Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade

Mark Twain used the character of Jim from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to push back against racist myths of the Reconstruction era, according to this astute study. Fishkin (From Fact to Fiction), an English professor at Stanford University, argues that Twain’s friendships with Frederick Douglass and an erudite Black tour guide Twain met while on a trip to Venice convinced him to portray Jim as intelligent—as seen in scenes where Jim gets the better of Huck Finn in arguments—to rebut the prevailing “myth of Black mental inferiority.” Pushing back against criticisms that Jim is a minstrel stereotype, Fishkin notes that Twain viewed minstrel shows as unrealistic and avoided several minstrelsy conventions (e.g., replacing the “final f or v sound in words like of or give or have with b”) in his effort to more accurately represent “Missouri Negro dialect.” A chapter recounting episodes from Huck Finn from Jim’s perspective feels redundant after Percival Everett’s James, which receives only a passing mention, but the chronicle of Jim’s stage and screen portrayals fascinates (both the 1936 and 1973 Soviet film adaptations of Huck Finn “use the novel... to criticize America and to champion socialist ideals of interracial proletarian solidarity”). This sheds new light on a much-studied character. Agent: Sam Stoloff, Frances Goldin Literary. (Apr.)