear that we
are focusing our attention on this one person, James, which
is kind of revolutionary in its own right, but it's
also very important that it is not Jim.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
It is James.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
So we have a renaming here that really gets to
the essence of being able to have some autonomy and
some kind of agency. I did my usual thing with titles,
where as I was going through the novel, anytime James
or sort of the name, the significant use of the name,
not just like any random mention of James, but when
it would come up and it seemed significant, I would
market And it was really really strong the way that

(19:44):
Percival Everett was underscoring the importance.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Of this idea of James.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
So and then it's this is not giving anything away,
but it is the last word of the novel. And
I love the idea of it being well, not yes,
it is the last word.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
I love the idea of.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Beginning with this name and then ending with this name,
and all the while throughout the narrative really having it
reinforced for us how important this name is. I also
did love the fact that at one point a last
name is included, and it is the last name is Faber,
which comes from a pencil. So a pencil. Again, this
is also not giving anything away. A pencil is a

(20:20):
very important talisman and a very important plot point.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Actually in the novel.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
And the idea of the importance of that pencil is
underscored with this idea that James maybe would take on
that name. You know, he's sort of trying it on
at that point. But you do have this sense of
choosing your own identity and shaping yourself in the way
that you want to be, as being very fundamentally tied

(20:47):
to the name, which is extremely important throughout. So then
we have our title, and we have our cover art,
and we have our dedication. It says for Danzy, who
is Percival Everett's wife. Again, haven't read any of the
other ones, so I don't know who he is dedicating
all of them to. Famously, in a book of you know,
he dedicated all of them to his wife Vera. I'm

(21:09):
not sure if our Percival Everett is doing that same thing.
I'll get back to after I've read the Trees and Erasure.
But this one is in fact dedicated to Danzy. And
then we have this really interesting thing where what we
are starting off here with is the notebook of Daniel
Decatur Emmett.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
So I have to say that I found.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
It very difficult to read this script, and it was
not because I didn't have my readers. I mean, even
when I had my strong readers on, I was not.
It was taxing to be reading this script. And it
was so interesting for me because it made me slow
down and it made me appreciate the difficulties of reading.
And I had this sense of like, I wonder how
purposeful this is. I wonder how purposeful this choice of

(21:53):
font is in terms of reminding us the fact that
it is in fact very difficult and it is a
privilege to read. So I didn't know what these songs were,
and I read through them, you know, I have to admit,
pretty rapidly, and I did get a sense that they
would have been songs from the era of Huckleberry Finn
And I did not, in fact know any of these
songs at the beginning.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
They were not familiar.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
But I really loved it when in fact we meet
at Daniel Decatur Emmett later in the text, and you're
sort of like, oh my gosh, wait, here's the guy
from the beginning. And of course I went to the
Google machine and looked up Daniel Decatur Emmett, and in
fact he is a very important songwriter and like very
important part of the minstrel movement, which is highly, highly

(22:36):
problematic because obviously those minstrels were white men who were
wearing black face and in fact doing lots of you know,
really hurtful sort of stereotyping of black people. But it
was very you know, I had that sort of like
meta thing where I was like, oh my god, wait,
this is the guy at the very beginning, and in
fact he is a real historical figure. So it really

(22:59):
grounded a grounded the novel for me in the sense
of things really happening. I also was totally alarmed because
a couple of these songs, like Jimmy Crackcorn. I mean,
we sang that at summer camp, which is totally appalling.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
You know.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Also Dixie like way down in Dixie. I don't remember
singing that at summer camp, but I know the tune
so clearly I was singing it somewhere. And in fact,
because Jimmy, because the name jim and James and Jimmy,
because that seemed significant, I looked up Jimmy Crackcorn, and
cracking corn apparently is like either idly kind of lying
around gossiping, or it's cracking into like the corn whiskey

(23:37):
jug So there's this idea of an enslaved person potentially
named Jimmy, so that Jimmy crackcorn. But I don't care.
My master's gone away. So this idea of like I
can even as an enslaved person, I can sort of
lounge around all day gossiping, or I can lounge around
drinking the corn whiskey or corn alcohol of some sort,

(23:58):
because in fact, my master is a way for the day.
So I was so appalled because again, these are songs
that are very familiar that I literally grew up singing
and had no idea what the references were, which I
think it's very important to have this kind of reckoning
and to understand how casually that kind of you know,
song would have come down to us without any kind

(24:18):
of real reflection on what in fact it meant.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
I had that experience also with bullying.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
So this bully and the bully whip is something that
comes up again again in the novel. And I don't
actually know for sure that this is the case, but
I was really alarmed at the idea that bullying someone
in fact comes from the idea of this bully whip.
I don't know that, but I was, you know, vaguely
sickened at the idea that that is where that comes
from the term bullying.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
I also the idea of cakewalk.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
I mean literally, I remember an elementary school fundraiser that
a cake walk was a thing you would buy a
ticket and then you know, everybody would bring a cake
and you would, like, I don't know, you would get
a cake. But I had no idea of kind of
the origin of that tradition or the expression. You know,
it's no cakewalk and it's this idea of winning an
easy prize.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
But and I liked the idea that that in.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
The era in which James is taking place, that this
was one way that you know, that the enslaved people
might have been making fun of kind of the mincing
and silly behavior of the enslavers. But it's again sort
of well, it's not sort of horrifying, it's totally horrifying
that these are expressions and these are you know, cultural

