Tag Archives: literature

HUCK VERITAS

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Copyright 2006 mue

NOTE: Numbers in the text paratheses are page numbers from the 2001 edition of

Huckleberry Finn, 2001, University of California Press, Berkeley 

Since its publication the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has retained its popularity with the reading public. Its theme, Motive, Moral and Plot, though, have eluded acclaiming readers, skeptical detractors and literary critics. This confusion was the author’s who wanted the book to endure and to sell.

Slavery, Southern society and the Mississippi River seemingly move the story. However, a river of Christianity and faith runs through the writing. Unlike the river waters purifying Huck and Jim as they float into slaveland, Southern professions of faith, hope and charity from 1 Corinthians 13 are not Christian, and they pollute civilization. This thematic flow makes the novel an irony, making the Adventures a tract against religion as it is practiced.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain, was raised a Presbyterian, and he was well acquainted with the King James Version of the Bible and other works of English Protestantism. Despite wide circulation of those books, Southerners had religion but little Christianity. Huck notes the,

pretty ornery preaching – all about brotherly love and

such-like tiresomeness, but everybody said it was a 

good sermon, and they all talked it over, going home,

and had such a powerful lot to say about faith, and 

good works, and free grace, and preforeordestination,

criticismand I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me to be

one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.(147)

Huck’s questioning comes to him naturally. Startled by Pap and quizzed, Huck reads aloud. Pap growls, First thing you know you’ll get religion, too.(24) Religion practiced in the South corrupts. A note warning Jim’s captors of a plan to free the slave pleads, I am one of the gang, but have got religion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again.(334)

Huck learned the Bible from the widow and Miss Douglas. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Matthew 6:24.  If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast…and come and follow me. Huck gives Judge Thatcher his money in Chapter 5, and throughout the novel he never thinks he can reclaim the money and buy Jim’s freedom. Huck seeks the more excellent way.

The King James Version of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, prescribes the conduct of a Christian:

THOUGH I speak with tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

2. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,

and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains,

and have not charity, if profiteth me nothing.

3. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

4. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

5. Doth not behave itself unseemly, seekth not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

6. Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

7. Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophesies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

9. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

10. But when that which is perfect is come, than that which is in part shall be done away.

11. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

12. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I also am known.

13. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

One must act with charity, a Christian love which burns into the heart and pilots all action. A mere act of liturgy, prophecy or giving without the requisite state of mind and heart is nothing. Christians must not be envious, boastful, conceited, proud, rude, selfish or vengeant; they must seek truth and ride the joy of charity overflowing with kindness while withstanding suffering. Throughout the Adventures Huck lives this life hope and eventually learns the greatest of these is charity.

    FAITH

In the Adventures faith is evinced through prayer and professions to piety: …You had to wait for the widow to tuck her head down and grumble a little over the victuals…(2) Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it.(13) When the King and Duke commenced their swindle of the heirs of Peter Wilkes, …they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and let on to pray, all to their selves.(212) A preacher at the camp meeting aroused the crowd with imaginary visions of the Holy Ghost. They shout[ed] and cri[ed]…tears running down their faces; singing and flinging …themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild.(172) And the king got agoing (172) about being a pirate in the Indian Ocean, collecting eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. And then he fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a wagon…(174) Slaveowner/preacher, Silas Phelps come in every day or two to pray with Jim, the captured, runaway slave.(309)

But prayer described in the novel mostly departs from Scripture. Matthew, Chapter 6:5-6 directs:

And when thou prayest, thou shall not be as the hypocrites

are: for they love to pray standing in synagogues and in

the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. 

Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when

thou has shut the door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret;

and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Southerners manipulated faith. The widow,

learned me about Moses and the “Bulrushers;” and I was in a

sweat to find all about him; but by and by she let it out Moses

had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care

no more about him; because I don’t take no stock in dead 

people.(2)…I wanted to smoke…She said it was a mean 

practice and wasn’t clean…Here she was a-bothering about 

Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody… yet

finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some

good in it. And she took snuff too; of course that was all right,

because she done it herself.(3)

The King’s duds was 

all black, and he looked real swell and starchy…when he’d

take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a 

smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you’d

say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old

Leviticus himself.(204)

The King and Duke, …took on about that dead tanner [Peter Wilkes] like they’d lost the twelve disciples.(212)

Despite biblical interdiction, Acts 17:22, superstition of white people through the novel resembles the superstition of black folk. Huck thought differently, I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer’s lies…It had all the marks of a Sunday school.(17)

Southerners have no greater understanding of Christianity than the sensibility of the slave, Jim. The commandment, Ye shall not steal, is modified: The best way would be for us to pick out two or three things…and say we wouldn’t borrow them any more…it wouldn’t be no harm to borrow the others.(80) About Solomon and his million wives, Jim poses: Now I want to ast you: …what use of half a chile? I wouldn’t give a dern for a million un um…He as soon shop a chile in two as a cat. Dey’s plent mo’. A chile or two, mo’er less warn’t no consekens to Sollermun…(95-96)

Southern white ignore the tenets of Christianity. The Grangerfords and Shepardsons go to the same church yet feud: If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.(148) Educated whites disregard the creed. A new judge leading Pap to temperance fails: The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shot-gun, maybe, but he didn’t know no other way.(28) Silas Phelps …was a-studying over. Acts seventeen…(316), an anti-slavery verse, yet Phelps remained a slaveowner.

