Kruse's Keys: Read "James" to Hear Jim's Perspective on the those Hucklberry Finn Adventures

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Percival Everett's novel, "James," is an incredibly imaginative retelling of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" that boldly centers the narrative on the character of Jim. More than just a new perspective, it's a searing indictment of the institution of slavery and a powerful reminder of the terror of everyday life for enslaved people. Through Jim's narrative, the reader is forced to confront evil in all its iterations.

One of the most striking, and chillingly humorous, aspects of the novel involves Jim's "language lessons." He teaches the children "slave speak" because, as he explains, "white folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don't disappoint them." He reviews the overarching principles with the kids:

• No eye contact

• Never speak first

• Always let whites name the trouble

• Give whites the opportunity to correct you

While much of Jim’s internal dialogue is tongue-in-cheek, it's also a deadly serious survival and coping strategy. These lessons are designed to prevent the slightest external slip of the tongue, which could easily lead to painful death or torture. This ever-present danger brings a profound seriousness to the "adventure" upon which Jim embarks—which, spoiler alert, is more of a harrowing marathon for freedom.

While Jim is the principal character, the novel retains much of Twain's stinging satire. Jim often depends on the young white child (i.e., Tom Sawyer) for his very survival at several junctures, precisely because no one would ever believe a Black man would be out on his own during that period. Yet, it is Jim’s heart—for Tom and, more importantly, for the family he leaves behind—that truly shines. He grapples with the lunacy of the system into which he is born without losing faith in himself or hope for the seemingly impossible.

For an author as prolific as Percival Everett, "James" feels like a magnum opus of sorts—perhaps even a catharsis. If not a total cleansing of the soul, then at least an unburdening of the anger, outrage, and generational injustice that he would argue make up the Black experience in America. His acknowledgments section sums it up best, adapting a well-known Twain quote: "Heaven for the climate; hell for my long-awaited lunch with Mark Twain."

Key Quotes:

Quotes: 

23 'Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient." 

23 'the better [whites] feel, the safer we are.

27 Judge rules he can't indict on a slave burned to death b/c it was a mob that

did it... 

35 "But where does a slave put anger?... the real source of our rage had to go without address"

The Cost of Living Like This: My Notes and Kindle Highlights

2015 Reading List



One of my favorite things is to have a writer I love tell me about writers he/she loves.  In a complete aside check out this website on 'neglected books'--an amazing compilation put together by writers and editors.  

In Salter's biographical tale Burning the Days (my review here), it's noted that Kennaway was buried standing up (he died of a heart attack at the age of 40).   Having just discovered writers' writer Salter a year ago, I was more than happy to go down the rabbit hole and find out who this writer was that Salter thought worth mentioning in his own biography.  

Needless to say I was impressed by Kennaway's story of one man's gradual descent into destruction. I happen to enjoy a good tragedy and this story's arc slowly sinks while keeping the reader wondering if there's a chance for redemption  But what struck me most about Living Like This, though, was the author's descriptive abilities.  

On doctors:
Doctors combine an air of masculinity with an impression of virginity. They look as though they change in changing-rooms and never drop their eyes. The economist did not like doctors. He preferred mini-cab drivers really, they being the other idiots to whom we so frequently trust our lives.

I mean who thinks of describing a woman's eyes like this: 
you watch the sea on a cloudy day, you may become awed by its infinite invention. Not only does its colour constantly change within the range of blue, grey and green but waves form and break without the pattern ever being repeated. Nervous children, it is said, can be reorientated by a few days on a beach. The sea both fascinates and reassures them. We are talking of Christabel’s eyes.

I will leave you with this great little line he penned on falling in love:
Before we are infected, by love or measles, we are wide open to infection.