(25:31):
sort of traditions that we were doing, you know, in
the eighties, seventies, in the seventies, and you know, one
hundred years after more than one hundred years after this,
and again sort of without any reflection upon what they
might have meant, so I really appreciated the way that
Percival Everett in fact, you know, did a little consciousness
raising for me as I was moving through the novel.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
So we have this.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
Idea of of the the notebook of Emmett, and notebook
in fact becomes very very important as the text moves along,
and it's really cool, in fact, to have it as
a sort of epigraph at the very beginning.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Of the novel.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
And lastly, including this Emmet notebook at the beginning. It
also points to the fact that we are going to
have inclusion of texts throughout the work. So we have
different philosophers coming in.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Particularly philosophers, but we have these.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Different elements that are sort of from the real world
that are incorporated into the text, which is extremely important.
It's not just like interesting in a literary way. It's
not kind of just that like, oh my gosh, wait,
this is cool because something you know from the real
world is incorporated into the fictive world.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
But there's also this idea of really.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Widening the scope of the novel. So certainly philosophy is
going to widen the scope of any novel. But when
you're including you know, these songs that have such cultural
you know, relevance in lots of ways, and lots of
really despicable ways. You're really adding weight, and you're adding
you know, all of the history of what is implied

(27:05):
in these songs and the oral tradition and in folklore
and in the idea of the minstrel shows. I mean,
all of that is then folded into the novel in
a very economical and a really impressive way. You know,
it's not only like an interesting thing to do, but
in fact it's really serving a very large purpose in
terms of adding veracity and adding this real sense of verisimilitude,

(27:27):
and adding this real sense of weight and gravity, which
are really important because this is it's a profoundly historical
text here that is playing off of a work of fiction,
but is also looking at many of the other cultural
manifestations of the time. Okay, now we're going to look
at the first part, part one, chapter one. Those little

(27:49):
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 step board with my foot. Knew she was
going to call me to fix it tomorrow. I was

(28:11):
waiting there for her to give me a pan of
corn bread that she had made with my sadies 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. They

(28:35):
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. So this is such an incredible opening. So

(28:58):
this is happening, you know, toward the beginning of Huckleberry Finn.
So he's settling into miss he's settling into the house
of the widow, and then it's like all sort of
too civilized for him. And so he leaves, and he
and Tom Sawyer are out, you know, in the bushes,
and they're having one of their adventures, and we have
the whole thing from the perspective of James here, who

(29:21):
is Jim in Huckleberry Finn. We have this whole thing about,
this very knowledgeable and very knowing presence where Jim is
explaining to us not only you know, his relationship with
Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, but also he's giving us
some really important pieces at the very beginning here of
what it is like, in fact to be someone who

(29:41):
is enslaved. So I think it really plays really well
on this sense that the reader has of something that
is very familiar. You know, whether or not you've read
Huckleberry Finn recently, this is you know, you can imagine
what these boys are all about.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
You can imagine even just.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Sort of in the popular culture, even if you've never
read it. You know, you the sense of them as
being sort of these pranksters and these young boys and
sort of up to no good. I think you probably
remember that they are not being closely watched by their parents.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
All of these different things are very familiar to us.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
But we also have this really important sense of him
speaking in the first person. So whenever we have a
first person narrative, it's important to ask why this person
and why now? So if you ever decide to write
something in the first person, you have to be able
to answer those two questions. And obviously, in this case,
it's really important and really cool that what Percival Everett

(30:35):
is doing here is writing the story from Jim's perspective.
So we have the first person as being kind of
the very most obvious way to do that and the
most I think telling the first person can be very
limiting in some ways because in fact, you know, the
first person is I. So if you're saying I did this,
and I did that, and I was sitting on the
porch and I was looking at Huck and Tom out

(30:57):
there in the in the bushes being bitten by the chiggers,
as you have that first person that I, it can
be very limiting because really that first person narrator should
only know what that person could know. But one of
the beauties of this is that we as readers. You know, ideally,
if you have read Huckleberry Finn recently or you have

(31:17):
listened to it in the audio version, you have this
whole other world that is, you know, informing your sense
of what is going on. And also Percival Everett just
does a really great job of grounding us in elements
of Huckleberry Finn as we are moving along, so lots
of it can feel familiar. And even you know, I
think some of us probably read adaptations when we were little,

(31:40):
or we read there were a lot of versions of
it that stripped out a lot of the parts that
people thought were offensive, which you know, that's a whole
conversation unto itself.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
But you have this idea of a lot of this.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
I mean, if you've been to Disneyland, you know, I
think there or maybe that was only Swiss family Robinson,
but you know, in the popular imagination there are lots
of cartoons and lots of different things that sort of
play on the elements from Huckleberry Finn. So you really
have this sense of this feeling familiar. And so James
as having this sort of first person narrative voice is
not as limited as it might be because in fact, lots

(32:11):
of elements of the story are familiar to us. So
one other thing that's really important about this first person
narrative is that we learn fairly early on, at least
in sort of the first third of the novel, that
in fact, James here is not just telling us the story,
but in fact he is writing the story.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
So it's so cool the way that really.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
This idea of this manuscript that we are holding in
our hands is a product of James having written it.
And on some level, as a reader, you sort of
understand that intuitively, when he's talking about I did this,
you know you're sort of you know that he is
telling the story, and you know that in some ways
it was written because you have you know, you're holding
this piece of fiction in your hands. But it becomes,

(32:54):
in fact very explicit, and it's one of the things
that I think Percival Everett does so masterfully.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
So I want to.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Take a quick look at this idea of the writing
that is also happening. So this is kind of one
third of the way into the novel, and this is
when we realize in fact that James is writing the
book that we are holding in our hands. Often that
kind of turn, or that recognition happens at the very
end of a novel, and I think that can feel
little bit cheeseball. It can feel a little bit like,

