Ranks 31st on The Fictional
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"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."
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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characters.
- 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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