CHARITY

These professions of faith accompany the revelation of charity in chapter three. Relying on Mark 11:24 [Therefore, I say unto you, What things so ever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye shall receive them, and ye shall have them.], Miss Watson tells Huck, to pray every day whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn’t so…Once I got a fish line, but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without the hooks.(13) Miss Watson chides the foolishness.

Huck asks. The widow tells him …the thing a body could get by praying for it was “spiritual gifts,” 1 Corinthians 14.(13) Benefits of these gifts elude Huck, especially after the widow explained, 

…I must help other people and do everything I could for 

other people, and look out for them all the time, and never 

think about myself,…I went out in the woods and turned it 

over in my mind a long time, but I couldn’t see no advantage 

about it – except for the other people…(13-14)

Both the widow and Miss Watson urge Huck to practice charity but describe the rewards differently. The widow will make Huck’s actions closely relate to public benefits of conforming to Southern society. She described Providence …to make a body’s mouth water.(14) When Huck dirtied his clothes after a night out

the widow she didn’t scold, but only cleaned off the 

grease and clay and looked so sorry that I thought I

would behave a while if I could.(13) [B]ut maybe the

next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it

[the widow’s Providence] all down again.(14) 

Miss Watson demanded individual immediate internal reformation of character to make Huck Christian, and she was direct:

Well, I got a good-going over from old Miss Watson,

on account of my clothes; (13) Miss Watson told me

about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there.

She got mad; …she was going to live so as to go to 

the good place. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage in

going where she was going…(3-4)

Listening to each woman, Huck

could see that there was two Providences, and a poor

chap would stand considerable show with the widow’s

Providence, but if Miss Watson got him there warn’t no

help for him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned

I would belong to the widow’s if he wanted me, though 

I couldn’t make out how he was going to be any better

off then than what he was before…(14)

Miss Watson drives Huck away. She wants to sell Jim, separating him from familiar surroundings and family. Helping Jim escape, a large step to leaving the widow’s Providence, bothers Huck(52, 124-125, 127-128), but he passes over the ramifications as they float South where Huck will learn charity and receive spiritual gifts.

He witnesses events …to make a body ashamed of the human race.(210) The legal system tolerates Pap going for Huck’s money. (Chapters 5,6) Boastful boatmen are …chicken-livered cowards.(111) The Grangerford and Shepardson families feud. (Chapters 17,18) After Boggs is killed, Colonel Sherburn defies the mob: …If any real lynching’s going to be done, it will be done in the dark, southern fashion, and when they come, they’ll bring their masks…(191)

Southerners suffer frauds in the camp meeting, hold overly romantic notions and are duped by the King and Duke, giving new significance to the reference about praying hypocrites: Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward. Matthew 6:5)

Huck is edgy when the King trusts …in Providence to lead him the profitable way – meaning the devil(204): [B]eing brothers to a rich dead man, and representatives of furrin heirs that’s got left, is the line for you and me, Bilge. Thish-her comes to trust’n to Providence.(214)

In Chapter 28 Huck balks, hides the money in the coffin and tells Mary Jane about the scam. He knows he cannot join the widow’s Providence, be good and civilized and receive the rewards of Southern society. He tells Mary Jane, I’d be all right, but there’d be another person that you don’t know about who’d be in big trouble.(240) Mary Jane responds, 

I’m going to do everything just as you’ve told me; …and I’ll

pray for you too!

Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she’d take a job

that was more nearer her size…and if ever I’d a thought it 

would do any good for me to pray for her, blamed if I 

wouldn’t a done it or bust.(244) 

In Chapter 31 the King takes a bounty for Jim, the runaway slave. Jim is imprisoned. Huck must choose. Should Huck gain spiritual gifts from the Widow’s Providence, again. Seeking absolution, he considers telling her by letter where Jim is:

…it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of

Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know 

my wickedness was begin watched all the time from up 

there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s 

nigger that hadn’t ever done me no harm, and now was 

showing me that there’s One that’s always on the lookout,

and ain’t agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go 

only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks,

I was so scared…It made me shiver. And I about made up 

my mind to pray; and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the 

kind of boy I was, and be better. So I kneeled down. But

the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no 

use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I 

knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because 

my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was

because I was playing double…You can’t pray a lie – I 

found that out. (268-269)

But Huck doesn’t send the letter because he is taking faith private, before God full face. In the wigwam of the raft – the wigwam (and the dilemma) – was a close place like the closet Miss Watson took him into in Chapter Three. Huck ponders whether the follow Christian charity, to help Jim and do everything he could for Jim, look out for Jim and not think about himself.(13)

