I Wrote Myself Into Being: JAMES by Percival Everett
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Percival Everett won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his novel james, A modern work that retells The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn From the perspective of Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck on a trip to the Mississippi River. in this week’s episode Zero to well-readJeff and Rebecca discuss what Everett does with Jim’s interiority and intelligence that Twain couldn’t, how the novel’s central conceit embodies W.E.B. Du Bois’s theory of double consciousness, and how Everett succeeded in creating a book that is layered and intellectually rich, turning in a genuine page-turner.
In this companion piece to the episode, I’m sharing some Percival Everett trivia and interviews, some book awards tea, recaps for retellings where side characters appear, and more.
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fun facts
- Percival Everett got the idea to write james Story while playing tennis.
- Everett teaches fiction writing at the University of Southern California (USC)
- Yours truly (Vanessa) went to USC (fight! ✌🏼), but studied business for immigrant-parent-pride reasons after first declaring pre-med and realizing it was a mistake.
- If I had actually decided to pursue writing then, and shared Rebecca’s absolute terror of having my silly short stories graded by that man, I would almost certainly have joined one of Everett’s Intro to Fiction Writing courses.
- Man contains diversity: He worked for 12 years training horses and mules, is an avid fly-fisher and woodworker, repairs musical instruments, and plays jazz guitar along with teaching and writing literary masterpieces.
Book Awards Trivia (and Tea!)
- James is one of only eight novels to win both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Others are:
- Thomas Pynchon almost made this amazing list, and the reason he didn’t is a little scandal.
- In 1974, he won the 1974 National Book Award for Fiction for his novel gravity’s rainbow.
- It would have won the Pulitzer—the three members of the fiction prize committee unanimously recommended it.
- At the last minute, the Pulitzer Advisory Board rejected her nomination, calling the book “unreadable,” “turgid,” and “obscene,” and then decided not to award the fiction prize that year. Escandalo!
- Pinchan’s vinland The basis of the Paul Thomas Anderson film one fight after another. You can listen to our episode on the novel Here.
show quotes out of context
- “He knows that we know, or he knows that we think we know.”
- Me, who grew up on MTV programming: “This is the diary of Percival Everett.”
- “Penelope, if you don’t know, is Odysseus’s wife, who has spent 20 years eluding people through deception and, frankly, men who don’t understand textile art.”
front side character
establishment of james Here’s one of my personal brands of fiction catnip: retellings told from the POV of a side character, or even just a different main character, from the source material. Here are some (more than) of my favorites.
- song of achilles By Madeline Miller: The story of the Trojan War and Achilles through the eyes of Patroclus (warning: keep tissues on hand for this one). See also: girls silence by Pat Barker (told by Briseis, Queen Achilles is taken captive) and a thousand ships By Natalie Haynes (told by women on both sides of the Trojan War)
- wide sargasso sea By Jean Rice: a remix on Jane Eyre Told through the POV of Rochester’s wife Bertha Mason – aka “the mad lady in the attic”
- beautiful villain Rebecca F. By Kenny: a vampiric retelling of the great Gatsby Told from Daisy’s point of view
- lady macbeth By Ava Reed: A Gothic, Contemplative Story “What if the woman in this famous story was labeled evil to excuse a man’s wickedness?” based on diversity, looseness macbeth
- march By Geraldine Brooks: A look at Louisa May Alcott little WomenRetells the story from Mr. March’s point of view
- I, Tituba By Maryse Conde: It is not a retelling of a fictional work, but a fictional account of a historical event told from the POV of a person generally excluded from the narrative. In this case, that person is Tituba, the slave woman who was among the first people accused of witchcraft during the 1692 Salem witch trials.
- penelopiad by margaret atwood – I can’t describe it better than Jeff did in the “Show quotes out of context” section.
quotable
james Full of some great quotes on everything from the act of reading to the plight of the black person surviving in a racist society. Here are some extraordinary things:
- “In that moment, the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know that I was looking at them or reading them, listening to them or understanding them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and therefore completely subversive.”
- “With my pencil, I wrote myself into existence.”
- “What a strange world, what a strange existence, that one’s equals must argue for one’s equality, that one’s equals must have a space that allows that argument to be aired, that one cannot make that argument for oneself, that the premises of said argument must be tested by equals who do not agree.”
- “Luke laughed. So when we see him stuttering later, acting silly, will that be an example of proleptic irony or dramatic irony?”
Variations
In 2024, IIt was announced that Stephen Spielberg would executive produce the adaptation. jamesTaika Waititi has been tentatively named as director. That was a while ago, and we haven’t heard much about casting or anything else since. Taking on any task is an undertaking. Friendly it Work? This is a project that needs to be handled with care and discretion. I share Rebecca’s bewilderment – I’m that worried Kermit meme all over again.
The good news is that Everett is set to write the script himself and will also serve as executive producer. Fingers crossed, breath held!
extra credit
readlikes and such
sales by Paul Beatty
A satire about a young man’s segregated upbringing and the race trials that send him to the Supreme Court to try to reinstate slavery and segregation. The book includes a Huck Finn plot point: a character wrestles with the N-word. huck finnAnd their solution is to replace the word “race-sensitive” in every occurrence of it in the book
underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The central conceit of this award-winning novel is that the Underground Railroad, through a touch of magical realism, was a real railroad, not just a metaphor.
Supplementary reading (and watching/listening)
- this youtube clip Percival Everett has discussed the anti-intellectualism he observed among American students. This clip is over 15 years old, but whenever I get on social media and see the younger generation of readers resisting reading difficult texts, I want to send it to them.
- Levar Burton used to host an amazing podcast called levar burton readsA show dedicated to short stories selected and presented by Burton himself. As far as I know, the show ended in 2024, and one of the last stories covered was Percival Everett’s “appropriation of cultures” The story of a young black musician who is harassed by a group of white fraternity brothers first appeared in Everett’s 2014 story collection, damned if i do.
- Dua Lipa continues to impress me with the book selections, interviews, and insights she shares in her Service95 Book Club. In his September 2025 interview with Percival EverettThe pair discussed Everett’s 2021 novel Tree.
- Singer read this title in 2022 when she tackled the Perfect Book Award shortlist after being asked to speak at the awards ceremony.
- She describes the book as “classic Percival: wicked, deeply affecting, and always a step ahead of your expectations”.
- A quote from the interview: “You know, it would be great to write a novel that everyone would hate… What a power that would be! It’s wonderful!” Sorry, Mr. Everett. The circumstances are not in your favor there.
- ICYMI: Everett’s acceptance speech For the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction. It’s kind, it’s funny, it runs on AI, and despite the state of the world, it’s beautifully, boldly hopeful.