(33:21):
oh my god, wait, the whole time this person has
been writing the novel that I'm holding in my hands.
So I like the way that Everett gets that kind
of out of the way one third of the way through.
But I was so excited. I mean, those of you
on YouTube can see right here like I don't at
the bottom with my margin EALI I have all of
this stuff about, oh my god, it's James's story. Like
it's very exciting to realize in fact that these are

(33:44):
his actual words. This is not coming through a filter.
In fact, this is what he is wanting to write.
So I'm going to read what we have on ninety three.
My name is James. I wish I could tell my
story with a sense of history as much as industry.
I was sold when I was born, and then sold again.
My mother's mother was from some place on the continent

(34:06):
of Africa. I had been told, or perhaps simply assumed.
I cannot claim to any knowledge of that world or
those people, whether my people were kings or beggars. I
admire those who can remember the clans of their ancestors,
their names, and their movements of their families through the wrinkles,
trenches and chasms of the slave trade. I can tell

(34:28):
you that I am a man who is cognizant of
his world, a man who has a family, who loves
a family, who has been torn from his family, a
man who can read and write, a man who will
not let his story be self related, but self written.
So we have the big chunk of text, a big
block of text in italics. We understand this is what

(34:48):
James is writing. So here at the top we have
this my name is James. It's really important that he
is beginning with this declaration of his name, and it's
important that it's in italics, the whole entire way block
of text, because we understand that this is what he
is writing.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
And then we have a.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
Little space break, and we have the following line, also
in italics, with my pencil, I wrote myself into being.
And then it goes on. That's part of the main text,
and we go on. It's important I believe that this
italicized part is also incorporated into the main text, because
we are then allowed to believe that not only this
chunk of text, but also the rest of the text

(35:27):
that we are reading. These are James's words. So this
little snippet with my pencil, I wrote myself into being.
That is a snippet that is repeated in lots and
lots of the reviews of the book, you know, And
that is for very good reason, because this idea of
writing himself into being is so cool. Not only is

(35:48):
it very important because we have this first person narrative
voice who is sharing the actual story of what has
happened to someone who has been sidelined and marginalized in history,
but we also have this idea on the importance of
having this written document in our hands, the importance of writing,
the importance of reading, the importance of listening to whose

(36:09):
story is being told and discerning who in fact is
the storyteller. So we have talked a lot at the
Fox page about the importance of voice and this idea
of who in fact is telling the story and in
what language and in what registers they are speaking. And
this is never more important than with this novel James.
So one of the things that Everett is doing so

(36:29):
so well is talking about the different languages that James speaks,
and he talks about it in those terms he speaks
slave or he can speak English that is actually his
own language, which is also the language of the enslavers,
so much the way that at the beginning of Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn we have Mark Twain giving us this

(36:51):
idea of dialects, we also have Percival Everett taking that
idea and really making it his own, and in fact,
you know, alluding to the fact that white people expect
to hear a certain verbiage and a certain syntax from
the people they are enslaving, and when that doesn't happen,
it's hugely disjointing and unmooring for the enslavers. I mean,

(37:12):
even at the very end, and one of the most
important climax is when a lot is happening in terms
of potential violence, one of the elements that is so
unsettling to the people, to the enslavers at that point
is the idea of language and is the way that
in fact James is speaking.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
So even at the very beginning of.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
The novel, we have this really clear sense of this
kind of slave filter, which is one of the names
that Percival Everett gives to James to describe the way
at times he talks about speaking slave. Other times he
talks about the slave filter. So there is this sense
of the danger of not giving white people what they want,

(37:52):
and there's nowhere where it is more apparent than when
he is talking to his daughter.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
So very significantly in Huckleberry.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
Finn, Jim has two children, and it is really really
significant in fact that here in James he has only
described as having the one child, Lizzie.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
So his wife is Sadie, his daughter is Lizzie.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
They are named here, and it's very important this interaction
that he is having with her. This is on page
twenty one. That evening I sat down with Lizzie and
six other children in our cabin and gave a language lesson.
These were indispensable. Safe movement through the world depended on
mastery of language fluency. So we go down a little

(38:32):
bit further. White folks expect us to sound a certain way,
and it can only help if we don't disappoint them.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
I said.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
The only ones who suffer when they are made to
feel inferior is us. Perhaps I should say when they
don't feel superior. So let's pause and review some of
the basics. Don't make eye contact. A boy said, never
speak first. A girl said Lizzie looked to the other
children and then back at me. Never address any subject

(38:59):
direct when talking to another slave.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
So he's making clear here.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
And in fact, he's giving us this whole sort of
you know, breakdown of what exactly the kind of submission
that is expected by.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
White people looks like.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
So all of the ways in which we would have
heard Jim speaking in Huckleberry Finn is actually very codified
here and explained to us in a way that's extremely important.
So we have this idea of language as being really
really crucial in terms of survival.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
And of safety.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
And this is not you know, it's not simply like
changing registers or different dialects, and it's not as light
as this disclaimer that Samuel Clemens has at the beginning
of Huckleberry Finn.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
In fact, here we have, you know, their lives are.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
On the line, Like it's a really really crucial thing
that these that these young children understand that there are
expectations around language and that honestly it can be the
difference between life and death.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
So on page fifty two.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
This is when James been bitten by the rattlesnake, which
is taken directly from Huckleberry Finn. And in fact, I
thought Percival Everett was very generous, because that is a
trick that Huck Finn is playing on James, and it
goes very awry and ends very badly for James. And
in fact, Huckleberry Finn is not you know, he feels badly,
but he's not as contrite as you would like him
to be in Huck Finn. And I was waiting in