He resolves to rescue Jim, thereby choosing the Providence described by Miss Watson. But he still believes he is controlled by the Providence described by the widow, Southern society will condemn him. Huck says, All right, then, I’ll go to hell…(271)

Clemens made the structure of the Adventures a cross. Faith, hope and charity on the vertical pole (patibulata) intersecting Southern civilization of whites and Negroes in the Mississippi Valley on the cross beam (patibulum):

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        SOUTHERN     T     SOCIETY     

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When Huck becomes charitable, he finds himself before the cross, before the only character who is charitable and Christian throughout the story: Jim. After Jim’s capture, Huck reflects in the wigwam and voices a prayer:

I see Jim before me, all the time, in the day and in night-time,

sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating,

talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t

seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only

the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n,

stead of calling me – so I could go on sleeping; and see him 

how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when 

I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud 

was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, 

and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and

how good he always was; and at least I struck the time I 

saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and

he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever 

had in the world, and the only one’s he’s got now;…(270)

Jim is a slave, and in the novel he who is hung on the patibulum of Southern society. Questions arise: Should Huck save Jim? Should Huck attempt to save the nigger on the cross? Should Huck work himself …up and go and humble [himself] to a nigger? Huck …done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterward, neither.(105) It is inexplicable that present-day detractors of Huckleberry Finn, like ante-bellum Southerners, don’t believe in humbling themselves to the nigger on the cross and dispute Huck’s decision to save him.

Putting Jim on the cross is controversial, but Clemens advanced the idea in Huck’s prayer. In doing so he mocked camp meetings and the glory of the evangelists’ timeless voices describing the appearances of Jesus Christ: I see Jesus before me, all the time, in the day, in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms… Moonlight is necessary because Southerners and detractors of this novel cannot see Jesus in the dark.

  HOPE

At the beginning of the novel, the widow wants to sivilize Huckleberry. After charity is explicated in Chapter 31, the remaining eleven chapters exhaust hope found in the widow’s Providence, Southern society. Tom Sawyer returns to the story, and he conceives a plot to free Jim. But Huck was bothered that Tom …a boy that was respectable, and well brung up; and had character to lose(292) would help the slave escape. Huck did not know it was Tom’s sport; the widow had died and freed Jim in her will.(358) Again, Huck is homeless. He subordinates himself and his new faith to the tomfoolery: He [Tom Sawyer] was always just that particular. Full of principle.(307) Jim, too, recognized the folly but …allowed we was white folks and knowed better.(309)

About the escape and Jim’s recapture, Southerners blather about the complexity of the escape scheme and wonder who had done the planning and why – conversations not reflecting reality.(Chapter 41) Tom Sawyer was proud of the adventure and especially the bullet he took in the leg, which he wore around his neck.(362)

At book’s end Huck heads for the freedom of the Territory; otherwise Aunt Sally is …going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I’ve been there before.(362)

Tom Sawyer was published in 1876, the same year Clemens was feverishly writing Huckleberry Finn. He had more material about the river and Southern society than he could use in one book.

The jarring impact of the Civil War was fresh. Clemens had lost his chosen profession of riverboat captain. He set aside the Adventures until 1879-1880, when he wrote a bit more. Follow a trip on the Mississippi in 1882, Clemens pumped out Life on the Mississippi also detailing the downside of Southern society and Huckleberry Finn in 1884. These books along with Pudd’nhead Wilson’s

exposition of the black man’s plight, 1894, are a trilogy. The Adventures is the hinge book integrating both themes – Southern society and race.

As a novelist Clemens had responsibilities to art and to society. The trilogy was his response to the War and its outcomes – expressions of despair that lessons of the horrible slaughter were forgotten or never learned. America was the same. The South had not changed. Reconstruction had failed. Slaves, now free Negroes, were drowning in tides of caste and race supported by the society which fueled Southern war fever in 1861.

Upon expressing the issues, Mark Twain had to camouflage the most damning religious themes. He released the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a boy’s book, a sequel to the popular Tom Sawyer. Many of the same characters appear at the beginning of each, but the similarities end with writing, style and content. Later, more Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn sequels were published which have nothing to do with the thematic content of Huckleberry Finn.

Next, Twain approved original illustrations for the Adventures which show the protagonist as a meek boy of eight or ten years, not the savvy adolescent telling the narrative. Also some captions to the illustrations are misleading e.g. Thinking.(270)

Twain maintained his standing as a novelist accepting responsibilities to readers. Twain met and befriended an invaluable ally, Ulysses S. Grant, the most popular American of his day. Twain became the publisher of Grant’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY (1885). Grant also wanted the end of racism (our term today).African-Americans should have equal standing in the country, yet the War had not accomplished that change. The end of Grant’s presidency stopped economic, sociological and politic efforts. Indeed, slavery’s end as an economic institution become insidious, repressive political, economic and social measures. Twain had written the novel as a simile of faith, hope and charity, spiritual gifts, always distorted in the South and its civilization, a crude, greedy, perverse, non-charitable, vulgar society including frequent use of offensive language. Readers gloss over orgies and obsequies (Chapter 25) and the Royal Nonesuch (Chapter 22) Such behaviors and attitudes are not surprising in the ante-bellum South. Americans see the same from Southerners and many other Americans in organized religion and Christianity today.

