Mark Twain
ROBBIE
this from http://www.boondocksnet.com/twainwww/huckleberry_finn.html
'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of Mark Twain's most loved, most
influential, and most controversial books. It was banned from the Concord
Public Library in 1885, the year of its publication, and Huckleberry Finn
ranks number five in the American Library Association's list of the most
frequently challenged books of the 1990s. But in 1935, Ernest Hemingway
wrote that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain
called Huckleberry Finn.... All American writing comes from that. There was
nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
most frequently challenged books of the 1990s- what does that exactly mean?
I know Orwell was a Twain admirer- i *think* i'm right in saying that, but
did he have anything to say about Huck Finn's autobiography?
--
"The truth comes in a strange door." ~ Francis Bacon to David Sylvester
Bobby Farouk
"ROBBIE" <famousfatboydanc...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b6q5kb$9du$1...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
> I've been having a rocking time reading Huckleberry Finn:
>
> this from http://www.boondocksnet.com/twainwww/huckleberry_finn.html
>
> 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of Mark Twain's most loved, most
> influential, and most controversial books. It was banned from the Concord
> Public Library in 1885, the year of its publication, and Huckleberry Finn
> ranks number five in the American Library Association's list of the most
> frequently challenged books of the 1990s. But in 1935, Ernest Hemingway
> wrote that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark
Twain
> called Huckleberry Finn.... All American writing comes from that. There
was
> nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
>
> most frequently challenged books of the 1990s- what does that exactly
mean?
I believe there remains in this country a fair sized inventory of folk who
want it removed from school reading lists. Nearly 120 years after its
publication and they're still trying to ban it. Is that a good book or
what?
Martha Bridegam
ROBBIE wrote:
> I've been having a rocking time reading Huckleberry Finn:
>
> this from http://www.boondocksnet.com/twainwww/huckleberry_finn.html
>
> 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of Mark Twain's most loved, most
> influential, and most controversial books. It was banned from the Concord
> Public Library in 1885, the year of its publication, and Huckleberry Finn
> ranks number five in the American Library Association's list of the most
> frequently challenged books of the 1990s. But in 1935, Ernest Hemingway
> wrote that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain
> called Huckleberry Finn.... All American writing comes from that. There was
> nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
>
> most frequently challenged books of the 1990s- what does that exactly mean?
The American Library Association defines a "challenge" as "an attempt to remove
or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group." See
<http://www.ala.org/bbooks/challeng.html>.
>
>
> I know Orwell was a Twain admirer- i *think* i'm right in saying that,
IIRC he offered to write about Twain in one of his early pitch letters to
editors. I've also noted here that his Charles II school play has an
identity-switch plot that looks to be borrowed from "The Prince and the Pauper"
or "Pudd'n'head Wilson." (Which raises an interesting side issue to me: in
conducting his own disguised social experiments, did Orwell flatter himself
with the old "royalty in disguise" trope rather than genuinely trying to
empathize with the people he was meeting?)
> but
> did he have anything to say about Huck Finn's autobiography?
Many quick mentions, though "Life on the Mississippi" gets more, and also a
1944 review in the Manchester Evening News -- quoted without endorsement here.
Looking past the implicit acceptance of prejudices, it's poor as literary
criticism: how could he think "Tom Sawyer" was the better book unless he was
applying woodenly mechanistic standards for writing fiction?
Here's the review:
"Everyman Library editors are in error when they describe 'Tom Sawyer' and
'Huckleberry Finn' as 'the best of Mark Twain,' but these two books are
certainly among the half-dozen that he will be remembered by, and they are of
special interest for their picture of the background -- and not only the
physical background -- from which Mark Twain sprang.
All that is best in Mark Twain has some connection either with the Mississippi
River or with the Western mining towns. Take him away from that environment --
the environment he had known in his youth and early manhood -- and he always
fumbles, whether he is attempting a travel diary, a novel, or a life of Joan of
Arc. In a sense he never grew up, he never made up his mind on the most
fundamental questions, and nothing really significant seems to have happened to
him when he was much past thirty.
That wonderful boyhood in the 'forties, on the banks of the Mississippi, was a
sort of mine that he was still exploiting into old age. It produced, besides
the two books named above, 'Roughing It,' 'The Innocents at Home,' and, above
all, 'Life on the Mississippi,' which Arnold Bennett described with pardonable
exaggeration as 'that incomparable masterpiece for which I would exchange the
entire works of Thackeray and George Eliot.'
'Huckleberry Finn' overlaps with 'Life on the Mississippi' somewhat more than
does 'Tom Sawyer.'
Everyone knows its story, in so far as it has a story. A runaway boy, the kind
of ragged homeless, vagabond boy who in those days in Western America could not
only exist but grow up into a fairly decent human being, is floating down the
river on a raft in company with an escaped slave. They have incredible
adventures (the best is when they fall in with two rogues who describe
themselves as a duke and a king and work various swindles in the riverside
towns), but the real hero of the book is the river itself.