(40:21):
James to have, you know, Percival Everett really like unleash
some real anger at Huck Finn for this prank that
ended so badly for poor James. But in fact he
it is very gracious in this novel, because in fact,
it's more about the suffering that he goes through.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
So he's sort of.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
Delirious and is speaking in a register that wasn't comfortable
for Huck, and so James is concerned about more of
that happening. I was afraid to sleep again for fear
of Huck coming back and hearing my thoughts without their
passing through my slave filter. I was even more afraid
of further unproductive imagined conversations with Voltaire Rousseau and about

(41:01):
slavery race and of all things albinism, how strange a world,
how strange an existence, That one's equal must argue for
one's equality, that one's equal must hold a station that
allows airing of that argument, That one cannot make that
argument for oneself, that premises of said argument must be
vetted by those equals who do not agree.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
So what I love.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Here is this idea of beginning with the threat of
having you know, this young boy, hear him an even
huts sense of his expectation of a certain accent and
a certain dialect.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
But what's happening here is he's.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
Going one step further and talking about Voltaire with a
Voltaire Voltaire rousseau un locke. In these ways that are
really important, because we're moving from this idea of language
that is his own to the fact that he in
fact has this enormous range, and to synthesize all of
these philosophical, you know, questions that he is grappling with

(41:58):
throughout the novel. In fact, I heard in an interview
that Percival Everett one of the ways that he sort
of made his way into the character for James was
this idea of coming up with his library. So in
the novel, James goes in to Judge Thatcher's library, he.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Sneaks in and reads in there.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
But for Percival Everett, it was very important to imagine
what those books would have been.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
It's really so cool.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
So not only does James in fact wield, you know,
all of these different dialects of English, but he also
has this real sense of the way that language functions.
So there are different times when he talks about metaphors,
there are different times when he talks about satire and irony,
and irony is actually something that comes up again and again.
And I loved this sort of overt use of the

(42:45):
term irony because of the way that Percival Everett is
really underscoring the role of irony in the book. So
I wanted to take a quick second and do a
refresher for you on the differences between irony and satire.
So irony is simply that something feels kind of strange
because you expect it to happen one way, and often
it happens in sort of the opposite way. So importantly,

(43:08):
there's something called dramatic irony, which is specific to you know,
either the theater, which is where the word dramatic comes
from It comes from classical Greek, you know, theater sort
of stuff, but it also applies very much to literature
and even to movies. It's this idea that the reader
or other characters in the book have information that a

(43:29):
certain character does not, and so so much of James
is sort of steeped in this idea of dramatic irony
because we have all of the information from Huckleberry Finn,
some of us have more than others that then we
are bringing to James. So that idea of dramatic irony,
the whole thing is sort of steeped in it, and
it pervades all of the different parts because as James,

(43:51):
you know, as things are unfolding in the novel by
Percival Everett, we have in mind all of this sort
of backstory about Huckleberry Finn. So and oftentimes it even
works with Huck too, because you have this sense of like,
we know a lot of information that that Huck doesn't know,
and in fact, there's a lot of stuff that Jim
knows that Huck doesn't know. So the dramatic irony is

(44:13):
working on all sorts of different levels. So we have
different shades of irony and we're going to look at
those in the text in just a moment. But satire
is something slightly different. So satire and satirical humor or
satirical writing is often exaggeration, or it's hyperbole, or it's
a certain description that will show something about a character

(44:36):
or a situation, and largely it tends to be corrective.
So when we have these exaggerated portrayals, for example, of
like how terrible miss Watson is in Huckleberry Finn, or
you know, how terrible the King and the Duke are
in Huckleberry Finn, that is a very satirical look at
you know, you know these sort of con men who

(44:57):
are in the who are in Huckleberry Finn. So when
we have satire, it's sort of pointing out weaknesses in
society in a way that usually hopes to be sort
of corrective. So lots and lots of this book of
James and of Huckleberry Finn are satirical.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
But I really loved.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
The times when Percival Everett was underscoring either his use
of irony or his use of satire. So very early
in the novel, we have a really important illustration of
how Jim is not the only person in this community
of enslaved people who has access to this sort of
philosophical thinking and understanding how language works. So he's talking

(45:36):
with another enslaved person, Luke, and they're talking about how
this guy's going to go off and get drunk, and
James says this, he's going to get drunk. Now not
so much because he can, but because we can't, I said,
Luke chuckled.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
So when we see.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
Him staggering around later acting the fool, will that be
an example of proleptic irony or dramatic irony?

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Could be both? Now that would be ironic. It's really
so cool.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
I literally had to look up proleptic irony. I didn't
even know what it means. It simply means that you
know something is going to happen, So it's like it's
it's understanding that something's going to happen in the future,
which this is an example of proleptic irony, and it's
very close to dramatic irony, which is simply that idea
that we as a reader or as an audience, that
we know something that the other characters don't, or in

(46:27):
this case, Luke and James know something that this other
character doesn't know so, but I loved this idea of
these two different kinds of irony and the person not
only of like the literary terms, but how language works.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
It's so strong. On page one sixty seven.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
So this is when when James in fact has joined
up with the minstrel crew, and you have this kind
of crazy visual irony here where he is in fact
a black person who then is, you know, putting on
some kind of white face and then putting on black face.
So you have this very strange kind of like convolution
that is happening here. So Norman is someone who passes

(47:09):
as white. I'm not giving anything particular away, but we
have this Norman character who becomes very important in lots
of different ways for the story, and the two of them,
Norman is kind of the expert at doing this blackface makeup,
and we have this interaction between the.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
Two of them.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Norman tucked a towel around my collar. Can't get this
on your shirt? He smeared the black onto my forehead.
They even do the cake walk. But that's how we
make fun of them. I said, yes, but they don't
get that. It's lost on them. It's never occurred to
them that we might find them mockable. Double irony, I said,
that is amusing. Can one irony negate another one cancel

(47:48):
out the other? Norman shrugged, this is actually not a
terrible time to take a quick little sidebar. So the
adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are both examples
of something called the picker esque novel, a novel that
is episodic, a novel that is sort of loosely tied
together in these different sort of capers, And very importantly,

(48:09):
it tends to be like some sort of a little
young rapscallion, you know, some sort of young like rascal
person who is sort of doing things against the law,
but in a way that is relatively harmless and sort
of has their own set of ethics. So the picker
esque novel very importantly, also, it generally doesn't show any change.

