Transcript: Race in America: Giving Voice with Author Percival Everett (2024)

MR. EVERETT: Thank you for having me.

MR. CAPEHART: All right, Professor. In his review of "James" Washington Post book critic Ron Charles wrote--and I'm quoting--"This is not a story told by a boy drifting down a river. It's a story told by a man racing against chaos to retrieve his family." What inspired you to reexamine an American classic like "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" from James's perspective?

MR. EVERETT: I think it was a longstanding dissatisfaction with the representation of enslaved people in literature and film. You know, it seems--there's a scene in Huck Finn where Jim is led to believe that he's been dreaming something that he knows very well has happened, and this portrayal of a simple-minded beast, more or less, is unfair to the really complicated human beings that obviously people, of course, were.

MR. CAPEHART: And let's talk more about that dream that Jim has, because in the book, "James," how do you--what is Jim dreaming about? What's happening in his dream?

MR. EVERETT: Well, the scene I'm referring to is one where he and Huck Finn--where he and Huck are separated, and I don't remember the scene all that well, to tell the truth. And much happens, and Huck leads Jim to believe that none of it has actually happened, that there was much adventure here. And in my telling, Jim--James allows Huck the space to play this prank. He allows him to--he allows the boy to believe that he's been misled.

MR. CAPEHART: Hmm. And that goes--gets down a whole other part of the conversation I'm going to have in a minute.

So I thought you were alluding to what was going to be my next question, because in the reimagining, James has an expansive vocabulary, which he hides from White people by tactfully code switching, reasons that, you know, we understand. And James has a vivid imagination, occasionally envisioning himself speaking with the likes of Voltaire. That's what I thought you were referring to.

For those who haven't read the original book, how was how was Jim previously portrayed, and why was it important for you to depict him in the way that you do?

MR. EVERETT: Well, again, that he's portrayed as very simple, simple-minded. He's capable of understanding love, hate, eating and sleeping, but there's no depth to his character. There's no understanding of his humanity. And so in this novel, "James," it's not that I'm providing agency for Jim. That agency already exists. It's not visible in Twain's text, but I'm simply allowing James an avenue for expression of that agency.

MR. CAPEHART: You know, James comes into possession of a pencil, and I'm not going to give away how he gets it. But he declares--and I'm quoting--"I wrote myself into being." Talk about the power infused in that line.

MR. EVERETT: Well, first of all, I'll back up to the activity of reading. Reading is perhaps the most subversive thing that we can do. No one--no one is privy to what goes into us when we look at a text. So someone can actually read over your shoulder, but they have no idea what the work is doing to you, what the words mean to you, what you bring to them, and where they take you. This is why people who would oppress and would seek to control you are so afraid of literacy, why fascist regimes run so quickly to the burning and banning of books.

So when--perhaps the second most subversive thing is actually writing, providing a text which can be consumed by someone else that will lead to that subversive act of reading. And so Jim, in writing himself into being, is actually taking control of his own story so that he might relay it to someone else.

MR. CAPEHART: I believe in an interview with the New Statesman, the journalist writes, "But in giving Jim a voice that was denied to him in Twain's original text and in making the enslaved man an intellectual who writes, reads, and hallucinates conversations with Voltaire and John Locke, Everett makes an urgent political point about the underestimation of Black lives." Do you agree with that characterization?

MR. EVERETT: Not sure I understand it completely. [Laughs]

MR. EVERETT: Oh. Why? Talk more about that. I mean, I highlighted it because I was like, yeah, that's right.

MR. EVERETT: I like it, but I think I have to back off of how much I'm giving to Jim. I'm allowing this character to speak, and he's not speaking for me. He's speaking for the character that I've imagined. So I back away from any kind of--though, of course, writing it, I'm creating all of this. But there is something to the agency that this character in our literary space has.

MR. CAPEHART: I'm fascinated by--several times now, you're, in some ways, putting distance between you and James. It's as if James--it's as if you did an interview with James, and now you've taken the interview, transcribed it, turned it into a book, and put it out there into the world, instead of James being in the story that you are telling from his perspective, being generated from your own mind. Why are you putting separation between you and James, I wonder.