Twain told all this to Grant who read the book and encouraged Twain. Grant’s approval is found in Twain’s 

NOTICE – PERSONS attempting to find a Motive in this

narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a

Moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a 

Plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author, Per G.G., 

Chief of Ordnance.

Twain inferred the novel was not about religion as it is proselytized and practiced in the South. However, repeatedly the novel levies on the practice of religion and unChristianity in the South [and today in America]. And the GG in the NOTICE was never Chief of Ordnance. Ordnance of the novel had changed from military supplies for use in War to ideas and concepts explaining the social, cultural and economic ways in the novel always producing iniquitous and unchristian outcomes. It was GG who backed up and gave heart to the wary Mark Twain, writing a novel lobbing shells into Southern Civilization and into present day America today. 

For seven score years readers have recognized the obvious and have been sidetracked by Mark Twain’s counsel to seek no motive, moral or plot. America’s hope is to discover and understand the motives, morals and plots in the Adventures, as Samuel Langhorne Clemens wrote them, and to live accordingly. 

MARK TWAIN

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Ron Powers (2005)

This biography encapsulates Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens’ life as he lived and was understood – a human being, a father, a writer, somewhat as a performer and somewhat as a thinker. It tells without delving into a comprehensive consideration of Clemens’ thinking and relating his total experiences . 

Ron Powers, biographer, did not read, understand and critique Huckleberry Finn. His failure to do so renders his biography to Twain inadequate. [Oddly, Ron Chernow, has a longer, newer biography of Clemens (2025), making similar mistakes and omissions.]

No one can understand Clemens without a full understanding of Huckleberry Finn. It is likewise obvious that no one can understand American literature without a full understanding and appreciation of Huckleberry Finn. Citing the opinions of other reviewers, authors and sages as Powers did, repeats mistakes of the past and repeats ignorance as current interpretation.. Indeed, both biographies are more lightning bug than lightening. Neither know the deeper meanings and features of Clemens’ existence and why he is laughing at American misunderstanding today. It is evident neither biographer knows the Bible. What part did religion have in Clemens’ life and writing? Clemens, himself, was comfortable citing and casually referring to biblical passages: “The British are mentioned in the Bible: ‘Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth’.”

Huckleberry Finn is filled with overt religious references and tidbits without any explication, except for Chapters 1- 3 and 31. Clemens wrote during more religious times when no one was condemning Christianity for its support of slavery before the Civil War and racism afterward. Clemens used the modes of Southern Society throughout his work, writing and lecturing, presenting thematic material buried in nonsense. Huckleberry Finn attacks and tells shows that Clemens violently disagreed with religion as it was practiced, and how religion supported slavery, Southern culture and the lingering plague of racism. Religion provided no civilization to the South; the South was incapable of establishing civilization on its own, with or without religion. These analyses are finalized in the final chapters – after Chapter 31 – when most authorities, Ron Powers faithfully cited, say is the end of the novel.

As the driving force of Huckleberry Finn, religion is obvious and apparent upon reading the original manuscript. The first three chapters in Clemens’ hand have very few changes. One might wonder what are the spiritual gifts Huck refers to in Chapter Three. He got through Chapter 31 without much change. It took Clemens seven years to write  the novel..

I have written a critique of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Veritas whichinterprets the novel. It is being posted concurrently on WordPress with this review: Read both biographies, but don’t expect to understand the man writing the best novel in any language. Readers must read Huckleberry Finn, compare the text to unreferenced biblical passages and chapters, realize their significance and understand.

A PILE OF BOOKS

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Having a neglected pile of books to read, I wondered how to get through them. Each appeared interesting. They came cheaply, purchased one at a time but most all at once. Libraries have shelves of donated books they want to pass on. Likewise there were grocery bags of books costing one dollar at the bag sales at library book sales – the first time in history books were cheaper than the shopping bags they were carried away in.

So how did each book of the pile read? Perhaps I was correct in stacking the books:

John LeCarre, A Small Town in Germany. At the beginning he insists on long descriptions of the town. How does the scenery advance the espionage story?

2. John Dos Passos, Big Money. The author tried to tell how people made their way in careers in an advancing economy while presenting the worst dialogue – non-directional, cumbersome and unrelated to the story. I give it 170 pages.

