Book Review Number 8: Huckelberry Finn

Mark Twain
Adventures of Huckelberry Finn
Barnes and Noble Classics 292 Pages

So...who cares about Mark Twain. He is dead...right? I like to read. I read a lot of crap. I read a lot of cynical, negative crap. Every once in a while it is time to get back to a classic or two. Last year it was Anna Karenina which was as hard as I remembered it but much more rewarding then it was in college. Twain seemd easier, shorter and yes more American.

Written in 1884 (although most of it was allegedly written pre civil war when “Tom Sawyer” was released, many have pointed to this book as the start of American literature and pegged and perhaps unfairly saddled with the title of “Great American Novel.” I thought it would be easy to read and it is...if you gloss over, skim and just kind of take in the narrative swing. But you can’t. Twain demands attention because he is so biting, so critical and so funny that it is embarrassing to miss the jokes.

Twain wrote this in a “style” that sought to mimic the rural Missouri and rural south which he experienced. This is similar to many hip hop authors, and southern authors since that time. The idea that you could write out bastardized king’s english and that all printed word whould not be written like Jane Austen (who was born right in the middle of Twains life) was an anathma. But the book is just so good.

A classic story of adventure and human nature. Starkly drawn characters which allow the reader to identify with each one and the bad characters are never totally bad and the heroes...Huck and Tom... are never really that good. From his abusive father to the rivercity con men that he “befriends” the bad guys are richly drawn, complex and ultimately sad characters and the fact that he can make you feel empathy fo these cruel and stupid characters is for me one of the books greatest traits.
In our politically correct day this book would not be published due to his use of the word “niger” over 200 times, primarily with the character “nigger Jim.” While it certainly would be totally unacceptable and unjustifiable in ANY modern society at this point, his use of the word has been defended and contextualized but I am not sure that Twain was not deeply familiar with the offensiveness of the term and it’s odious nature. In using it so casually throughout the book is evinces a contempt but in one of the most quoted and most biting indictment of time and really of human beings there is the sequence where Huck is explaining that a dirver blew on a steam boat and Aunt Susie asks:

"Good gracious! anybody hurt?" she asks.
"No'm," comes the answer. "Killed a nigger."

Seriously...where do you go with that? Devaluation of human life, social commentary, indictment, whatever...all in about ten words. Arthur Petit wrote a great summary book of Clemens relatioship with the south, slavery and blacks called “Mark Twain and The South.” Here is the link:

http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/enam482e/reviews/swilson.html

Throughout the book he is constantly throwing out other beauties such as when his discussing a farm house preacher and says:

”....and he never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was worth it, too.”
Beautiful.

The story waxes and wains but many commentators including Twain believe that the novel should have ended after about 200 pages when Nigger Jim gets stolen from Huck. The rest of the book after that is a somewhat long winded happy ending. The brevity of style is what is also amazing. If T. Corghassen Boyle or David Foster Wallace Wrote this book now it would be 800 pages with footnotes. Twain did it 150 years ago with incredible grace. Bottom line is that if you need a good read and you need a little bit to think about, this is a nice break and a good refresher on life, writing and what is great and bad about people... and authors....and America.