Regular readers of my blogs (and, indeed, of anywhere I hang out in the online world) know a recurring theme for me is how a nation founded on the principle that all people are created equal so strongly embraced slavery that it took a major war with hundreds of thousands of casualties to change course…and we’re still working through the problems caused by that peculiar institution more than two centuries after the founding and more than century after the war that supposedly resolved it.

So I was intrigued by the reviews I’d read of James, by Percival Everett. It’s a retelling of Huckleberry Finn, but from the point of view of Jim/James, the escaped slave who accompanies Huck on his adventure.

I never read Huckleberry Finn although I certainly know of it and am familiar with its broad outline. Twain’s characters are referenced in a lot of other literature I’ve read over the years, particularly the works of Robert Heinlein. One of the many things I enjoyed about James was recognizing, and being introduced to, characters whose exploits I’d read about, third hand, in other stories. It was an interesting closing-the-loop experience.

But my biggest take away from James was…good lord, the American institution of slavery was far, far worse than I’d imagined.

That’s more than a little embarrassing, since its “retail” horrors were easily predictable from even a bit of reflection by anyone familiar with the basic history, market capitalism and human nature. All of which I write about, and think about, extensively. All I can plead is “sorry for the blind spot; some of what happened is literally too horrible to think about unless you have to.”

I used to like to challenge my kids, after they’d gone through California’s required 8th grade civics component of US history, to explain how the US — during its slave-holding period — was better than Nazi Germany.

It’s kind of hard to do…which is, or ought to be, immensely disturbing. Granted, we didn’t set up industrial abattoirs to get rid of people we didn’t want around. But some of us did a lot of stuff which came pretty damn close, and many others profited from it, or simply stood by and let it happen. One of the more shocking tidbits of 20th century history is that the Nazis, as they were designing the Third Reich, studied how the US had institutionalized and regulated slavery…and declined to adopt certain of our “principles” because they were a bit too much, even for them. Yikes!

While James doesn’t focus exclusively on the horrors of slavery, it is a constant major background element. You’ll encounter situations and behaviors which may or may not have actually occurred (it’s a novel, after all, not a history) but all too likely occurred, somewhere, in the old Confederacy.

Definitely recommended.