Huckleberry Finn (31)

Ranks 31st on The Fictional 100

"I didn't do him [Jim] no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way."

Illustration by E. W. Kemble, 1884, for first U.S. edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885. (Library of Congress)

The following books will introduce you to Huckleberry Finn, who said these words in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Though he remains deeply controversial, Huck stills stands as the most influential character in American literature.

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• Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Intro. by John Seelye). Penguin, 1995.
  • Seelye's fine introduction compares Huck with kindred figures in American literature, such as James Fenimore Cooper's Natty Bumppo (who ranks 94th on The Fictional 100) and Owen Wister's Virginian.
    
• Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Intros. by Toni Morrison and Shelley Fisher Fishkin). Oxford University Press, 1996.
  • Features insightful introductions by Toni Morrison, Nobel-prize winner and America's foremost novelist today, and by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, whose book, Was Huck Black? (see below), is a major contribution to Twain scholarship.
    
• Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Norton Critical Edition). Norton, 1980.
  • Another useful edition, with collected critical essays following Twain's text.
    
• Twain, Mark. Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Penguin, 1987.
  • Early adventures of Huck as trickster Tom's sidekick.
    
• Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African-American Voices. Oxford University Press, 1993.
  • Anyone interested in Huckleberry Finn, the roots of American literature, and the racial controversy surrounding the novel will want to read this book. Fishkin shows that Huck's vernacular speech was drawn from Twain's experience with an African-American child ("Sociable Jimmy"). Recognition of the African-American roots of America's most characteristic literary voices is at the heart of Fishkin's analysis, which is both skillful and provocative.
    
• Bloom, Harold (Ed.). Huck Finn (Major Literary Characters). Chelsea House, 1990.
  • Commentaries by Ernest Hemingway, Carl Van Doren, Lionel Trilling, Ralph Ellison, and others.
    
• Bloom, Harold (Ed.). Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Modern Critical Interpretations). Chelsea House, 1988.
  • Probably the best essay in this collection is by James M. Cox, "A Hard Book to Take," which faces up to the pain the book has caused, the issue of banning it, and the hard lessons it teaches.
    
• Inge, M. Thomas (Ed.). Huck Finn Among the Critics: A Centennial Selection. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1985.
  • Landmark critical responses by Andrew Lang, H. L. Mencken, V. S. Pritchett, Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, T. S. Eliot, Joseph Wood Krutch, James M. Cox (not the article mentioned above), and Lauriat Lane, Jr. explore the secrets of the novel's influence.
    
• Seelye, John. The True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970.
  • For those who complain about the novel's morally unsatisfying ending, Seelye offers a tongue-in-cheek revision. By implication, he suggests that a more uplifting ending would not necessarily have made a better book.
    
• Banks, Russell. Rule of the Bone. HarperCollins, 1995.
  • Chappie is a latter-day Huck Finn (with a good dose of Holden Caulfield) whose wanderings take him to Jamaica, along with I-man (his Jim), a Rastafarian who shares his journey through the wreckage of modern life.
    
• Arac, Jonathan. Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target: The Functions of Criticism in Our Time. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
  • While acknowledging the literary achievement of Huckleberry Finn, Arac cautions against the pitfalls of its "hypercanonization," which has sometimes led to sidestepping the very real offense the book can give. He does not support banning it, but rather advocates more well-rounded debate acknowledging its true political context, at the time of its writing and today. For example, Arac shows how Twain's book was elevated to the position of the national text, as Uncle Tom's Cabin came under increasing attack as mere "protest" literature. (See also Uncle Tom.)

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