The Curator: what do retellings owe us
what the best books do, Percival Everett's James, a comfort rewatch, and thinking about summer reads
It’s Saturday and I’m in your inbox again - dealing with some minor health issues but things should get back to normal Fridays soon. Thanks for being here, did I ever tell you you’re my hero?
We, as humans, tell the same stories over and over, just in different costumes. Everything we consume is influenced by the creator’s experiences, including all of those stories we tell each other constantly, every day, in any format. It’s all just an amalgamation of everything that came before. If I wrote a book the number of times I would think about Harry Potter is frightening.
Yet - yet - “reimaginings” with a single direct reference tread a fine line. Existing IP is a goldmine for artists looking for something to produce, and I don’t begrudge them that, but I don’t think anyone needs (or asks for) a shot-for-shot remake. How many times has that worked out? For a film or show or book or song (Mean Girls remake👀)? You cannot capture the original's essence - the combination of timing and place, history, people, or zeitgeist, so WHY EVEN TRY? Just for updated graphics and clothing? To include cell phones or Google? Let the original LIVE.
What we need is a text in conversation with an original. That I can get behind.
From Jim to James
I walked into reading Percival Everett’s James with a huge chip on my shoulder, ready to have qualms with its immediate popularity. Described as a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but from Jim’s perspective, I worried it would either be too on the nose or too satirical. I’ve been burned enough with retellings that didn’t say anything new or interesting or were simply bad writing.
But I ate that shoulder chip (so salty) because James was as brilliant as promised. It feels like a delicate conversation with the original, a subtle deepening of perspective, both empathetic and honest. Everett made us complicit in the American South’s cultural crimes just by reading it. Sitting outside on my porch in the quiet, watching the kitties stare at squirrels, the book made me consider what retellings do best and what they owe us. And it is James.
Three things that the best retellings always do.
They are in conversation with the original text1. Again, this is not your chance at a remake. This is serious reimagining time. We want to see a different perspective, but not a simple this is what happened through character B’s eyes. James gave us not just Jim’s narration but “James” as an entire second world to layer over what we thought of Huckleberry Finn and the institution of slavery. Many of the same scenes were there (from what I remember), but so were new ones that provided a richness of interpretation and intrigue.
Have respect for the original. Unless this is Vacation Bible School, I don’t need preaching or an attempt to disparage or ruin the original text. That does us no favors - why bother engaging with a text if you find it so abhorrent? There may be times when that feels right - say a piece of art that deserves to be taken apart and re-examined for its racism, sexism, etc. - but degradation will get you nowhere if that piece of art is truly beloved. I don’t mean to say that anyone who engages publicly with a racist POS needs to be KIND, but the point is better served with craft and subtlety. James does this incredibly well. We become complicit, indicted by the institution of slavery as we are entertained by James’ experience. The horrors are there, but he doesn’t proselytize - we know intellectually slavery is bad, but experiencing the horrors with James brings a new level of empathy that could have easily been overdone in another author’s hands2.
Stand on their own merits. This is a simple one, but critical. James would still be an excellent novel even having never read Huckleberry Finn. A retelling is enriched by an understanding of the original reference, but not required. I don’t think this needs much explanation, so here are a few of the best retellings I’ve read and a few on my radar.
Excellent retellings
James by Percival Everett→ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (obvi).
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver→ David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I wrote about this one here, but Bk hits all the requirements.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys → Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. To be honest, I read Wide Sargasso Sea in undergrad and didn’t get it. I skimmed through some of it for this piece and with my elder wisdom I have a feeling I would appreciate it so much more now. Critics recognize it has the ultimate example of a retelling. If you read and loved this one, tell me why in the comments!
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier → Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. A smash hit dark romance story that everyone attempts to recreate and everyone fails. It has one of the best first lines of any novel and stands as a classic reference on its own. I never reread because I have too much on the TBR but I have been dying to reread this one and might take it up early fall.
March by Geraldine Brooks → Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Another novel I have to credit an English professor for introducing me to, it’s about the horrors of war and the men who endured them, set in the world of Little Women. Brooks won a Pulitzer for March so don’t take my word for it!
His Dark Materials Trilogy/The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman → Paradise Lost by John Milton. I was raised by a woman who endured a lot in the name of organized Christian religion. I have never felt an affinity for the institution. Neither did Mr. Pullman, and this is why we get along. The Golden Compass is an everyone book disguised as a children’s story. It’s also a retelling of Paradise Lost in response to The Chronicles of Narnia as a thinly disguised Christian allegory. A lot to unpack here but in the end, The Golden Compass is simply a fabulous sci-fi adventure.
Other popular retellings on my radar that I haven’t read yet: Poor Things by Alasdair Gray as a loose interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Hello, Beautiful by Ann Napolitano, which the NYT described as “Little Women but with basketball”; T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead, a retelling of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher; and Rouge by Mona Awad, which is a twist on the Snow White fairytale. I don’t know that I will ever read Poor Things but the rest are already downloaded on my Kindle.
And just because I can, I leave you with a wholly original moment.
Got a favorite retelling/reimagining/adaptation HELL, even a straight remake? Let me know in the comments.
READING 📖→
A fifth of the way through The Wanderers by Chuck Wendig. I’m intrigued, but I can’t help comparing it to The Stand, which I read in January (and the kittens decided to tear up last weekend during a midnight game of What’s Behind the Bookshelf). I will keep chipping away at this behemoth, but sprinkle in other reads as I go.
I restarted Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale at some encouragement and I’m just not sure I can do it fam. Previously, I made it to chapter ten, but I couldn’t remember much, so I started over. I’m having trouble getting past the melodrama. But everyone seems to love this novel so perhaps I need to let it go.
WATCHING 📽️→
My husband and I, the King and Queen of rewatching, are currently in the middle of our fourth (or fifth?) New Girl rewatch and it still makes me cry laughing. Sometimes, you just need to feel good.
NEW BOOKS 📚→
include the story of a washed-up actor who attempts to revive the cult show that made him famous, a modern Korean Blade Runner-esque space opera, a new romance by an author who needs no introduction, and a hypochondriac’s critical memoir that I will never be able to read because it hits too close to home.
BOOK NEWS 📰→
Women’s Prize finalists were announced and I really want to expand my literary vocabulary with at least one of these. If you have an opinion on which one to start with, please share!
The LA Times announced their 2024 book prize winners, and this is my sign to up Claire Dederer’s Monsters and Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory on the TBR.
RESTACK OF THE WEEK ♻️→
It’s getting close to warm weather reading time, and I’m already thinking about what I will bring to Palm Springs in June for my bestie's birthday.
has me reconsidering the romance genre with her recent post about Emily Henry’s Beach Read.AND CATS 🐈⬛→
Evidence of the midnight bookshelf game that started with Mom and Dad falling asleep on the couch and ended in one book ruined.
In Case You Missed It 🖤
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See you around the bookshelf!
Natalie
I did a lot of thinking about fan fiction when writing this but decided I will save that for another day. I don't even know where to begin to understand that stuff.
The horrors of slavery can NEVER be overstated but perhaps there are limits for an effective piece of art, whatever that means.
I'd nominate Zadie Smith's On Beauty as another example of a great retelling--I hadn't read Howards End when I first read On Beauty, and I loved the latter anyway.
And I'd love to hear if you stick with The Nightingale. I'm reading and posting on WWII fiction as my way of coping with 2024 (while working on a manuscript that's at least partly set in WWII), and I haven't read The Nightingale but of course it gets a million shoutouts and I've gone back and forth on whether to attempt it.
I just bought James and am looking forward to reading it soon.