MR. EVERETT: Well, I think it's more separation between--from myself and the work. When I finish a novel, I really--I really move on from it. It now has its job to do in the world, which is to eat and survive. I call it the "mother bear school of art." I finish. I kick it out. It must go out and survive. But the one thing it cannot do is come back to the den. I cannot speak for the work, and in this case, the work is "James." I cannot speak for him. This work exists on its own.

MR. CAPEHART: Wow. You and I are going to have to meet one day, face to face, where we have more than 30 minutes, because I would love to talk to you more about that.

There are some scenes that readers of Huck Finn will recognize, others that are brand-new, and some you purposefully left out. Why?

MR. EVERETT: Well, first of all, I may have left it out simply because I didn't remember them from the text, because they weren't a part of the world as I saw it through Jim's eyes. In order to inhabit the world, I found it necessary to make myself sick of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and to that end, I read the novel some 15 times in a row. I would finish it and just go back to the beginning, because I wanted to be loyal to the world and not to the text.

By the fifth reading, I was fairly sick of the novel, and now the idea of reading it again is really repulsive to me. I just--I know the world, but I didn't want Twain's words getting in my way. And so some of those characters fell away. The most important one that falls away at the end of the novel is Tom Sawyer, who I simply don't like. And so he's--so he's not there.

[Laughter]

MR. CAPEHART: Well, let's talk more about your writing of "James." As you well know, having read Huck Finn 15 times back to back, it is notorious for using the N-word, and it uses it 219 times. And that fact has been used as a means to get it removed from being taught in schools. Were you thinking about the use of common racial slurs of that time period while writing "James" and how it would be received?

MR. EVERETT: Well, one can't help but notice and think about it, given our culture and the day. But I did not give much thought to how it would be received. The word shows up in my novel because I'm trying to be true to the world. That was a common word then used not so differently from the way it's used now, but it had different import, and it was doing just as damaging business. But to not have it in the text, to say to do what someone tried to do, republish Huck Finn with the word "slave," replacing that particular unfortunate word, is to try to clean up American history. The word belongs there because it was there. What education does is it allows us to see what the word represents, what it means about America, what it means about the culture's attitudes towards an underclass at that time. It is much better to have it there and to educate people than to remove it and have them be ignorant.

MR. CAPEHART: Yeah, I agree with you 100 percent on that.

You know, in an interview you did with the BBC, you said, "The language that people use tells us about the people." And then also there's something else that they pointed out where you say, "If someone came into this studio right now and quite angrily called me, quite literally, 'You N-word,' I would be just as offended because I would know what they meant." Then they go on to quote you as saying, "The strange thing, of course, is that as a Black man, I can say the word, and my students, they will not say it. Sensitivity to language is important and necessary, but we've become too literal-minded." Talk more about--talk more about that. Are your students being too sensitive?

MR. EVERETT: Well, I appreciate their sensitivity, and it's certainly not a word they should go out and use it in public.

MR. CAPEHART: [Laughs] Yeah.

MR. EVERETT: But it's just two syllables. And if you're talking about American history, there's no reason to be afraid of this word. Replacement of one word for another with the same intention is no replacement at all.

And there's another layer of offensiveness to it. If someone came in here right now and called me, quite literally, an N-word, and that is then I know they actually know better, but they're choosing to be insulting in that way.

MR. CAPEHART: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You have said--and I keep quoting you back to you from other interviews, but it's so good. You say, "I don't think about genre. I think about people's expectations about stories, and if I can subvert those expectations, then I can create absurdities. And I can give either a heightened satisfaction or dissatisfaction that will allow me to do something different." How challenging is it to subvert expectations?

MR. EVERETT: Well, once you figure out what the expectations are, it's not difficult at all. Maybe the challenge is to do it in a way where you don't push the audience away from you, and one never knows when one's being successful with that. So it's trial and error.

MR. CAPEHART: Mm-hmm. You often examine serious issues through humor. How did you find your sense of humor, and how has it helped you examine topics like slavery and racism?

MR. EVERETT: Well, it's very easy to be earnest about terrible things, and that's what makes terrible things often so boring. I'm not saying they should be entertaining, but when people think they know when they come to something, then it's hard to convince them of anything else. And actually, I'm not trying to convince anyone. I just want people to think.