(48:29):
So generally, at the very end of the picker esque novel,
the sort of impish, mischievous character is the same as
they were at the beginning.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
So you can see why.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
In fact, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are perfect examples
of that, because these are not boys who are learning
important lessons.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
Well, they do somewhat, but for the.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
Most part, you know, they just carry on with their
shenan against. Certainly Tom Sawyer does both in Huckleberry Finn
and Tom Sawyer doesn't figure as much in James importantly,
But you have this idea of Huckleberry Finn as still
a getting up to all the same shenanigans even toward
the end of Huckleberry Finn. So we have that versus
a Building's Roman, which that is like a story of

(49:09):
coming of age. So you have great, you know, sort
of evolution of a character from the beginning until the end.
But James is then a completely different thing. It is
neither pick or sque nor any kind of buildings romant.
It is really an incredible heroic quest in lots of ways,
and we don't need to see like the kind of
evolution that we would see in another character. James is

(49:32):
very similar at the beginning as he is in the end,
but he is in fact on the way to trying
to overcome something really difficult, and we see him as
as sort of this hero which is really very different
in lots of ways than what we are seeing in
both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Okay,
so we're going to move on from our discussion of

(49:53):
irony to talk about humor slightly more generally in the novel. So,
the humor elements, I think it's really important because again
there's a lot of weight to this novel. It very
feels very important, it feels very philosophical. In lots of times,
it's very difficult to read. It's dark, not difficult in
the sense of the prose being difficult, but just it's
hard to think about these realities. But the humor is

(50:17):
often so perfect in terms of its levity, and it's dry,
and it's subtle, and it's complicated, and it's just sort
of woven in in these ways. It's never, you know,
sort of heavy handed, and it's certainly never like slapsticky
or like really too obvious. But it's really, I think,
serving a very important function. It also gives us a
chance to move through the text and look at some

(50:39):
of the ways that this prose is just unbelievably great. Okay,
So on page nineteen, So I loved this because one
of the elements of humor is is the way that
James and Perceval Everett are both poking fun at Huckleberry Finn.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
There's a lot of that.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
So Huckleberry Finn, you know, he's kind of an anti
hero in his own story, and in this one he
often just seems silly. So it's really delightful to sort
of realize that, like what's happening in Huckleberry Finn is
often ridiculous, and you're sort of as the reader, you're
suspending disbelief and you have a certain amount of sympathy
and identification with Huck, so you're kind of going along
with it. And then it's like such a relief when

(51:17):
you are reading it in the pages of James.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
To be like, yeah, this is absurd.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
So this is when Huck is telling James about the
fact that when he was with Tom Sawyer they had
to do this blood oath. So Huck says this, I'm
surrounded by crazy people. You know what Tom Sawyer did,
tells me, Huck, he made me take an oath in
blood that if in any of us tells Gang secrets,
then we will kill that person's entire family. Don't that

(51:44):
sound crazy? And I just had such a strong reaction
to that. Here we have Huck confighting in fact in
James that a lot of what's happening in Huckleberry Finn
and Tom Sawyer even to Huck, sounds crazy. So you
have this, it's this very intelligent thing that is sort
of couched in humor. It seems light and just kind

(52:05):
of cute on some level. But what's happening here is
James is bringing out like a logical and a very
important sort of critical thinking side of Huck that we
don't have in Huck's own story. It's really very important
and very rich the way that humor allows us to
see this.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
On page thirty seven, this is when Huck is telling
James that, in fact, everybody thinks he's dead.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
Jim, is that you? Jim? It was Huck. I swear
you like to scare me with death.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
What you're doing out here, the boy asked, First off,
I'm freezing, I said, what should be doing on this island?
And while you got blood all of you, I killed myself.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
The boy said. I looked him over.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
You didn't do a good job, which I thought was
so funny, you know, shining this kind of spotlight on
the ways in which this is absurd. You know, this
idea of like, oh, I killed myself. Well, you didn't
do a good job of it. It's so it just
adds this whole other element that I think is really
important and very well done throughout the novel. So there
is just this sort of knowing and very sort of

(53:08):
dead pan reactions on the part of James that are
just so good and underscore the way in which Huckleberry
Finn is being absurd, but also the sort of intelligence
and warmth and acceptance on the part of James on page.

