I found James difficult at times, not only for its erudition, which is a staple of Everett's work, but also for its unflinching view of the horrors of slavery. I don't know whether or not it captured my heart, but it didn't have to. It captured my interest and imagination, it disturbed me, and it made me want to explore some of the avenues it opened.

I felt that it paid honest homage to Huckleberry Finn, and transcended it greatly. James had manifold abilities. Perhaps speaking and reading Danish was among them. Many of those philosophical sequences are dream sequences. Anything can happen in a dream. It's fiction. It's possible.