3. Anson’s Voyage Around the World 1740-1744. The Introduction was of interest, filled with appalling facts: Ships left England with mostly old men who were sick. About 950 mens set off from England and by the South Atlantic 370 men were left. Not all of the 370 were fit for duty aboard the ships. However, the diary is written in an eighteenth century fashion by more than one author, each writing formally and stiltedly.
I’ve read of similar journeys. I don’t have to struggle through Anson’s. I passed on the diary.

4. Thurber and White, Is Sex Necessary? This text was likely enlivening in 1929. Now it is dated.

5. George Kennen, The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order and The Fateful Alliance. Each book appeared unread when purchased. I’ve read about each subject in excellent academic produced histories. How did old George do? He is pompous and verbose. His English is truly bloated. Sentences are unnecessarily long and convoluted.

6. Norman Thrower, Maps and Civilization. This is another academic book written in the vernacular of its subject matter. Small print. It appeared involved and complicated, requiring looking up words in dictionaries. Disclosures about maps and civilization shall remain hidden.

7. H.G. Wells, Journalism and Prophecy, is disappointing. I am not fan of the author’s science fiction work. I do not hold him in awe. Meetings with Hitler, Stalin and Lenin reveal H.G. Wells was completely uninformed and ignorant. In articles that should be written as essays, H.G. writes in the narrative. It is the best illustration about the folly and fallaciousness in the use of the pronoun, I – except for the Tweeting I abilities of Don Trump.

8. Chapelle, The American Sailing Navy, describes sailing ships used in eighteenth century wars and commerce. There is much about ship and sail design and the history of ships. There is little about the functional fighting qualities of each ship. I gave the book about 320 pages. From the number of American ships captured or sunk, i am surprised there was any early Navy at all!
Unless one is intensely interested in sailing ships and their design and builders – minute and large changes – this is not a book for the average reader.

9. Tate, Stonewall Jackson. This appears one of the lovingly biographies written by a Southerner during the 1920s. It is about a revered Southern Civil War general. Every word is a compliment. I recognized it as such and passed.

10. Leonard Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, a small print book telling of the establishment of the Mormon Church in and around Utah. It looked unopened and unread when I picked it up. Perhaps I am lazy, wanting nothing physically challenging to read. The small print covering the pages was daunting. I put it down.

HOCHSCHILD’S MISREADING

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On March 18, 2016, Second D, page 5, Adam Hochschild ventured into an area where he lacks expertise, knowledge and imagination. He described why Mark Twain’s Life On the Mississippi need not be read in its entirety. Being familiar with Twain’s work, I am surprised. I’ve read works from historians competing with Hochschild for readers, and I now wonder if I ought to read his books. The world is more multilayered than Mr. Hochschild appreciates. Regarding Life On the Mississippi he has two grand oversights.

Hochschild stumbled upon the fact that Life On is a companion book to Huckleberry Finn. That novel is firmly set in the 1830s. Life On presents contemporary observations which were added to Twain’s previous publication of Old Times on the Mississippi (@1875).

In 1882 books and basic knowledge of the Mississippi River Valley were scare. Twain had written about 25 chapters of the novel but needed a refresher course about locations and the sense and feel of the South, and the river. In 1882 he traveled up the river, noting events and occurrences, present time to 45 years before. Not much had changed.

Life On came from Clemen’s notebooks and scrapbooks. Prior to William Faulkner’s observation about the past in the South, Clemens realized in the South that nothing was ever the past. In 1884 he told the world that in Life On.

The second point is what the South did with its history, this time and subject is described by a prominent American historian who quotes Life On the Mississippi from a late passage. SPOILER ALERT! Hochschild’s fans should stop reading NOW!

…Colonel Marshall graphically described the scene demonstrating Lee’s
posture and his forward wave of the hand as Jackson rode away.The
movement became the subject of a painting completed in 1869…Mark
Twain studied the original in New Orleans and reflected on the importance
of explicitly telling people the retrospectively defined meaning of what they
they see when one offers them a historical representation…Unless the
painting were properly labeled Twain said, it might readily be taken to
portray “Last Interview between Lee and Jackson” or “First Interview
between Lee and Jackson” or “Jackson Reporting a Great Victory” or
“Jackson Apologizing for a Heavy Defeat” or “Jackson Asking Lee for a
Match.” “It tells one story and a sufficient one; for it says quite plainly and
satisfactorily, ‘Here are Lee and Jackson together.’ The artist would have
made it tell that this is Lee and Jackson’s last interview if he could have
done it. But he couldn’t, for there wasn’t any way to do it. A good legible
label is usually worth, for information, a ton of significant attitude and
expression in a historical picture.”
Royster, Charles, The Destructive War, Knopf, NY, 1991, p. 203-204.

 

BUY, READ AND KEEP

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A JURY OF HER PEERS – Elaine Showalter

This book is invaluable. It should be in every public library and in private collections.

American citizens should read this book to learn how women have viewed America since 1630.

American literature students, male and female, should buy, read and refer to this book. It is an excellent teaching source; it is an engaging source to acquaint students with an entire body of little known literature.

