I’m not averse to using existing works as the jumping off point for something new, or a tale being told from a new perspective. And I’d certainly expect a book set in the world of Huckleberry Finn, with a slave as a narrator to have heavily racial themes. And I’m a big fan of great writing and good storytelling. Percival Everett’s “James” certainly has all of this going on. But it’s also up other things. Things I don’t enjoy. Or even respect. First, it’s an inconsistent mishmash of parody, satire, pastiche, melodrama, racialist political screed, and self-indulgent intellectual hogwash. It simply can’t make up its mind what it wants to be, so it ends up like a scrap collection that’s pretending to be a quilt. But the Pulitzer committee obviously disagreed.
Meh.