Speaker 2 (53:25):
On page.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
This is an example of the kind of like subtle
humor that we have over and over. It is so
effective we have here, how can I walk over to
the pile of hey, we were near dead but thankfully
not dead. So this is again that kind of very
subtle humor because and in this case it's really pointing
to really the stakes being very, very high, and yet

(53:49):
Percival Everett and James both having just a light touch
with some of these really really dark moments. It's I mean,
it's not exactly comic relief, but a little bit like
just the slight level in some of that kind of thing,
and a lot of times it's playing with language. Percival
Everett loves a pun. He has said, in fact that
he loves puns. He said that his humor is informed

(54:12):
by his father, Groucho Marx, Mark Twain, and Bullwinkle in
that order. So I like the fact that Mark Twain
is in there. I found Huckleberry Finn really amusing in
lots of you know, lots of instances. And in fact,
this kind of dead pan and kind of irony and
kind of satirical, sort of sarcastic stuff is really it's

(54:33):
throughout and it's light enough that it does add levity,
but it's so skillfully done.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
Okay, then we move on to one sixty.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
This is when the minstrel the minstrel people are wanting
James to come with them because in fact, he has
a great singing voice. It's important that they're buying his voice,
you know, and that his voice is kind of a commodity.
It's really underscoring the fact that words are important and
his voice is important. And in this case it's you know,
it's this very strange, ironic and absurd situation where he

(55:02):
is a black man who is posing as a white man,
posing as a black man. Again, this kind of double
irony that he spoke about earlier, but in fact it's
also ironic that what they want is his voice when
he is someone who has been silenced. So when he
is interacting with one of the minstrel guys, he says this,
somehow he sounded more like he was practicing or even

(55:24):
trying to make me feel comfortable, which was at once
evidence of some sort of kindness and terribly offensive. So
we have this idea of it was kind and also
terribly offensive. It's not even like it's definitely not laugh
out loud funny, but there is a levity and a
certain sort of sarcastic, kind of ironic humor here that

(55:45):
is really really well done. Then a little further so
we come to another point where James and Huck. It's
a very high stakes moment, and Huck says we have
to stick together, and then James says, that's not what we.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Have to do at all.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
So again you have this idea of a really plain
speak and of like really like stating and it's also unexpected,
which is part of humor. It's unexpected and it's clear,
and it's really cutting through a lot of what is
happening in the novel in a way that I found
again like a very important levity. But every single time,

(56:21):
it's smart, it's dry, it's subtle, it's it's it's it's
my favorite kind of humor. But it is a very
important element of the novel. I mean, it would be
fine if it felt unrelenting, because it should be unrelenting
in lots of ways. But if we're talking about a
you know, some sort of extension of the world of
Mark Twain, there is a lot of humor in Mark Twain,

(56:42):
so it's appropriate that we have, you know, even more
skilled and interesting and subtle humor in James.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
The last thing I want to.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Talk about is this idea before we talk about the
very end the spoilers that I that I promised and
that I will there will very clearly announce before we
get to them. But one of the things that the
book does that I think is very skilled. It's not
I don't think it's the most important thing it does
by any stretch, but I do think it's really it's
very satisfying. Is this idea of answering questions that come

(57:12):
up in Huckleberry fin or sort of clarifying pieces Again,
Huckleberry Finn, is this kind of episodic novel. So you
have these kinds of different chapters and different sort of sequences,
and we have huckle Finn and James as being separated
and then coming back together, and there are a bunch
of different coincidences, and in fact, Huckleberry Finn has been

(57:32):
pretty heavily criticized for sort of not like hanging together
very well. At the end of Huckleberry Finn we have
the reappearance of Tom Sawyer, and in fact, I got
so frustrated at the end of Huckleberry Finn. I was
sort of, you know, I found Huckleberry Finn. Listening to
it the audio version with Elijah Wood, I found it

(57:53):
actually very entertaining, and like I wouldn't be looking.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
Forward to it.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
I'd be like, oh, I should probably listen to my
Huckleberry Finn while I'm walking the dock. And then I
actually really enjoyed it quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
But I will say that toward.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
The end I got very, very frustrated because when Tom
Sawyer re enters the narrative and James or Jim at
that point is being held captive and you just want
the boys to free him, and there are a bunch
of really easy ways they could do that. But because
it is an adventure story, and because Mark Toyn has
promised his readers an adventure story, they like create all

(58:27):
of this kind of like Rube Goldberg esque kind of
like complexity that is so frustrating. You have the sense
of like this is a human life that they're trifling
with and that they are toying with. So that part
got very very frustrating for me, Like it was so
uncomfortable and terrible, and I just really was like angry
actually at Twain and also at these young boys who

(58:49):
were just kind of trifling again with a human life. So,
but that is a part of the book that has
been heavily criticized, and to his credit, Percival Everett just
like eliminates that whole thing.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
Again.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
I don't think that's any kind of a spoiler. He
just has an alternative thing and doesn't in fact involve
Tom Sawyer deeply in the close of James the novel. So,
but there are a bunch of times where he answers
some questions. For example, another one of the big questions
that people have is like why does why are are

(59:23):
they going south? Like why is this escaped enslaved person
moving towards the south, they get to a point at
when he could have gotten on the Ohio River, and
he continues south in Huckleberry Finn, and in James, we
have some answers in fact to why that is the case.
We also there's a whole episode of this big family

(59:44):
feud thing that is happening in Huckleberry Finn, and so
in James we get the answers to some of the
questions that are raised during that period of time. We also,
in fact, you know, throughout Huckleberry Finn there is really
again very liberal use of a really horrific racial slur,
and that is addressed in James, and I was curious

(01:00:05):
about how that was going to be handled, and I
felt like Perceval Everett does such a good job with that.
So some of the elements of Huckleberry Finn that are
really problematic are sort of dealt with in ways that
I think are very skilled in the novel James. And
one of the other things, you know, I mentioned earlier
that there's some coincidences, so lots of times when James,

(01:00:27):
when Jim and Huck are separated in Huckleberry Finn, you're
sort of like, wait, why are they separated, and why
are they back together? And this seems like overly coincidental,
and those issues, some of them are addressed in James.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
And also you can imagine that in James.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
A lot of what we are finding out, a lot
of what we are experiencing, occurs during those periods of
time when Huck and James are not together. And it's
so satisfying, you know, to sort of have Huck off
in his world and we know that he's off with
the King and the Duke, or we know that he's off,
you know, with the families who are feuding, but then
to find out what James has been up to the