Male and female students of writing should buy, read and refer to this book.

If Americans of all ilks believe they have read as much American literature as is available, this book will provide at least 50 novels to read.

For example, Jo Marsh of Little Women wrote books about her family, sequels to Little Women. One of those books discusses in the 1870s a woman’s wish today: “Having it all.”

An issue in the 1960s Civil Rights movement was the position of women. Not intending to be pejorative or derisive, Stockily Carmichael accurately described that position as “prone.” Doubly for Black women. Should Black women support the Civil Rights movement or the Women’s Movement? Each involved different and conflicting obligations and goals. In history, sociology and journalism there is little development and discussion of the issues. HOWEVER, black female authors raised and wrote about this issue. These books are described and discussed in Showalter’s book.

CRITICISM

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Since blogging in August 2013, I’ve read novels and put forth my comments. I’ve been direct – complementary or derogatory. It something is unreadable, I’ll say that.

But this morning I put down a novel (more than 500 pages), and I am reminded of Mark Twains purported evaluation of Henry James’s novels: Once you’ve put down one of his novels, you can’t pick it up.

I won’t identify the novelist or her first novel. The subject matter is something I’ve thoroughly versed with – a student going to college in a strange place. Chapter One is long and slow. Ten pages into it I realized it was common stuff. Not a lot happened – dialogue, descriptions, action – by page 20. But I recognized the source. It was obvious that this author had kept a journal in college and had devoted pages to the mundane as most journals and diaries are. This author had replicated in the book the journal conversations she had tediously recorded as a fresh student. 

If an author will write about a character who is boring, dull, mundane and ordinary, the author ought not to show those traits by being prosaic with the writing. It must be poetry (Lennie, Of Mice and Men). It is entirely possible that this author did not fully understand how the traits of the character might be perceived. That is a failure of the author’s, of editors and of the publisher; it should be noted in criticism. Stumbling along writing characters in common, everyday speech is not the way to do it. Fiction does partly reflect reality, but an author has to make up the language as she proceeds. The author does not get to literature by inserting every sentence ever uttered, remembered for a journal and put into a novel. However, that’s what this author seems to have done, and she should have been more wary. She states a fact that reveals the character is a moron. In the first 20 pages she mentions that the character took Geometry during his senior year of high school. Geometry is a high school freshman or sophomore course.

So I quit this novel before being insulted more. I had to put it down and quit it forever. I’ll be suspicious of anything more from this author. Fortunately there was no expense. I borrowed it from a library where I gladly returned it.

WHAT SORT OF TALE?

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A FALSE FRIEND by Myla Goldberg

I try to read different styles of fiction and non-fiction to learn something from style, the writing and the author’s presentation. But I am impatient because there is much to read. If I cannot detect a story and structure inside a book with good writing, I lose interest quickly.

I don’t expect every book to have a chronological narrative. But if a writer begins with “bit,” and she goes onto “bot,” and next to “but,” followed by “bat” and ending up with “bet,” the story, writing and telling need distinction: Voice(s), choice of words, style of writing, immediacy of sentences, a comprehensible of structure guiding the reader at the rudder to make way through the “B-a-e-i-o-u-t.”

All that failed me in A False Friend by Myla Goldberg, and I did not sense a style or a structure otherwise presented to the reader. The story is told by Celia, as a pre-pubscient girl and when in the first chapter Celia’s best friend Djuna disappears in the forest (down a hole like Aiice), Celia has reached puberty. I note the Celia’s voice, words and speech are the same despite aging. These ages and the on-coming womanhood are important in youth because there are bunches and gobs of currents and circuits fed by hormones hitting girls.

Although Celia and Djuna interact with each other, they seem unaware of puberty. Their parents are unaware. Nobody else knows anything. The reader has no guidance except experience, although the book is presumably written for adults. The activities of the girls at nine years seems the same at 13 years.

Should the advent of puberty show up on page 180 as an involved plot point or a plot twist, when the actions between the two girls happened on page 10? I don’t know if that happens because the book lost me as a reader at Chapter 8. One book cover squib praising the novel mentions it is about “girl bullying.” If the author does not have a handle on the perpetrator and the victim, but is writing generically about morals, ethics, behaviors and reason, the writing is not a novel but a sociology. 

Of course with a novel, a story can be presented and the reader can learn from the characters and detect how incidents, however small, may get out of hand and result in bullying. Of perhaps the violence is mean and intentional. What sort of writing tries to make a point in   A FALSE FRIEND:

Chapter 3, page 39-40: “For years Celia had figured she would live alone: a small apartment in Ukrainian Village or Wicker Place shared on alternative weekends with a boyfriend who would have his shelf of the medicine cabinet, his bureau drawer. Their lives with sporadically intersect from Friday to Sunday, phone calls leaving the time in between. She had been perplexed by people who did it differently, had theorized that they were somehow less busy. In high school and college she simply had not had time to meet people. There were marches to organize and fund-raisers to plan, poems to read and meetings to attend. Her chronic overcommitment and loneliness had felt inherent, conditions like diabetes or color blindness that demanded their own concessions.”

