Like many, I’ve read this book when I was a kid (twice actually, as a kid and a teen), and this was the first time I revisited it as a (hopefully) fully functional adult. And this time my reactions to it were quite magnified. The parts I liked before I loved now, and the parts that irked me in childhood now irritated the living daylights out of me.
Huckleberry Finn is a classic, and about half of it deserves that designation. Those are the parts where Twain shines — the parts with the mesmerizing and majestic Mississippi river, the ability to write injustice and abuse without proselytizing and falling into “misery porn” trap, and the sharp observation of the folks of the rural American South.
“We catched fish and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed – only a little kind of a low chuckle.”
And then there are the parts when severe tonal dissonance kicks in and the whiplash of being in another book sets in. It first starts with a bit of annoyance in those endless “king” and “duke” chapters, but peaks at impressive rate once Tom Sawyer and his hijinks pop up. Tom Sawyer, who belongs in a kids book at best, whose overactive imagination in this situation is no longer cute but dangerous and cruel and incredibly thoughtless — and almost physically painful. (Yes, I know Tom Sawyer is supposed to come across as ridiculous here, but it went on for way too long).
Oh, and how bleak and pointlessly violent was the world of rural American South of the 1830? Sometimes I wonder if humanity really deserves to continue on. Yes, there are quite a few funny parts (Huck’s rant about Henry VIII many “achievements” – from Domesday book to malmsey wine drowning to Boston Tea Party comes to mind), but my overall take this time is of resolutely grim life. Slavery, violence, alcoholism, cruelty, ignorance, disregard for rights of others – I need to stare at the wall for a little while now.
My favorite rant here, under spoiler tag for brevity sake:
(view spoiler)[“My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. ‘Fetch up Nell Gwynn,’ he says. They fetch her up. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head!’ And they chop it off. ‘Fetch up Jane Shore,’ he says; and up she comes, Next morning, ‘Chop off her head’—and they chop it off. ‘Ring up Fair Rosamun.’ Fair Rosamun answers the bell. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head.’ And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it Domesday Book—which was a good name and stated the case. You don’t know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this old rip of ourn is one of the cleanest I’ve struck in history. Well, Henry he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. How does he go at it—give notice?—give the country a show? No. All of a sudden he heaves all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on. That was his style—he never give anybody a chance. He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of Wellington. Well, what did he do? Ask him to show up? No—drownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. S’pose people left money laying around where he was—what did he do? He collared it. S’pose he contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn’t set down there and see that he done it—what did he do? He always done the other thing. S’pose he opened his mouth—what then? If he didn’t shut it up powerful quick he’d lose a lie every time. That’s the kind of a bug Henry was; and if we’d a had him along ‘stead of our kings he’d a fooled that town a heap worse than ourn done. I don’t say that ourn is lambs, because they ain’t, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they ain’t nothing to that old ram, anyway. All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they’re a mighty ornery lot. It’s the way they’re raised.”(hide spoiler)]
Being a novel of its time it doesn’t go where I wish it did, but even classics belong to their time, and this one is not an exception. And people needed to start like Huck — deciding that ”All right, then, I’ll GO to hell” — because you have to start somewhere.
3.5 stars, and my brain is busily editing Tom Sawyer out of this story).
books are life 