The Cost of Living Like This by James Kennaway

You have 23 highlighted passages

The wicked games, the weapons we use to destroy others with ourselves: there is no measuring the lengths to which we go in order to avoid the loneliness of death.Read more at location 214

Doctors combine an air of masculinity with an impression of virginity. They look as though they change in changing-rooms and never drop their eyes. The economist did not like doctors. He preferred mini-cab drivers really, they being the other idiots to whom we so frequently trust our lives.Read more at location 268\

But acceptance is not quite belief. Acceptance is a blind drawn down neatly between patient and the blazing truth. TheRead more at location 283

Jealousy is wild and filthy, we know; is demanding, obsessive, leading always to thoughts of violence; but Lord, it is a living emotion. We are never more totally alive than when the loved one is lying in someone else’s arms.Read more at location 575

you watch the sea on a cloudy day, you may become awed by its infinite invention. Not only does its colour constantly change within the range of blue, grey and green but waves form and break without the pattern ever being repeated. Nervous children, it is said, can be reorientated by a few days on a beach. The sea both fascinates and reassures them. We are talking of Christabel’s eyes.Read more at location 867

Her face was that of a refugee who is not afraid. The face of a girl who has crossed the Ukraine.Read more at location 1073

But the eyes were Sally’s, Sally’s ten years from now, worn down by the responsibility and pain and hopelessness of an invalid’s passion, do not call it love: of an invalid’s hook, his gaff.Read more at location 1076

Sally had never starved. None of the kids have starved. Her father was in the R.A.F. with all those proper allowances, and even before Den arrived on the scene, ends met. Yet there wasRead more at location 1124

something about her nature associated with poverty. The strange, slummy mixture of toughness and sugar separated her even from Jacky. It was as if she had inherited a knowledge of want.Read more at location 1125

During such recollections she was less honest than the rest of us. She never put bad things in her diary. It is the poor girl who looks back on the tiniest patch of sunlight, really no more than an hour’s relief from the struggle and pain; she makes a summer of it.Read more at location 1133

She has nothing, Julian often told himself at times like this, nothing beyond her youth. The sorrow lies in her own awareness of that fact. She knew these to be her years; her short years; her lifeRead more at location 1141

but he’s still alive, I think. And someone once said of him ‘He’s got a long, unblinking stare.’ If I were an artist I’d like them to say that about me.”Read more at location 1320

“When Julian said to me ‘All fatal illnesses are only marginal examples of an ageing process common to us all’, he put in one sentence this whole stoic, depressing English philosophy.Read more at location 1680

All right, all right. But there is such a thing as love. Not agreed. There are at least fifty different things carelessly filed in our heads under the general section of love. What we are talking of, here, or what you are afraid of, is a case of obsessional love: the Albertine syndrome is what the Americans would call it. The sort that finally makes a man shoot himself over the lady’s grave because his energies are exclusively devoted to the pursuit of one object—another person’s soul. You are right to be afraid of it. It does not reason.Read more at location 1914

Before we are infected, by love or measles, we are wide open to infection.Read more at location 1922

Asked why he went to the far side of the barricade, and Julian was not so far gone as to ask himself just that, he could only reply with honesty “I tasted the salt on her upper lip.”Read more at location 2180

The first marriage was not consummated in happiness; the days are not therefore marked on my heart. Every day of my second marriage is marked there.Read more at location 2262

My life is my heart. My heart is my marriage. My marriage is my Julian.Read more at location 2264

mean Josh takes ten times the risks Julian ever took every day. He’s got guts and he’s been in terrible trouble. Cool in crisis. All that. But he hasn’t got the pain in his face.Read more at location 2526

she seemed stunned by her streamlined cruelty. She muttered “Christ.” Mozart was asking something about her intimateRead more at location 2551

The thought that occurred to both women simultaneously was “Thank God he’s gone.”Read more at location 3177

She was evidently engaged to him. Den thought she died of a broken heart. He said he was doing his best to stop her mother Pam writing a bad letter to this poor man. I said I thought he’d better do that.”Read more at location 3225

Only on his way north did he think of all the things he should have said to her; how she was doing for her children what she had done for Julian, how she was turning her eyes from the blazing truth that passions such as Julian’s have always deeper roots? How we can’t go on and on, like this?