In this paragraph Celia recollects the idea of living alone. Note there is no development of that idea from the standpoint of living alone, its glories or deficits. Nor is there development of Celia’s character. There are erratic and errant thoughts about Celia’s busy lifestyle unrelated to living alone: Irregular live-in boyfriends. Why was that desirable? No answer. How other people lived together, a thought completely unrelated to Celia. Celia remembers her earlier years when living with anyone seemed unnecessary: For purposes of this story it is immaterial and off point. But is it nonsensical that a young woman involved in politics, social issues and fund-raisers would not make friends and would have no acquaintances from those activities. What’s a reader to think?

Boyfriend-husband Huck had nights with the boys when Celia was out of town. (45) Does this have much to do with Djuna’s disappearance and the reaction of Celia’s hometown? Nothing. It tells little about Celia, even if the point of the novel appears to be the reaction to Djuna’s disappearance, today rather than 25-30 years before. The story is silent about the psychology of the adult Celia wanting to tell what happened to Djune. Celia shows up at her parents’ home in chapter 5 and tells her parents when Djuna disappeared: I lied. Her parents excuse her – her mother, who works at a high school says, you were just a child (13 years). You were confused.

The mother’s character is incredible. She works in a high school. She ought to know kids lie, including her own daughter. The mother is oblivious. Why does Celia come home and announce the lie? No one asks that. Where does this get anyone? Djune and Celia were friends who had sharp fights. Just before Djune disappeared, a fight had occurred.

An example from history. Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were friends who frequently socialized with one another. They also enraged one another. In July 1804 they fought a duel. Burr killed Hamilton. When Aaron Burr returned to New York City, its citizens heard Burr walk around trying to solicit conversation: I fought a duel with Alexander Hamilton, my best friend, and I killed him. History records no one stuck around to hear the full psychological release.

It is either the writing – the mix of bat, bet, bit, bot, but – or it is not presented in the story. I have no sense of remorse, guilt, regret or another other weight on Celia that compels her to come clean in Chapter 5. I would expect that set up in the first four chapters. It’s either bad reading comprehension, or there was nothing in the first four chapters to comprehend.

I lost track of any structure or order in the presentation of story, identifying a concept and generally following it. Words lengthened into sentences and ended nonsensically, Page 49:

“As Huck stood over Celia in the half-light cast by the approaching dusk, he had struggled to imagine a malady dire enough to send her home from work. She’d been know to barricade herself inside her private office with herbal tea, ibuprofen and zinc lozenges to avoid taking a sick day. Huck had considered the possibility that nursing her through some awful affliction would force an end to his late mornings, and perhaps return him to the sort of person who ministered to the slow-draining sink in the bathroom, the loose bedroom-door handle, or their beloved creaking couch. He would restore Celia to wellness, and himself to a person who did all these stuff he was supposed to do, and by the following week they’d both be their normal selves again.     But Celia hadn’t been sick.They’d sat on the couch…”

The reader is happy Celia isn’t sick, but Huck’s thoughts and impressions are overblown. He goes through the litany of her office sick routine, and next remembers he’s supposed to do all the handy work around the house. That’s his job. BUT Celia isn’t sick, and Huck’s ruminations are filler, extra, padding, stuffing or surplus. A reader is a sucker to plow through the routine/Huck’s thoughts, yet no one knows it is completely unnecessary until the next paragraph. The author could get away with it but didn’t write it so: Huck stands over Celia worried she might be sick. Does he wake or disturb her to get her reaction, and to have an emotional release himself? NO. Celia is just being a nine year old girl: She’ll sit on the couch with him.

When the reader’s imagination outruns the author’s, the book is in trouble. Page 53-54, Chapter 5: 

“Celia braved the hallway in her nightshirt. As children, she and Jeremy had been permitted downstairs in pajamas, but their parents only ever left the bedroom fully clothed. At some point Celia had adopted this habit, until Huck – early on in their courtship, the first demand of her he ever made – refused to serve post-coital pancakes to a woman wearing anything more than a bathrobe. The stairway carpet on the soles of Celia’s feet felt like Christmas morning, circa 1981. In the kitchen, she found a note beside a fresh half pot of coffee – Good Morning! Call me when you wake up. Love, Mom…”

Hank and Celia are married. Making pancakes is after-play for Huck, and Celia’s reaction? Celia! Now that you’ve brought it up how was sex with Huck? What sort of condiment did you put on the pancakes – honey, syrup, preserves, a tart marmalade, sour cream or sauerkraut? This passage implied Celia’s parents did not have sex for decades. It also implies Celia didn’t like sex and doesn’t want to talk about it or about anything else. 

