In a fever dream of a retelling, America's new reigning king of satire has turned a loved classic, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, upside down, placing Huck's enslaved companion Jim at the center.
An enslaved man debates John Locke. A Black man pretends to be a white man in blackface to sing in a new minstrel show. In a fever dream of a retelling, the newAdventures of Huckleberry Finn,
A subtle but significant change is that while the events of Twain's 1884 novel take place in the Mississippi Valley"forty to fifty years ago," in the 1840s, Everett advances the timeline by two decades, putting the nation on the cusp of civil war, though James and Huck don't know it. The artifice serves a crucial purpose, and James is a consummate trickster – the cooperative slave, play acting exaggerated subservience, with his voice and diction morphing to character. And despite their growing connection, James's audience iswhite people, old and young – including Huck. James only holds fast to only one true thing: His vow to his family: to"get me a job and save me sum money and come back and buy my Sadie and Lizzie.