(01:01:04):
whole time is so satisfying. So there are these ways
that the things work together, and there's kind of this
really nice filling in of gaps and answering of questions,
which is very satisfying. So for those of you who
don't want any spoilers, this would probably be a good
time to pause the tape. And the tape it's obviously
not a tape you can hit pause on your like

(01:01:27):
cassette tape player here, but you can, you know, maybe
tune in later when you have finished the book for
the rest of you, I want to talk in fact
about a couple of spoilers, So definitely I'm giving you
some time here, giving you some time. You should definitely
be turning this off if you don't want to hear the.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
Rest of this.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
One of the pieces of the story that was so
incredibly satisfying to me and so revelatory and so well
done was this idea of Jim As being Huck's father.
So this is something that is alluded to in Huckleberry Finn.
This is something that Percival Everett is is really developing

(01:02:05):
in ways that we're so strong and I have to say,
this is exactly the way you want something like this
to go in terms of the literary unfolding of it.
So what you want when you are writing a novel
is to have something feel really surprising but also inevitable.
So you want it to be like the reader to
be like what, but you also want the reader to

(01:02:27):
be like, oh my gosh, of course, like this makes
so much sense to me because of different things that
have been sort of different clues that have been included throughout.
So if we look at the way that this is
introduced subtly as we are moving along it's very satisfying
and it's very cool to look at the care with
which Perceval Everett has laid this out. So on page

(01:02:48):
forty six, this is very early on in the book,
and this is I think most readers would not have
any sense of this as being ironic. But once you
have read to the end of the book and you
understand what James's role is in Huck's life, this takes
on whole new meaning. So at one point Huck says,
I don't like white folks, he said, and I is one.

(01:03:10):
And then James says, shul looked like one. So it's
so important because in fact, you know, Huckleberry Finn is
passing for a white boy in this story. But this
idea of James again, this dramatic irony here where James
in fact knows that Huck is mixed race. James comes
back with, schol look like one. You have that idea

(01:03:31):
of him, as you know, tipping us off in a
very very subtle way, relatively early in the novel. Then
it gets slightly less subtle. On page one point fifty,
the enslaved person is talking to James and says, this,
what's the story with you? And your boy, did you
teach him how to pass?

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
What? How to pass? Easter said, pass Easter, that boy
is whiter than Wiley. Easter smiled at me. The boy
doesn't know, doesn't know what I asked. I knew both
of his parents.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
So we have this important introduction here on the part
of someone who is black and recognizing in fact that
that Huck as a young boy might in fact be
a mixed race. Later on, Huck says something about, you know,
when Tom Sawyer said that his hair never gets wet.
There's this idea of sort of slow realization on the
part of the reader that in fact Huck might be

(01:04:24):
mixed race. But even here we have James sort of,
you know, like pushing against that idea and saying I
know both of his parents, which is in fact not
a lie, but in fact is not.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
The whole truth.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
But this idea of passing too, which is you know,
hugely important in literature. We have Passing by Nella Larson,
we have the we have britt Bennett. I can't remember
the name of that book. So then on page two
fifty three my margin Elia just goes completely bananas.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
So we're getting very close to the end.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Of the novel, we have this really important revelation. I
liked the fact that that this is a very important revelation.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
In the novel, But it was crucial to.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
Me that this is not a story about Huck Finn.
This is a story about James and his family, and
it's about you know, his enslaved family, about saving Sadie
and Lizzie, and fully understanding that as a young white boy,
that Huckleberry Finn will be fine in the world. So
it's not, you know, I didn't want it to become,
you know, a story where Huckleberry Finn is sort of

(01:05:27):
you know, gaining more advantages and is suddenly like, has
an even better life. I wanted it really to remain
James's story, and in fact, he does a very good
job of that here. So as you know, having finished
the book, here comes a spoiler when he chooses to
save Huck and not Norman. There's that incredible tension, and
we have great tension throughout the novel, but there's that

(01:05:48):
incredible tension of like, who's he going to save? Is
it going to be Norman or Huck? He saves Huck
and Huck says this, why me, Jim, maybe because I
was tired of the slave voice, maybe because I hated
myself for having lost my friend, maybe because the lie
was burning through me. Maybe because of all those reasons.
I said, because Huck, and I hope you hear this

(01:06:11):
without thinking I'm crazy or joking, you are my son.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
I mean, it's such a bombshell.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
I have like down at the bottom of my page
here it says what and up here I have all
these exclamation marks and stars and lines and whatnot. It
was such a shocker, But I also had a sense
that it was coming again. It's that sense of like
being surprised at how clearly it is stated, but also
having that sense that this is inevitable. This is something
that we knew in fact was coming. It's so so

(01:06:39):
well done, and of course because Percival Everett is such
a genius, and because this novel is so incredibly well done,
you know, this idea of Huck as being James's son
is not just like this cool kind of twist. In fact,
it's extremely important because it's pointing up this fact of,
you know, of the way in which life is completely

(01:06:59):
different for the son of James, simply because he appears
white and all of the sort of ways that Huck
would have to then grapple, you know, with his race
and with the idea of like, is he you know,
in fact, going to try to pass as white or
continue passing as white.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
Also, again, this idea.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
Of James as really remaining resolved and you know, toward
the idea of saving his wife and daughter. The fact
that that is still the main thrust and the fact
that he is not going to have, you know, much
of a continued relationship with his son because he understands
that his son will be safe in the world is