I also know the next sentence of the paragraph is NOT, “The stairway carpet on the soles of Celia’s feet felt like Christmas morning,…”
Finally, the reader gets the impression that something is really not right with Celia – she’s mentally ill, or is a complete whack-job or too much of a Daddy’s little girl, or Mommy’s precious friend. She’s completely useless as a human being. Why else would the author leave the reader hanging with Celia thinking about sex with Huck and five lines later a note from Mom?

Heinrich Boell learned to write in part by rewriting published books. A False Friend may provide that type of opportunity to students learning to write. It is easy to be at sea with this book, reading and casting about for any safe harbor, literary pier or an anchorage to steady the boat. An author telling a story must appear to have control, write efficiently and effectively using few words. That is not the experience here. Why suffer through an author’s obvious shortcomings? There are other books to read.

 

 

A GOOD BOOK

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GILEAD  Marilynne Robinson

Usually, I would not read Gilead, a preacher telling his family’s story. It is draped in religion and is set in a small Iowa community. But I read it, and learned something from the telling.

There are no chapters and only two sections. There are a few hundred incidences. The telling of this story is in the form of an oral history. If a parent or grandparent were telling the story of the family, Gilead represents how that elder might tell: Incident here, reminder of that, this doesn’t necessarily follow but is interesting, the next thing, where was I in the story? Gilead is not chronological, but the telling is pleasing because the reader goes from incidents to more incidents, gaining insights along the way along with some learning.

The telling is by an educated man and the story stays close to that character’s roots – religion. If there be a drawback, the doses of religion and faith, undoubtedly supporting the story with biblical passages, whether noted or not, provide a foundation for the story. There is the family – the audience for this testament – the community and church members. Few names are given, as though confidences are kept. Instead, the setting and way of life imparts the demands, life’s work and worth, on the preacher-narrator. In many ways Gilead is about the preacher’s hope that future generations will learn, will hear his confession and will realize his shortcomings, all a reconciliation and realization he never had with his father. In some ways religion can seem repetitive, but in the style of oral history, some repetition should be expected.

I noted I would not usually read a book like Gilead. In my life I’ve read some primary sources. The Confessions of St. Augustine are overpowering. I’ve read some primary sources, and a lot of history about the development of Christianity and its sects, and some primary sources and sermons in those sects. [Waiting on the bookshelf to read it is Harnack, The History of Dogma, about the rise of Christianity.] Gilead has a historical component of telling the lives of its characters in the Mid-west, after the Civil War to the mid-1950s. Inside are few historical events to date anything. Again true to the character, the author sticks to religion. There are important events of faith, of his life and his family, but they have no time.

The fact that incidences and stories happened and will happen again without reference to time, makes Gilead eternal.  

 

WARY READER

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I’ve read no Dostoyevsky. I tried something short: The Gambler. It is like reading of characters who are mentally ill. I’ll try another of Dostoyevsky’s stories, but I’ll enlarge this lesson.

The gambler is in love with Maria Philippovna. She knows it, but there are difficulties. He’s not suitable for her, and it’s easy to read why, from his own mouth. He says to her:

“It makes no difference to me…Do you know something else? It is dangerous for you to walk alone with me: many times I have felt an irresistible longing to beat you with my fists, disfigure you, strangle you. And do you think it won’t come to that? You will drive me crazy. I’m not likely to shrink from the scandal, am I? Or your anger? What’s your anger to me? My love is hopeless, and I know that afterwards I should love you a thousand times more. If I ever kill you, you know, I shall have to kill myself as well; well, I shall try for as long as possible not to kill myself, so as to savour the unbearable pain of being without you. Do you know an incredible thing? Everyday I love you more, and that’s almost impossible, you know. After that, how can I help being a fatalist? You remember, on the Schlangenberg the day before yesterday, I whispered to you when you provoked me, ‘Say the word and I will leap into the abyss!’ If you had said a word, I would have jumped. You do believe, don’t you, that I would have jumped?”

“What silly talk!” she cried.

APPARENTLY, being demonstrative and vocal is the Russian way of passion, although that passion is not present in Tolstoy or in Pasternak. It seems doubly impossible that any sensible woman would tolerate this creep and his crap. Are readers expected to believe this is Russian culture, played out in Germany? Is the manner of a nation of chess players – foresee, plan and plot with all subtlety possible and MOVE displayed in this passage or in this story? Dostoyevsky’s message, I love you because I want to smash in your face, is beyond the pale. Note for Dostoyevsky’s male, it is mere “scandal.” Any person who does not read beyond this paragraph is justifiably excused.

“What silly talk!” is the stupidest comment a woman can utter. Trying to understand such a man is foolhardy. Trying to reason with him reveals too many motherly tendencies (and probably too many Psychology courses in college). Hugging and comforting him demonstrates delusion. 

The best reaction is be an American: Disengage (not part of Dostoyevsky’s story). If he offers to jump into the abyss, encourage him. Don’t see him again. Tell him not to bother you. Change the locks on your doors. Be alert. Get a restraining order. And get a gun and learn to use it: If the situation arises, you can shoot off his pecker.