Although there is little scenic description (the story is supposedly told in
Huckleberry Finn's own words) the vast, warm, muddy, uncontrollable stream,
which carries whole villages away in its floods but also makes possible an
easy, lounging, hospitable, tobacco-chewing kind of life, seems to dominate
every page.
'Huckleberry Finn' is a kind of sequel to 'Tom Sawyer,' and Tom himself
reappears towards the end, bringing with him the less adult atmosphere which
characterizes the earlier book.
Huck is a pure savage, but in some ways precociously wise, prizing liberty
above everything and yet naturally unromantic. Tom is a more typical American
boy, with a good home behind him, ignorant enough and yet full of intellectual
curiosity, his head stuffed with adventure stories and youthful love affairs.
It was not an accident that for two generations or more the best books dealing
with childhood came from America. The real secret of books like 'Tom Sawyer' on
the one hand and 'Helen's Babies' or "Little Women' on the other, was that
nineteenth-century America was a very good place in which to be young.
The American boy dreamed of becoming President or, alternatively, of becoming a
pilot on a Mississippi steamboat. He did not have the consciousness of being
doomed in advance to a stool in a bank or an insurance office. But above all,
the easy, generous life that Mark Twain and the others describe rests on a
basis of Puritanism.
Puritan ethics and religious beliefs were still firm. The family was still a
powerful institution. Tom Sawyer may run away from home and live a wild life in
the woods for a week at a time, but Aunt Polly is always there with her Bible
and her doughnuts, and though he regards Sunday school without enthusiasm he is
certain that he will be struck by lightning if he fails to say his prayers. He
is full of superstitions, learned largely from the negroes, and his education
does not go much beyond the three R's and a painfully acquired collection of
hymns and Biblical texts. But he has the advantage of never having heard of a
movie or a soda fountain.
Of the two books contained in this volume 'Tom Sawyer' is probably the better.
It has in it a well-constructed and reasonably credible story, and it is not
written in the dialect which makes 'Huckleberry Finn' rather tiresome to read
for more than a short stretch at a time.
As social history both books are of the greatest value. It would be nice if, at
some time, the Everyman Library decided to reprint "Roughing It' and 'The
Innocents at Home,' neither of which is now easy to procure. Meanwhile 'Tom
Sawyer' is a good introduction to Mark Twain's work, a sort of curtain-raiser
for his larger masterpiece, 'Life on the Mississippi.'..."
[The review goes on to an unrelated title.]
c/o M
jmc
"Bobby Farouk" <far...@ninemile.com> wrote in message
news:v917jt8...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> I believe there remains in this country a fair sized inventory of folk who
> want it removed from school reading lists.
Why?
Gene Zitver
>> I believe there remains in this country a fair sized inventory of folk who
>> want it removed from school reading lists.
>
>Why?
At one time, I believe it was because Huck tells lies and smokes and ignores
adult authority. Now it's mostly because he calls Jim, the slave with whom he
flees, a "nigger." Which of course is what a poor white kid in pre-Civil War
Missouri would have called a slave.
Gene
Bobby Farouk
"jmc" <jamesmart...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b6qcfg$2s8$1...@titan.btinternet.com...
The only thing I can think of is the use of the word "nigger". Perhaps
there is a worry over a plot revolving around a rebellious teenager running
away from home with a man from another race. Anti-family values? Because
of the use of dialect in the narrative, there may be a problem with poor
English being promoted in our schools. MAB would be a good source on this
topic.
jmc
And we think that PC is a problem in the UK! Boy, you must get sick of it
over there.
Naderista
>
> "jmc" <jamesmart...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:b6qcfg$2s8$1...@titan.btinternet.com...
> >
> > "Bobby Farouk" <far...@ninemile.com> wrote in message
> > news:v917jt8...@corp.supernews.com...
> > >
> > > I believe there remains in this country a fair sized inventory of folk
> who
> > > want it removed from school reading lists.
> >
> > Why?
>
> The only thing I can think of is the use of the word "nigger".
I seem to remember a very inspirational episode of "Family Ties"
on this subject.
paul.
Martha Bridegam
Bobby Farouk wrote:
Truth be told, I'd rather talk about the contents of the novel, not the
everlasting political fights over it, which anyway we've been through here
before.
I can't understand why Orwell thought *Tom Sawyer* was better than
*Huckleberry Finn*. Does anyone think it says something about Orwell's own
weaknesses as a novelist?
/M
Bobby Farouk
"Martha Bridegam" <ma...@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:3E90C78C...@pacbell.net...
