_The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn_: Classic or Dud?

Or what I read of it, I should note. I did read some sort of Cliff Notes/comix version in sixth grade, I recall, so I have a general sense of the story. But trying to read the straight text itself off and on over my teenage years ended up causing me to grind to a halt every time. Could well get much more out of it now, I'm sure, but I've really not been tempted. Certainly your description is a lot more intriguing than the glossy hosannas I usually read about it!

Interesting fact: Mark Twain wrote a third Huck Finn/Tom Sawyer book, but it sucked so much hardly anyone remebers it.

I wish I could remember more about the rest of the story, like when Huck and Jim pick up the two con-men...

- the feudin' families
- the King & the Duke
- the whole race plot and Huck & the other guy (whose name I can't remember because I am racism)'s evolving relationship

Plotwise it's a bit of a mess, though, and it ends very badly.

Yeah, this is what bothered me about it - I don't really have much time for journey-down-the-river type narratives anyway (see also Heart of Darkness), especially when they're broken up into little mini-adventures as Huck Finn is. And once Tom Sawyer re-appears the whole thing gets a bit dodgy, especially as the character of Jim seems to lose a lot of what had previously made him interesting, as if Twain's rushing to a speedy resolution for the book.

However, I do think there are some great little episodes and set-pieces in there, the King and the Duke in particular, and I'm interested in the characters of Jim and Pap Finn. But I've read it something like three times, and I just don't *enjoy* reading it. I think a major factor in this is that I find the vernacular a bit of a trawl in a way I don't with many other similar narratives. And while I appreciate all the aspects that Dan mentions above, and I could never say I thought it was a dud, it just doesn't resonate with me or hold my attention.

Preach on, Brother Martin!

I should have said "Isn't that right Dan?" at the end of my previous post, of course.

I read this (in high school, of course) under the assumption that Huck Finn is black. I didn't realize until today, when I saw some of the original drawings that accompanied the book, that his character was intended as white. I'm kinda disappointed. I need to re-read it now.

huck's description of pilgrim's progress -- "it was about a man that left his family, it didn't say why" -- is one of my personal ten funniest things ever.

i've never managed to finish another twain book, though, apart from 'letters from the earth.'

I didn't realize until today, when I saw some of the original drawings that accompanied the book, that his character was intended as white.

this is all kinds of interesting and I would like to hear more about how the book seemed to you going w/this reading

this was assigned to me junior year (iirc) high school over winter break. we had an exam or something on it the first day back, but i had forgotten/neglected to read it the whole time. i feigned illness and read it at home that first day of school in like 14 hours, and loved the shit out of it. that and macbeth were my two favorite things i read in high schoo, i think.
also, i had a very similar argument with ppl in my class w/r/t jim's character and racism to the one dan descibed upthread! anyone who thinks it's racist is a fuckin moron

xpost yeah that's really mind blowing, rev

i mean, it must have been mind blowing

xxp: I wish I could get into that, but there's the problem that I don't really remember enough about it to allow for much elaboration beyond that. I'm pretty sure Huck's syntax is what gave me the impression. He also seems to me (in retrospect, I wasn't familiar with, at least the academicized treatment of, this archetype at the time) to be much in line with the trickster characters that heavily populate African-American folklore. Tom jocking Huck's swag made a lot of sense to me in that context.

Maybe there's an element of personal identification here? I definitely identified with Huck a lot and maybe saw more of myself in him than Twain intended.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/christopherhowse/100050316/huckleberry-finn-loses-the-nigger-he-loves-thanks-to-a-publishers-ethnic-cleansing/

wtf @ the last line of that piece

this book is awesome, censoring it is stupid, why people approach it as a children's book is a little baffling - it seems to me like a ton of it, esp the racial politics stuff, flies over kids' heads.

oh god, why did I start reading the comments

I imagine you'd have to be at least 12-14 and educated about the antebellum South to "get" the book

I was going to post something about the sanitizing of this book but was afraid it would devolve into ranting about how fucking stupid people have become and how it would really be a great thing if we allowed more of the type of fascism that murders stupid, incompetent people rather than poor, disadvantaged people into our society so that we could dance on the bodies of the fuckfaces who decided that this made any kind of logical sense.

