--- title: Percival Everett Is Challenging the American Literary Canon description: With his latest novel, ‘James,’ the National Book Award winner has jump-started a conversation about the Great American novel. canonical: https://time.com/collections/closers-2025/7210599/percival-everett-james-literary-canon/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-02-06T12:00:26.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:24:44.263Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Percival Everett Is Challenging the American Literary Canon og:description: With his latest novel, ‘James,’ Everett has jump-started a conversation about the Great American novel. og:url: https://time.com/collections/closers-2025/7210599/percival-everett-james-literary-canon/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt107e354ce057c230/6998b30766d4e3856bcba518/time-2025-closers-percival-everett-crop.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1200 og:image:alt: Percival Everett Is Challenging the American Literary Canon og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Percival Everett Is Challenging the American Literary Canon twitter:description: With his latest novel, ‘James,’ Everett has jump-started a conversation about the Great American novel. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt107e354ce057c230/6998b30766d4e3856bcba518/time-2025-closers-percival-everett-crop.jpg?branch=production --- Feb 06, 2025 # Percival Everett Is Challenging the American Literary Canon > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. ## Video: The Closers: Percival Everett [Watch (HLS stream): The Closers: Percival Everett](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/NAormfnp.m3u8) (2:16)  _Published 2025-01-28. Percival Everett claims he is not as brilliant as his fans know him to be. He deeply researches the worlds in which his novels are set, yet swears that everything he learns falls out of his head as soon as each book is published. “So I’m no smarter at the end than I was at the beginning,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. Years ago, sick of his writing students asking him if they were good enough to be published, he took a class to a bookstore in Middlebury, Vt., to prove he was not unique. “Look around,” he told them. “Anyone can be published. ‘Are you good enough to make a difference?’ is the question.”_ by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/) ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent  Percival Everett Percival EverettDylan Coulter—Guardian/eyevine/Redux Percival Everett claims he is not as brilliant as his fans know him to be. He deeply researches the worlds in which his novels are set, yet swears that everything he learns falls out of his head as soon as each book is published. “So I’m no smarter at the end than I was at the beginning,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. Years ago, sick of his writing students asking him if they were good enough to be published, he took a class to a bookstore in Middlebury, Vt., to prove he was not unique. “Look around,” he told them. “Anyone can be published. ‘Are you good enough to make a difference?’ is the question.” With his latest, [_James_](https://time.com/7172771/james/)_,_ a reimagining of _Huckleberry Finn_ told from the perspective of the escaped slave Jim—who drops his nickname for the more noble-sounding James—Everett has jump-started a conversation about the great American novel, how issues of race interplay with the so-called American canon, and how we talk to our children about America’s past. But just a few hours before he wins the National Book Award for fiction, he demurs when pressed on the book’s impact. “If a reader is coming to me for any kind of message or answer about anything in the world,” he says, “they’re already in deep trouble.” For many, however, _James_ has become an important companion piece to Mark Twain’s work, the book “all American literature comes from,” to quote Ernest Hemingway. “I’ve been getting lots of mail from former and current English teachers thanking me that they can now teach _Huck Finn_ again because they can do it alongside [_James_](https://time.com/7199834/best-fiction-books-2024/),” he admits, “which is great news for me and certainly flattering, but doesn’t come as a great surprise. It’s a problematic text.” Everett, 68, would do away with the canon altogether if he could. But at the very least he hopes that writers, readers, and educators can acknowledge the inherent issues with putting certain books on a pedestal. “My joke is, ‘The canon is loaded,’” says Everett. “Canon formation is necessarily skewed. It’s necessarily racist and sexist. As soon as you’re saying there are these texts that must be read, someone has to choose. Who chooses?” While Jim is little more than a sidekick on Huck’s journey down the Mississippi in the original, in Everett’s version he is at the center of the story. James and other Black characters code switch when white characters are present; on his own, James interrogates philosophers like Voltaire for his repugnant views on slavery. “Enslaved people, it had occurred to me, are always depicted as simple-minded and superstitious, and of course, they weren’t,” Everett says. “So I embarked on this.” Everett gives James the gift of language, and James writes his account of his travels with a stolen pencil stub—one which comes at great human cost. “Whoever controls language, controls everything. If someone has no voice, they cannot get what they want or what they need,” says Everett. Everett, who has published two dozen novels, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist _Telephone_, has historically bristled at being categorized in the genre of African American fiction, especially considering he has written everything from propulsive westerns to a novella styled like a Lifetime movie. “Any work of art that comes out of this American culture is about race. If there is no race in it, that is a statement about race,” he says. This frustration is at the heart of _Erasure_, one of Everett’s early and best-known novels, which was adapted into the Oscar-winning 2023 film [_American Fiction_](https://time.com/6520620/iamerican-fiction-review-jeffrey-wright/). The story centers on Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, the author of experimental novels that don’t sell particularly well. Monk becomes so exasperated with the publishing industry bolstering Black fiction that depicts only stereotypes that he pens a novel as an illiterate thug to prove a point. The book is a hit, much to the author’s chagrin. _James_, too, will get the Hollywood treatment, with [Steven Spielberg](https://time.com/6234045/steven-spielberg-interview-the-fabelmans/) producing and [Taika Waititi](https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2022/6177807/taika-waititi/) in talks to direct, though Everett insists this attention is “fleeting.” “I'll write some experimental novel next that no one will understand,” he says. “You would have to be crazy to get into literary fiction to get famous or to get rich.” Percival Everett Is Challenging the American Literary Canon ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/closers-2025/7210599/percival-everett-james-literary-canon/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/closers-2025/7210599/percival-everett-james-literary-canon/"},"headline":"Percival Everett Is Challenging the American Literary Canon","datePublished":"2025-02-06T12:00:26.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:24:44.263Z","description":"With his latest novel, ‘James,’ the National Book Award winner has jump-started a conversation about the Great American novel.","url":"https://time.com/collections/closers-2025/7210599/percival-everett-james-literary-canon/","keywords":["Closers2025","list","franchise","Magazine","Special Project","sponsorshipblock"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt107e354ce057c230/6998b30766d4e3856bcba518/time-2025-closers-percival-everett-crop.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliana Dockterman","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/"}],"creator":"Eliana Dockterman","articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt107e354ce057c230/6998b30766d4e3856bcba518/time-2025-closers-percival-everett-crop.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/closers2025/","name":"Closers2025"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/closers-2025/7210599/percival-everett-james-literary-canon/","name":"Percival Everett Is Challenging the American Literary Canon"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Closers: Percival Everett","description":"Percival Everett claims he is not as brilliant as his fans know him to be. 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