On the Joys of Retelling

Dear Desperate Creatives,

What a busy summer it’s been! I’ve had friends and family here for weeks now, in a whirlwind of swims and forest walks, debates about communism and socialism, populism and the far right, air conditioning, addiction treatment, how failed states unf*ck themselves and how best to survive the times we’re going through. I’ve enjoyed live music (the Pazific) that made most of the room get up and dance. I got to sing along as the band did a cover of Don’t go Chasing Waterfalls and I got to swim with my family from France between two waterfalls at Nymph Falls on Vancouver Island:

I hosted people with Covid and didn’t catch it. I chased a toddler and caught him every time.

We launched three new columns for DESPERATE WRITER: PEN AND PAINT is for writers and artists. FOR THE RECORD is for guest essays. LETTERS TO POTENTIAL FRIENDS is about fiction and culture with a Brazilian twist, to join Anne Marie (SHOCKY’S CORNER) and me.

I hope you’ve had a good summer, wherever you are writing and whatever else is happening in your part of the world. It’s hard not to fear and fret. But this is the span we have been given; these are the times that belong to we who are living. The least we can do is honor and cherish the beautiful moments, the summer-sweet fruit, the blessings of cold water and warm friendships.

Don’t forget, for paid subscribers, this fall will be the start of our monthly friendly and supportive online workshop group. Our first meeting will be October 11 at 11:30—if you are a paid subscriber and would like to share new work, reach out to us in the comments section or rachelrosewritesprose@substack.com and we’ll add you to the list!

This week I’d like to talk about novels that retell classic novels. I've just finished reading Percival Everett's novel James. It took me two tries. I read the first couple of chapters and stopped, thinking perhaps the book wasn't for me, perhaps it was heavy-handed and lacked subtlety. But actually, I think I simply wasn't in the mood to take it in fully, due to unrelated events (a not-uncommon occurrence). I picked it up two weeks later and tried again. And then I inhaled the rest of James, staying up much too late to finish it--it was tender and outraged, subtle and thought-provoking and absolutely brilliant.

When I went back to James, I cracked open Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and read a few chapters (a book I hadn't read since I was in high school, so many years ago). I quote here from Twain's Explanatory:

"In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect; the ordinary “Pike-County” dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a hap-hazard fashion, or by guess-work; but pains-takingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding."

-THE AUTHOR

Twain begins his novel, written in the early 1880's, by setting himself up as an expert on "negro dialects;" Percival Everett brilliantly exploits Twain's set up by having Black people use "negro dialects" as a smoke screen to help protect them from their enslavers; they are, in fact, perfectly fluent in standard English. And it works! The disenfranchised, and disempowered always know more about those oppressing them than the powerful do about them.

As James says when giving a language lesson to his daughter and other children, "White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don't disappoint them. The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us. Perhaps I should say 'when they don't feel superior.' So, let's pause to review some of the basics."

Everett's brilliant subversion of Twain's self-declared linguistic and cultural expertise offers both a new way to read Huck Finn and a rebuke to the author, as well as a re-examination of the whole institution of slavery. James reminds its white readers to beware of what you claim to know and understand. Throughout the novel, enslaved Black people use that coded language as a way of protecting and sheltering themselves and their tribe. But James himself is hyper-literate, and he's taking notes.

I imagine Mark Twain sitting down on a veranda somewhere, somehow able to read the novel James, and I sigh. How I wish that were possible! I believe Twain would see Everett's genius, and might also see the limits and biases of his own masterpiece. I would like to eavesdrop on that conversation if only it were possible those two authors, the living and the dead, able to meet. But of course, the conversation only goes one way. Percival Everett wrote James for us, for America and Americans of all races living and reading now, to both correct the record and expand upon the original.

Reviewer Dwight Garner in The New York Times writes, "My idea of hell would be to live with a library that contained only reimaginings of famous novels. It’s a wet-brained and dutiful genre, by and large. Or the results are brittle spoofs — to use a word that, according to John Barth, sounds like imperfectly suppressed flatulence — that read as if there are giant scare quotes surrounding the action. Two writers in a hundred walk away unscathed."

I couldn't disagree more with Mr. Garner. As a reader, I adore books that reference other books. Even when they falter, I appreciate the effort at conversation with a great author’s idea—but when they do it well, these are some of my favorite novels. A very partial list of those that do it well includes, for me:

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

March by Geraldine Brooks

On Beauty By Zadie Smith

The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

The Plague by Kevin Chong

Many of Shakespeare's plays reference ancient plays. Julius Cesear, Antony and Cleopatra need no explanation. Hamlet retells Orestes; Trolius and Cressida adapts Homer's the Trojan War. Several others also reference classical characters but make them new. And then along comes an immense talent like Jane Smiley, who rewrites King Lear, sets it in the Midwest, and lets Lear's ungrateful daughters take center stage on what is now a great American theatre. What's not to like?

Why do I appreciate these books? I think it is akin to the delight I experience reading a great poem written in form, or a song that has both unforgettable lyrics and a danceable beat: because such an experience offers extra bang for your buck. A great sonnet works even for someone who doesn't recognize the sonnet form, but if you do, your delight is doubled. With a retelling of a novel, you get the novel and at the same time you get the intimate conversation and commentary between the novel’s author and a classical text. When it works, it's thrilling. A novel that talks to a previous book and does it well also allows me as the reader to eavesdrop on the conversation between the writer and the novel. That is some meta fun right there, I'm telling you!

For me, reading a great new novel that invokes a classic work of literature doesn't just double my appreciation; it compounds it. With interest! I get to recall (usually by re-reading) the classic and then see how the author of the new novel engages with it, what liberties they took, where they stayed true, and how they re-interpreted that story for a new generation. What is their spin, the twist they use to tell it? Each great retelling novel that alludes to a canonical work brings to mind Whitman's words: "I am large, I contain multitudes." That is always true of the classics, and that is why they are a perennial source of interest and inspiration to writers and readers alike. It makes me feel part of the great library of humanity, the one open to all of us, the dead and the living. Or for those who are fortunate enough to live near water, you can think of these books as entering the same river twice—and no, it is never the same river. What a gift.

Nymph Falls, Vancouver Island

I know not everyone shares my appreciation for this genre, but for those that do, I'd love to hear some of your favorites, especially those that might not be as popular as those I mentioned.