It's like whoever approved this just hadn't read or understood the book at all. Are they going to do the same thing with To Kill A Mockingbird now as well?

and yes, wtf @ the last line of that blog entry

there is not enough money on Earth to make me read the comments on any of the reports/opinions about this

Yeah that writer getting a bit too cavalier with his pleased-with-himself-ness. O_O. And the whole issue of scubbing Huck Finn clean is just infuriating to me.

The words are one thing, but can't the story EVER factor into these decisions? Banning Catcher in the Rye bc he says DAMN 5700 times or whatever...it's not the same thing, I know, but it's people who aren't reading the book that are reacting to all this surface bullshit and preventing young readers from seeing human relationships and life presented in something other than the cocoon they've been given.

(Yes that's exactly what I need, another thread to rant in. Jeez.)

Lot of memories reading the posts in this thread. The Dirty Vicar! And Martin. I wish I could talk to him about this book now.

it seems to me like a ton of it, esp the racial politics stuff, flies over kids' heads.

...

you'd have to be at least 12-14 and educated about the antebellum South to "get" the book

I'm reading it to my 11 and 8 year old right now and they love it. They get the racial politics. They're not complicated in the book. Slavery is a way of life in the time and place of the book, and it's ultimately an evil institution. Huck's not evil, although evil adults have made him think he is. Most of the adults are absolute bastards in this book btw, or idiots, or both

The dialect doesn't bother me because I grew up in Tennessee. Even the archaic stuff I can just kind of steamroll over. It's ridiculously fun to make up the different voices. I, uh, go easy on Jim's lines.

Re: the censorship... I mean... reading it to my kids drives how just how many goddamn n-words there are. Everyone says it. And they say it over and over. It's inescapable. It's just how everyone talks. You can’t wish away how embedded the racism is in everyone’s everyday thoughts. (It's told in the first person so it's never Twain himself actually saying it. Nice one, white guy. I tip my hat.)

And that finds its kind of apotheosis in the plot, when Huck struggles with his conscience - which is telling him that helping Jim in his quest for freedom is the most low-down sinful thing a person could do! And then when Tom agrees to help, Huck fears for Tom’s standing in the world. Huck has nothing to lose but Tom’s got a future. Huck feels so sad for him. That he been brought so low as to help a slave escape. Huck can't bring himself to betray Jim's friendship, so he just chalks this ornery loyalty to his upbringing - that he's always been good for nothin'. He really believes this! He feels terrible about helping his friend! But what's Tom's stake in it? Why should he ruin himself for this cause? Tom brushes all this away and is like I'M IN. It’s incredible. One of the most euphoric moments of decision I've ever read. You feel so happy. And it comes at just the right part of the book, where shit needs to go down.

For the record I think Tom Sawyer, the book, is absolutely tremendous and just as good in many, many ways as Huck Finn. The episodicness of both of them don't bother me at all, in fact it feels quite modern. But Huck Finn has the n-word running through the heart of it like some evil vein. Huck's committing an action against, yes, systemic white supremacy, and it requires an absolutely unholy struggle against primal values he has always lived by in order to even contemplate it.

Anyway, I censor it in real-time when I read it to my kids. I say "slave" instead of the n-word whenever it comes up. I'd be interested to know what people here think of that. I wouldn't feel comfortable saying it as written, and I don't want my kids to hear their dad saying that word - at least certainly not the number of times it appears here. I feel like "slave" captures a lot of the debasement. But obviously not all. I wonder if Twain had an inkling what a punch that word would pack a hundred odd years hence.

At one point Twain can't help but give them game away when Huck's making up a story about a steamboat accident. His interlocutor asks: 'Was anybody hurt?' and Huck's like 'No'm - but it killed a (n-word)'. And she replies: 'Well that's lucky. You know people do get hurt sometimes.' Just cold as ice.

There are so many great bits in this. The early episode where they board the sinking steamboat in the night. Huck's natural good-heartedness in wanting to go back and save the robbers from being drowned. There's a similar moment later when he tries to warn the duke and the king that the jig is up, and the town's onto them. After everything those guys did. After selling Jim! He still feels bad for them.

"It don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know no more than a person’s conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same."

I mean... the struggle is real!!

One of my favorite lines is about something entirely different, but has echoes: “Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty uncomfortable all up the other.”

great stuff tracer, makes me want to read it!

Yeah good stuff, and seconded!