(01:07:38):
also hugely revealing about the sorts of choices that he
has to make. So it's so incredible because it isn't
just this kind of simple thing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
It's it's this like idea that that's.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
A very large question, and it sort of opens out
into all of these large questions about race and about
the idea of passing, the idea of enslavement, the idea
of the civil war, I mean it then it morphs
into all of these very very important questions that the
reader should be reflecting upon once we understand the reality

(01:08:12):
that Percival Everet is positing here. It's so good, Okay,
so and then I want to talk about the very
ending again, spoilers, spoilers coming. So the ending I loved
so much. I really wanted a happy ending, and I
was really afraid that we were not going to get
a happy ending, and I just I was so satisfied

(01:08:34):
because it wasn't too tidy and it wasn't too kind
of Hollywood ending. But in fact, it was very satisfying
to me, and really I think was a really good
extension of the tone of the book. It didn't seem
too pollyanna ish, it didn't seem too overly optimistic or
too light.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
It was just I felt it like it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
Was earned and just really fantastic. So I want to
take a look at the incredible prose and the in
which this these very last you know paragraphs of the
book are so so strong. So we have, you know,
this this Graham farm where Sadie and the daughter are

(01:09:14):
that have been sold to and it's this horrific idea
that this is this kind of breeding place. I mean,
it's so dehumanizing and so awful to think that something
like this would exist. And so it's really really gratifying
when in fact Jim is able to literally like burn
it down. So this is this is when the owner
of Graham Farms or Graham Yeah, I think it's Graham

(01:09:37):
Farms comes out. Who the hell are you, he asked.
He pointed his gun at me. I pointed my pistol
at him. I am the angel of Death, come to
offer sweet justice in the night, I said, I am
a sign. I am your future. I am James. I
pulled back the hammer on my pistol. What intarnation. He

(01:09:58):
cocked his weapon. The shot I fired rang through that
valley like a cannon blast. It echoed seemingly forever. All
of those with me stopped and watched the man receive
the lead.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
His chest exploded red.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
On his nightclothes. He did not fall like a tree,
nothing about him was that big. He merely fell face
first into a darkness. None of us could see. The
women behind him screamed, but their sounds were lost in
the roar of the flames and the night. The wind
became wild and stirred the fire. Let's go, Sadie said.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
At my arm. We ran.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
We all ran north, some up the road, some up
the path. I carried Lizzie in my arms. She kept whispering,
Papa Papa Papa. It's so incredibly moving. That's not the
very end of the book, but it's important to have this,
this reunion of the three of them, but also the hellishness.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
Of the ending here.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
It's so beautifully done because we have the smallness of
that man and we have the idea of him. Is
his death as being you know, not this kind of
big monumental thing. It's like sort of an anti climax
because it should be, because in some senses, what's much
bigger and what's much more important here is this idea
of the enslaved people as being free. You of course, though,

(01:11:17):
have this idea of this kind of conflagration and this
kind of hellishness and the blooming red you know, on
the night shirt.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
So all of that is speaking to the idea.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Of the hell that these people should be in, these enslavers.

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
So it's really really beautifully.

Speaker 1 (01:11:34):
Done kind of no nonsense, but just also lyrical and
incredible in terms of seeing what vengeance James is having
at the end with something like this. As a reader,
one thing to think about, if it's a fairly open
ended ending, If for example, this book were to end
right here, it would be a very open ended ending.

(01:11:55):
And when I am faced with that and I want
kind of more clarity, or I want to know how
the author is sort of predicting things. If you read closely,
there's usually some sort of indication of what is going
to happen in the future. So I thought this was
very satisfying because in fact it is left somewhat open.
It's not, you know, this perfectly tidy ending. But in

(01:12:17):
fact we have reason to be optimistic. So here's the
final chapter, chapter twelve, very short. As happens with the
frightened and unprepared, we scattered. Some of us would be caught,
some of us would be killed, probably some of us
would go crawling back. Sadie, Lizzie and I made it
north to a town we were told was in Iowa.

(01:12:39):
Morris and Buck remained with us. The white people didn't
seem happy to see us, but there was a war on.
It had something to do with us. The local sheriff
met us in the street and regarded us suspiciously runaways.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
He asked, we are I said, any of you named,
and we're Jim.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
I pointed to each of us, Sadie, Lizzie, Morris, Buck,
so beautiful that you have this use here of this title,
this this name, this label on Jim that he is
refusing in many ways, and he's giving the other people
their names.

Speaker 2 (01:13:16):
And who are you? I am James, James? What just James.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
So it's such a beautiful ending. Here we have the
idea of James as really coming into his own and
as you know, this idea of a certain amount of optimism,
the idea that they are in a state that is,
you know, supposedly free, the idea that that the civil
war is beginning and that you know, people will be changing.
The South will in fact be defeated. I mean, you know,

(01:13:45):
the gains that will be made, in fact will be
not what James would hope, but certainly you know things
are moving in a better direction.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
But you have here this idea too, of him.

Speaker 1 (01:13:53):
Taking the name, and he stating his name and introducing himself,
and of him as being like a self creation, this
idea of him as having agency and having identity and
having a personage, having a name and something that he
can present himself as by virtue of having been not

(01:14:13):
only through this terrible trial, but is having written what
he has written and having had this reunion with his
wife and daughter. It's so so strong, and I really
love the idea of a somewhat open ended ending, but
also one that is incredibly satisfying because we are allowed
a certain amount of optimism. So I loved this novel

(01:14:37):
so much. I just found it so moving and so important.
And I hope that this deep dive today has allowed
you a little better understanding of why it is such
an incredible literary feat and why it is also such
an important addition to the way that we are looking
at the American novel, and certainly the way that we
are looking at Huckleberry Finn.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
Okay, thank you so so much.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
For listening and for tuning in, and I hope to
see you back soon at the Fox Page.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
Happy reading,