At 9:46 AM -0600 12/31/02, Carrol Cox wrote:
I'd love to know what Fiedler said. _Love and Death in the American Novel_ was the first book of literary criticism that I read in English (not in translation!), so I'm rather fond of it.> At 7:36 PM -0500 12/29/02, Max B. Sawicky wrote:>Leslie Fiedler's sexual take ("come back to the raft, Huck honey").Leslie Fiedler's take has yet to be commodified in Hannibal.Incidentally, Fiedler spoke at a departmental dinner a decade or so ago, and the only thing I remember about the talk is that he discussed Huck Finn and did _not_ mention, either to affirm or to qualify or to retract, the thesis of "Come back to the raft." He did discuss various features of the book which could (he thought) be considered racist -- but I don't remember any of that either!
At 9:46 AM -0600 12/31/02, Carrol Cox wrote:
I think that Twain has Tom follow a different "book": an eighty-four page pamphlet published in 1835 by Virgil A. Stewart, _A History of the Detection, Conviction, Life and Designs of John A. Murel, the Great Western Land Pirate_, legends about John A. Murrell (Stewart misspelled his name, and so did Twain when he directly referred to him [not in _Huck Finn_ but _Life on the Mississippi_, _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_, and _Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy_]) that developed from the pamphlet, and tragic consequences that in part resulted from the legends. Cf. James Lal Penick, Jr., _The Great Western Land Pirate: John A. Murrell in Legend and History_, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981 (two reviews at <http://www.jstor.org/view/00218723/di952408/95p0409j/0> & <http://www.jstor.org/view/00028762/di951427/95p0162f/0>).I find some of the defenses of the last third of the book posted here persuasive -- but not decisive. It is always easy to defend anything almost with the catchword "irony." And while it's true that Tom "stands for" respectable society, and it is directly Tom (not Huck or Twain), these are somewhat abstract points, and there is no direct voice in the book even implying that there is something wrong, deeply wrong, about making a black man an object for play of several whites. Tom is following "The Book" (and I assume that Twain and at least some readers will think "The Bible"), and that is made as ridiculous as Tom makes Jim. But I still can't imagine the same narrative beting presented had the captive been (say) a Confederate Officer in a Union prison.
I don't know if any literary critic has picked up this angle and developed it. If no one has, maybe I should write an article about it. I claim copyright to the idea here and now. ;->
At 9:46 AM -0600 12/31/02, Carrol Cox wrote:
Even aside from the ideological problem that we've discussed, there does remain an aesthetic problem. Twain scholars have discussed the history of the book's composition: Twain worked on it intermittently over eight years. Twain scholars say that Twain clearly had a different ending in his mind, though the one discarded probably isn't any better, politically or aesthetically, than the one he actually settled for. Twain originally thought of ending the novel with a trial scene: Tom saves Jim from becoming convicted for Huck's murder. It's a device that Twain later uses for another unfinished sequel to _Huck Finn_: _Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy_.Besides. Twain is one of the greatest prose stylists in the English language -- and the first 2/3rds or so of Huck Finn would be Exhibit A. The style loses density in the final chapters.
--
Yoshie
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