I was just reading the Wikipedia page to see how people have been dealing with the controversy over the language:

Publishers have made their own attempts at easing the controversy by way of releasing editions of the book with the word "nigger" replaced by less controversial words. A 2011 edition of the book, published by NewSouth Books, employed the word "slave" (although being incorrectly addressed to a freed man), and did not use the term "Injun." Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben said he hoped the edition would be more friendly for use in classrooms, rather than have the work banned outright from classroom reading lists due to its language.[46]

According to publisher Suzanne La Rosa "At NewSouth, we saw the value in an edition that would help the works find new readers. If the publication sparks good debate about how language impacts learning or about the nature of censorship or the way in which racial slurs exercise their baneful influence, then our mission in publishing this new edition of Twain's works will be more emphatically fulfilled."[47] Another scholar, Thomas Wortham, criticized the changes, saying the new edition "doesn't challenge children to ask, 'Why would a child like Huck use such reprehensible language?'"[48]

Two similarly expurged editions of the book were published in 2011. The Hipster Huckleberry Finn employed the word "hipster". The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Robotic Edition employed the word "robot",[49] and included modified illustrations in which Jim was replaced with a robot character.

So... poorly.

i’m just going to pretend i never read the bold-faced bit of your post

I'm shook.

On the funny side of things, I imagine the Hipster Huck Finn author did this while dressed up as Batman's sidekick.

Hucklehipster Finn

Someone needs to flat-out murder the people who did the robotic edition: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dianidevine/replacing-the-n-word-with-robot-in-huck-finn

Don’t call me hipster, whiney

i think everyone should have to go through the struggle of how they deal with that word, rather than editors removing that difficulty for them. it’s a microcosm of the central difficulty of the book. though i don’t know what you do about people banning the book outright in that case

Would have been even worse if they changed him to a robot but kept the N-word.

I wonder if my kids will have to read this in school? Or if any kids read Twain any more? I don't remember reading Huckleberry Finn" until college, tbh.

I recall Louis CK having a funny Huck Finn bit.

Incentives! In addition to owning your own pdf or physical copy of the book, it's also possible to get these wonderful items!

Own your own Robot Jim!

That's right! Own your own Robot Jim! Set him free or put him on your shelf!

From the depths of my soul, fuck these people and launch them into the sun

Are they aware of the etymology of 'robot'? Is that the whole point? Or am I missing something here?

We're editing a new version of Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" that won't be bogged down with what Mark Twain was trying to say about racism.

This seemed so on the nose that I thought it was a joke about the controversy of removing the word from the book. The rest of the copy is so clueless and tone-deaf though. Better launch them into the sun just to be sure.

And I just want to say that Tracer's post above is fantastic.

The thing about satire is that you need to maintain a strong focus on your messaging in order to remain satire and not just artlessly amplify the things you intend to satirize.

And that finds its kind of apotheosis in the plot, when Huck struggles with his conscience - which is telling him that helping Jim in his quest for freedom is the most low-down sinful thing a person could do! And then when Tom agrees to help, Huck fears for Tom’s standing in the world. Huck has nothing to lose but Tom’s got a future. Huck feels so sad for him. That he been brought so low as to help a slave escape. Huck can't bring himself to betray Jim's friendship, so he just chalks this ornery loyalty to his upbringing - that he's always been good for nothin'. He really believes this! He feels terrible about helping his friend! But what's Tom's stake in it? Why should he ruin himself for this cause? Tom brushes all this away and is like I'M IN. It’s incredible. One of the most euphoric moments of decision I've ever read. You feel so happy. And it comes at just the right part of the book, where shit needs to go down.

this moment is so brilliant, and twain's writing during these few pages is the peak of english literature imo. 'all right then, i'll go to hell.'

I honestly can't remember, because it's been so long, but is it Tom who knows Jim has been free the whole time, or Huck? Or both? Doesn't one of them cruelly/maliciously keep the knowledge from Jim a little bit longer than necessary?

It's Tom. Huck left town before Jim was freed and doesn't know that Jim's owner freed Jim in her will or that his father was murdered.

It's not just that Tom keeps the information from Jim - he put him through a whole ridiculous series of ordeals just for fun. Love the good bits of this book, but the final section sucks and Tom Sawyer sucks.

Are they aware of the etymology of 'robot'? Is that the whole point? Or am I missing something here?

― pomenitul

They do seem aware.

Robots have a long history in literature and popular culture of being used as a metaphor for slavery and oppression. Replacing the black characters with robots in the book will maintain the integrity of MOST of Mark Twain's themes.