My sense of irony and humor, I have four influences that I can name quite clearly, and they are my father, Mark Twain, Groucho Marx, and Bullwinkle. And all of these people loved language and play with language. When you open language up to people, when you make them laugh, then you've created a game, one that they're engaged in. Then you can do other things, perhaps harder things, things with more gravity, but you can get them thinking.

MR. CAPEHART: Given what you just said, then, is that why you say in the acknowledgements that "Mark Twain's humor and humanity affected me long before I became a writer"?

MR. EVERETT: Certainly. When I was a kid, reading "Life in the Mississippi" and "Roughing It" were important texts for me. I wouldn't say that "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was. It wasn't a novel I thought about a lot. It was a novel I appreciated for the fact that it was the first time I'd seen a character representing a young America, an adolescent America, just like Huck is an adolescent boy moving through his own landscape, dealing with that feature of the American experience, which is the most pronounced, most important, and perhaps the only one that is always present. And that is race.

MR. CAPEHART: So I can't have you here talking about your brand-new novel without talking about a novel you wrote--I'm so bad at math, Professor Everett-- [Laughter]

MR. CAPEHART: --more than 20 years ago, and that is your book, "Erasure," which I mentioned in the intro. "Erasure" was adapted into American fiction. In that book, in "Erasure," your character Monk laments the limited Black stories that are published, including slave stories. Did you face that same internal struggle when you chose to write "James"?

MR. EVERETT: Well, a little, yeah. I was so sick of slave stories. What are you supposed to say when you walk out of a book or a movie about slavery? "Wow. That really changed my mind about slavery."

[Laughter]

MR. EVERETT: Oh, it was a bad thing.

And so I--and so I decided that my dissatisfaction was not with stories of enslaved people. It was with stories that were about slavery, and so I viewed James, as I was making it, as a story about an enslaved man, not as about the institution.

MR. CAPEHART: Mm-hmm. You know, in Elle magazine, you said, "When I was growing up and went to the bookstore, I read, like most writers, voraciously as a kid. Anytime I would look for novels that had Black characters, it either took place in the Antebellum South or the inner city. I came from a family of two generations of doctors. We would spend our summers in Annapolis, and we lived in Columbus, South Carolina. My family wasn't there," meaning wasn't represented in the text, "even though I knew my experience wasn't unique." I read that and I thought yeah, and I think that's why--I have not read "Erasure," but I did see "American Fiction" and identified completely with Monk. You know, being able to see--being able to see myself in writing in the arts is very important. Talk more about that for folks who might not understand that the Black experience is a whole lot more varied than sort of the--I'm missing the word--the either Antebellum South or inner-city Black family narrative that we're used to.

MR. EVERETT: Well, you know, it's in the language. We fall into this trap when we talk about--and I do it. We say "the Black experience."

MR. CAPEHART: Mm-hmm.

MR. EVERETT: But what's so strange is if we were to say, you know, "the White experience," everyone would be puzzled. Black Americans, because of religion, geography, socioeconomic standing, education, are as varied as White Americans. Why is it [audio distortion] unique? Except for the fact that many of us share the slavery in our ancestry.

MR. CAPEHART: Mm-hmm.

MR. EVERETT: But that doesn't define us. Well, you know, in some ways, it does still define us, but it doesn't define our daily lives and how we live and talk and enjoy each other.

That said, if we're in the middle of--find some remote places--northern Montana, we can feel awfully lonely, and we see another Black person, and there's a sense of some relief, some solidarity or something. But that's been generated and sort of made necessary because of our experience with this country.

MR. CAPEHART: Mm-hmm. You know, I remember seeing "The Last Black Man in San Francisco," which was a terrific movie, and the scene that jumped out at me was the one where the two primary characters--something terrible has happened, and they come to--there's an argument that's happening, and they come together. And I realized I've been so conditioned to seeing two Black men, two Black people, when they come together, that a gun is going to pop out or a fight is going to happen.

MR. EVERETT: Oh.

MR. CAPEHART: And instead, the two men embraced, and one of them broke down crying. And it was in that moment where, in this sad scene, I was elated, because for the first time, I saw two Black men on screen having real, complex emotions that had nothing to do and did not devolve into the pathology that we've grown used to.

MR. EVERETT: Oh, isn't that something? Yeah, I understand that completely and then some.