I don't know much about Tom Sawyer, but have always believed it was a
somewhat conventional entertainment. I never considered Orwell a great
novelist. I do seem him as a great writer whose skill with language allowed
him to write reasonably good and memorable novels. Surely, Twain's use of a
narrative driven by dialect must have annoyed Orwell ear. Frankly, I have
always found Tom's "romantic/chivalic" attempted rescue of Jim a deeply
flawed inability on Twain's part to resist a joke. Maybe Orwell saw the
same thing. Maybe Huck Finn is a sort of monolith of American Literature
that Orwell could not get his arms around. Do you think he understood the
place the Mississippi occupies in the American psyche?
Martha Bridegam
Bobby Farouk wrote:
Yes. The whole story gets stupid as soon as Tom shows up. Isn't it the earlier
part that people admire?
> Maybe Orwell saw the
> same thing. Maybe Huck Finn is a sort of monolith of American Literature
> that Orwell could not get his arms around. Do you think he understood the
> place the Mississippi occupies in the American psyche?
Actually that sounds like the part of Twain he's most interested in, doesn't
it?
/M
John Rennie
So you think the that changing the title of Agatha Christie's novel
Ten Little Niggers to Ten Little Indians means we can crow over
our American cousins when it comes to being PC? (Or was that
title change done to accommodate American changing attitudes?)
ROBBIE
A couple of points to make- knowing your suspicious legal mind- number one I
didn't know what Orwell thought about it which is why I asked- I always
forget to google group these queries and nuber two I didn't post the post to
start a debate about the word nigger which I bet you thought I did.
ROBBIE
"Martha Bridegam" <brid...@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:3E90E05F...@pacbell.net...
>
>
> Yes. The whole story gets stupid as soon as Tom shows up. Isn't it the
earlier
> part that people admire?
what do *you* think of the novel?
ROBBIE
Coming Up For Air has it's Sawyer-y fishing bit
ROBBIE
Thanks for that.
M
>
bayle
Mostly the word nigger, and the bogus IMO argument that Twain was a racist.
I find that I, as a free speech absolutist, had an interesting
transformation, from being unwilling to remove it from required reading
under all circumstances, to being willing to consider removing it under
certain limited ones.
The question is what do you do if there are only one or two black kids in
the class when you read it in highschool. How do you handle the fact that
they are often made very uncomfortable, and since there are only a few of
them, they feel under siege and compelled to defend their race if you will?
I think the age is important here. In college I wouldn't consider it, and I
know about the prevalence of nigger in other contexts. Still, in certain
unintegrated settings I think, unfortunately, that it might be better to
teach something else.
Naderista
"John Rennie" <j.re...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:TPbka.184$1F4....@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net...
Not much of an improvement, I would think.
When I was a child, there was a children's song entitled "Ten
Little Indians." I'm sure most of you know it: "One little, two
little, three little indians, four little, five little, six little indians,"
and so on. I have learned that this song now goes "One
little, two little, three little fingers" and so on, until you reach
"ten little fingers makes two little hands."
paul.
Naderista
"bayle" <nob...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:fqdka.8920$1s1.1...@newsfeeds.bigpond.com...
But it is possible that such a novel with it's dated
racist language would provide an opportunity for
those kids to have the issue of race - still a daily
fact of life for them, but unnoticed by the school at large -
a classroom hearing, if you will. If properly dealt with,
a comparison/contrast between the language used in
the books and the discomfort and seige that they feel
everyday could help give that issue a little much needed
daylight?
paul.
Martha Bridegam
ROBBIE wrote:
I like it until Tom shows up, though liking the story & finding it food for
thought isn't the same as reacting to the language and events the way Twain
probably meant a reader to react. After all, literary critics have
dissected the subtexts of that book to shreds. See for example
<http://www.yorku.ca/twainweb/reviews/graff.html>.
Just a thought as of this minute: is it possible the goofy romanticized
"rescue" part of the story was a satire on the condescending efforts of
people who preferred their own versions of kindness to the practical help
that individual slaves needed?
Don't know.
Other thoughts?
/M
jmc
"Naderista" <paula...@look.ca> wrote in message
news:v92vrdd...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> > So you think the that changing the title of Agatha Christie's novel
> > Ten Little Niggers to Ten Little Indians
>
> Not much of an improvement, I would think.
>
>
bad over here, I suppose. As long as they don't force directors to cut the
"niggardly rascal" line from Twelfth Night!
Bobby Farouk
MN1st
Because they're idjits? I wish Orwell had been able to write the Twain
biography. If only he had been able to find a publisher willing to take a
chance.
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas
MN1st
>So you think the that changing the title of Agatha Christie's novel
>Ten Little Niggers to Ten Little Indians means we can crow over
>our American cousins when it comes to being PC? (Or was that
>title change done to accommodate American changing attitudes?)
They'd best change it again, to "Ten Vertically-Challenged Native Americans."
:o)
bayle
I agree with you.
My point is that I've heard some passionate feelings expressed that the pain
was too much to deal with. And that is an argument worth listening to.
bayle
Have you heard about the politician in Washington DC who got into trouble
for using niggardly?
jmc
>
> Have you heard about the politician in Washington DC who got into trouble
> for using niggardly?
>