Percival Everett reveals a lot about his reworking of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) with his stark choice of title: James. Twain’s scrappy child protagonist has been usurped, in terms of storytelling responsibilities, by the character most talked about and criticised by teachers, parents’ groups and censors, through waves of controversies, bannings and retellings. And one of the first things that character wants us to know? His name isn’t Jim: it’s James.
Now 91 years old, the man Dylan called “the king of folk singers" tells stories of his time with Jack Kerouac and James Dean, and his experiences touring with Dylan s Rolling Thunder Revue.