MR. CAPEHART: Mm-hmm. Can I--you said something about "Erasure" that I thought was funny. You said, "The only thing that ever pissed me off is that everyone agreed with it. No one took issue or said it's not like that. I like blowback," you said. "It's interesting. There's nothing worse than preaching to the choir, right?" So you were pissed off that no one said--you know, pushed back on you?

MR. EVERETT: Well, but where's the fun?

[Laughter]

MR. EVERETT: I invite, I enjoy disagreement. It's how we learn and grow. So it's--I wouldn't say that I was pissed off as much as I thought I was missing out on some part of the game.

MR. CAPEHART: Hmm. You know, I read many reviews of "James," and several critics wondered, after you called out the publishing industry in "Erasure," if now you were, quote, "needling gullible White readers about what we expect from Black novelists with 'James.'" What do you say to that? Are you needling White readers?

MR. EVERETT: Well, one, I wouldn't admit it if I were.

[Laughter]

MR. EVERETT: And two, that's just the kind of blowback I like.

[Laughter]

MR. CAPEHART: So then what do you expect people--after White people read "James," what do you expect their reaction to be, or what do you hope it would be?

MR. EVERETT: Well, I hope they don't change their minds about slavery.

[Laughter]

MR. EVERETT: No, I never say what I want books to do or what I want them to mean, but I would say that if I can achieve anything, it's that I hope that people recognize that the enslaved were not bought, that they were intricate, complicated people who were being imprisoned, that they were not simple-minded people who just needed to be free to become like the rest of the world. But they were already people with agency, complicated thoughts, real considerations of second-level understanding of things, and second-order understanding of things, and that they thought about more than just their basic needs and desires.

MR. CAPEHART: So several times now--well, a couple, at least three times now, you have said that, you know, you hope folks' minds, you know, won't be changed about slavery after reading "James" or other--because slavery was wrong. Slavery was bad. Slavery was evil. And yet, Professor Everett, we're in a time when we had a full, several news cycles talking about the fact that in Florida, there is a curriculum that says to teach the benefits of--what the benefits that the enslaved got from their enslavement, or more than pulling Huckleberry Finn off the shelves, pulling off other books written by Black authors or that delve into the subject matter of slavery or even diversity and inclusion. What do you make of the time that we're in?

MR. EVERETT: Well, it's pretty scary, isn't it?

Well, first, you can be pretty sure that anyone who talks about banning books has never read a book, and if they have, they haven't understood the book. And that's a problem with--maybe the only problem with democracy. If you can garner enough votes, you can get into office and do bad things to everybody. I can't think of anything better as far as systems go, but that's a failing of what we have. We have to live with it because we're not a culture that goes out and votes.

Florida is a mess, and sadly, it's a symptom to do--to just say Florida is to do what America always does, which is to find some region to blame so that it can absolve itself of its guilt elsewhere.

MR. CAPEHART: Now that "James" is done and out in the world and you have released it, are you already working on the next book?

MR. EVERETT: Well, it's probably more correct to say it's working on me, but yes, we're working together, this book and I, trying to figure it out.

MR. CAPEHART: Tell me more. What's this book that's working on you?

MR. EVERETT: Oh. Well, I--that's the point. I start studying something and I get lost, and then I have to come to some agreement with the material. And I have not done that yet, so--

MR. CAPEHART: Okay. I'm going to press one more time. So what's your research? Why have you gotten lost--where are you--why are you lost? What are you lost into?

MR. EVERETT: Well, this is a nice try, but I'm not falling for this.

[Laughter]

MR. EVERETT: This is yet another book I'm writing about Calvinist dog training. That's all I'll say.

[Laughter]

MR. CAPEHART: Riveting.

MR. EVERETT: Yes.

[Laughter]

MR. CAPEHART: Percival Everett, Distinguished Professor of English at USC, author of "James," thank you so much for coming to "Capehart" on Washington Post Live.

MR. EVERETT: It's a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for having me.

MR. CAPEHART: Thank you.

And thank you for joining us. For more of these important conversations, sign up for a Washington Post subscription. Get a free trial by visiting--you see it there at bottom of the screen--WashingtonPost.com/live. Again, WashingtonPost.com/live.

I'm Jonathan Capehart, associate editor at The Washington Post. Thank you for watching "Capehart" on Washington Post Live.

[End recorded session]