Week One: James
JUNE 5, 2024 • CAMP TOB WEEK ONE
James
first half discussion
Camp is back! And we’re so happy you’re here with us again. Each month we’ll be reading a pair of books, each positioned around a specific “summer vibe”; our June mood is “the past is never dead,” and we’re starting with James by Percival Everett. Then we’ll follow that later this month with Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange.
Now let’s welcome Activity Leader Sabrina A., who will guide us through James over the next two weeks!
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When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.
This has been excerpted from the publisher’s summary and edited for length.
Hi Sabrina, and thank you for joining us. Please tell us where you’re writing from!
I live in SE Portland, just a block and a half from Powell’s on Hawthorne, and nine and a half from Backstory Books.
It’s good to be in walking distance of the essentials. So what are your preferred reads?
I love to read all sorts of fiction. I always plan to add biographies and histories, but too much good fiction keeps catching my eye! I currently have my next 50 books stacked on top of my bookshelf, but plan on adding Joseph O’Neill’s new book, out this week.
Nice—and now the floor is yours, Sabrina!
Hello campers! I am excited to discuss this book with you. Not only am I a Percival Everett fan in general (right now I am reading Dr. No), but really loved reading James. Even though I knew to expect something stunning, I was nowhere near prepared for what I read.
This week’s discussion will focus on part one. Next week we will discuss the rest of the book and our thoughts about it in general. In the meantime, no spoilers, I beg of you! Let’s all get to the end together. I have always had a hard time pacing myself during a delicious meal, but let’s try together, shall we?
My first questions:
1.
Reading about Huck Finn, I found that Hemingway, Trillin, Eliot (the T.S. one), and Mailer (among others) have all remarked on the importance of Twain’s novel, commenting on its use of “natural speech.” How do you think Everett’s novel responds to this?
2.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opens with the following preface:
NOTICE
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
Per G.G., Chief of Ordinance
Think of some of the ways in which Everett responds to this in the first few chapters. If seated opposite each other, could Twain and Everett find common ground?
3.
The first sentences in James:
Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass. The moon was not quite full, but bright, and it was behind them, so I could see them as plain as day, though it was deep night.
…
Those white boys, Huck and Tom, watched me. They were always playing some kind of pretending game where I was either a villain or prey, but certainly their toy. They hopped about out there with the chiggers, mosquitoes and other biting bugs, but never made any progress toward me. It always pays to give white folks what they want, so I stepped into the yard and called out into the night,
“Who dat dere in da dark lak dat?”
Contrast this to the first two sentences in chapter 2 of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (the first chapter, for those of you who don’t remember/have never read Huck Finn, is about the extraordinary luck of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and their successes):
We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow’s garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn’t scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson’s big n_____, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he said,
“Who dat?”
It seemed that Everett is setting up so many themes that run through the book in that one paragraph. But I want to hear what themes you see—I bet we all have different perspectives to add.
4.
How does the first section of James demonstrate acts of powerful defiance? What examples do you think of?
5.
How does Everett use philosophical writings to show James’s struggle with society, but also with himself?
6.
One theme I felt kept coming up was body memory/trauma. Do you think this fits in with or rides alongside the other themes? How do we see it in the other characters?
7.
James struggles between care for the child Huck, and impatience with the “white boy.” How did you feel about Huck by the end of chapter one?
8.
If you’ve read other Everett, what common threads did you recognize? How to they contribute to James?