Giving “James” a Voice: Percival Everett on His Reimagining of Huck Finn | Amanpour and Company
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- The work of Percival Everett landed in the spotlight when his novel "Erasure" hit the big screen in the movie adaptation "American Fiction." A biting satire of racial stereotypes in the literary world, "American Fiction" took home the Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Hard on the heels of its success, Everett is back with a new book, this time taking a deeper look at literature itself. "James" is a reimagining of "Huckleberry Finn," usurping Mark Twain’s protagonist to put Jim, Huck’s enslaved sidekick, front and center. Everett joins the show to discuss how he gave the iconic character a powerful new voice.
Originally aired on April 12, 2024
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Major support for Amanpour and Company is provided by The Anderson Family Endowment, Jim Attwood and Leslie Williams, Candace King Weir, the Leila and Mickey Straus Family Charitable Trust, Mark J. Blechner, the Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation, Seton J. Melvin, Charles Rosenblum, Koo and Patricia Yuen, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, Jeffrey Katz and Beth Rogers, Bernard and Denise Schwartz, the JPB Foundation, the Sylvia A. and Simon B. Poyta Programming Endowment to Fight Antisemitism and Josh Weston.
Subscribe to the Amanpour and Company. channel here: bit.ly/2EMIkTJ
Subscribe to our daily newsletter to find out who's on each night: www.pbs.org/wne...
For more from Amanpour and Company, including full episodes, click here: to.pbs.org/2NB...
Like Amanpour and Company on Facebook: bit.ly/2HNx3EF
Follow Amanpour and Company on Twitter: bit.ly/2HLpjTI
Watch Amanpour and Company weekdays on PBS (check local listings).
Amanpour and Company features wide-ranging, in-depth conversations with global thought leaders and cultural influencers on the issues and trends impacting the world each day, from politics, business and technology to arts, science and sports. Christiane Amanpour leads the conversation on global and domestic news from London with contributions by prominent journalists Walter Isaacson, Michel Martin, Alicia Menendez and Hari Sreenivasan from the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center in New York City.
#amanpourpbs
Just introduced to Percival Everett through his novel “James”. Powerful novel. I’m inspired to seek out more of his work.
I'd love to see them bound together. Old testament/new testament kind of thing.
Yes! Just watched an Alan Moore vid about reading and writing. Tom Sawyer turns Jim’s escape into a Romantic gesture. Twain was definitely mocking such an idea.
Huckleberry Finn, not Tom Sawyer.
Tell me you haven't read either without telling me you haven't read either.
@@Stratmanable Tom Sawyer appears as a character in Huckleberry Finn. D'uh. You tell me you haven't read Huck without saying it.
@@geinikan1kan I know he does. I merely misunderstood your comment. Upon rereading, you have my apologies. My response was really snotty.
@@Stratmanable no problem. The "tell me . . ." meme is a trap for the person who uses it I'm afraid. Apology accepted.
Both books suck.
Like who cares....Percival everett is a small ego-ed racist
wow, this is a really good interview.
Very glad Everett has written this book, a must have. Never liked Huck Finn because he treats Jim like he's a child. Never been willing to overlook Twain's blindness, however.
Twain isn't blind. HUCK is blind. Huck is NOT the hero of his story. He is illiterate, ignorant, superstitious, and credulous, which makes his treatment of Jim all the more galling.
And that's exactly the point. Treating adult black men like children was de rigeur in southern daily life up until, well...right now actually.
If you want to show how wrong something is, simply show it, and leave the moralizing to the reader.
Twain wrote the character of Huck to, among other things, paint a picture of how white folks, including poor white folks, infantilized black adult men, when all the while it's the white folks who behave the most like children.
Twain's satire is focused sharply on the foolish ways white people in all social strata behave.
Twain reveals his sharpness by writing characters who clearly are not.
You missed the entire point of the book.
@imperialmotoring3789 She did indeed.
Twain isn't blind. Huck is.
@@Stratmanable Exactly! Twain chose to use that word for Jim because he knew the impact of that word, to show how offensive the Democrats were with their slaveholding. Democrats censored that book because it made them look bad.
Huck Finn sucks with Percival's small penis insight getting involved.
Think about how much he hates himself to write this
The dude actually said "Mark Twain's version of Huckleberry Finn". The fool. There is 'Huckleberry Finn' written by Mark Twain. Period. Everything else is a fever dream.
His self-loathing should be mocked
@@aishabintabubakr4944 And yours should be encouraged.
@@tarnopol
That's funny....because I don't need to re-write a 150 year old book because it triggers me.; especially a 💩 book like Huck Finn
@@aishabintabubakr4944 You’ e never read it, c’mon.
@@tarnopol
I like how Huck's realization not to be a little 💩 is when the Prince and the Dauphin try to rob that family with the girl Huck was thirsty for (who just so happened to be related to Tom Sawyer)
Here is another good book that gives a glimpse of a courageous abolitionist that poses as a tutor and a slave girl learns to read as she fans her owner’s son during lessons:
Dear America - A Picture of Freedom - it’s historical fiction - set up like journal entries.
Doesn't suffering harden everyone?
Yes, improve on Twain. That sounds like a doable goal.
Taking a dump in a toilet improves on ALL of Twain's works
@@aishabintabubakr4944 Spoken like a true moron.
some school kids will say to a Black kid "why are you talking/acting white?"
Issacson is consistently in awe and pandering.
He's exceedingly unimpressive and uninteresting. But it's CNN --- what do you expect?
@@HomeAtLast501 Well Issacson is widely used for this role and has published several books, which certainly qualifies him otherwise. For me, it has lessened my interest in reading them.
@@beth3535 Being a sycophant makes you non-threatening to interview subjects, which gives you easier access. Not good for readers, however.
Thank god the nation ended slavery a long time ago, and Dr. King's dream has been achieved, with our nation electing a black man president twice, a black woman vice president once, and blacks can get novels published over and over and over again.
Percival is a small pee-pee racist
Didn't Evereet write a book praising killing the descendents of white people...sonething about the children of the ones who killed Emitt Till...
Remember that we're told that verdicts can never be wrong
According to the New York Times a Black man has as much chance of hearing back from a job interview as a White man who has just been released from prison.💙
We know this because everyone indicates their race on their resume? How did Obama hide his race when he ran for the highest office in the world?