I read this after reading James (Percival Everett's tale of the adventure as told by Jim the slave). Twain's story is good, a classic, but is very dated where Everett's version feels fresh. I did enjoy it until Tom Sawyer made his appearance at the end. I found Sawyer's hold over Huck frustrating and really slowed down the story, much less Jim's imprisonment. ( )

Huckleberry Finn

I've been eager to read Percival Everett's James, but since it's been decades since I read Huckleberry Finn, I knew I'd need a refresher to catch all the references in the newer book. Some takeaways:

- I was truly shocked by the frequency of what's become our society's Least Utterable Word--and I was surprised by my shock. The word was considered eminently utterable (although not without self-consciousness and a certain amount of care or daring) by white people well into my young adulthood. It appeared promninently on Patti Smith's best-selling album, in a story on racism in rock by Lester Bangs, and of course in 1994's biggest movie Pulp Fiction. It's a measure of how much things have changed that reading it in print now felt like a blow.

- Once you get over that, you have to deal with the portrayal of Jim. Jim is, as everybody knows, the moral center of the book. (Huck has a conscience, but it's still in formation. Tom Sawyer, whose appearances in this book annoy me, appears to have little or none.) Jim is also portrayed as ludicrously superstitious and, although high in common sense, of generally low intelligence. It's disturbing to see how often Jim's superstition and inability to grasp various concepts is played for laughs, and it undercuts his decency and heroism, which far exceeds that of any other character.

- Twain uses phonetic spelling to try to render the various accents and dialects of characters of differing backgrounds and regions. It's been a few generations since this was often done in literature, so it demands some patience and trust on the part of the reader. One reason the practice fell away is because dialectical rendering seemed to some readers to be a mockery of the character, a portrayal of their speech as "incorrect." I read one reference to Jim's speech as "minstrel dialect." I don't think this was Twain's intention at all. To me, the offensiveness in minstrel portrayals is in the exaggerated, childlike gestures and expressions on the actors' parts: the wide eyes, the exaggerations of surprise and alarm in the tone of speech. No pronunciation is inherently more right or more wrong, so an accurate rendering of pronunciation can't in itself be considered a mockery.

Twain does this for almost all of the characters, but most of all for Jim, whose speech is so far from what was considered the standard that, when rendered phonetically, it looks almost like a foreign language. But although modern authors are well advised to avoid writing dialect phonetically, I actually think Twain did a good job of it. In the Paramount series about the Oregon Trail, 1883, the actor LaMonica Garrett gave a restrained and dignified performance as Thomas, a former Union Army sergeant once enslaved. He spoke in a low, growly monotone, not the exaggerated tones of a minstrel, and if you had to render his pronunciation using standard English letters, it would come out a lot like Jim's.

So: Issues of language, dialect, and a problematic portrayal of one of its two major characters aside, how was the book? Brilliant in parts (the episode of the feuding families; Huck's incisive stray observations; vivid portrayals of the Mississippi). But oddly paced: it took several chapters to get started, was exciting for several more, and then settled for way too long (nearly half the book!) with the Duke and the Dauphin, contemptible characters not worth the investment. And poorly ended: as some critics have noted, the book might better have wrapped up at or not long after the point where the Duke and Dauphin turn Jim in as a runaway slave. The episodes after that, with Huck (now rejoined with the awful Tom) living at Tom's Aunt Sally's house, have no adventure or irony to them, and only involve Tom drawing out a rather stupid scheme to free Jim so that he can have the pleasure of a fantasy adventure while Jim rots in a locked hut. As Huck might say, I cain't hardly stand it.

I recommend a reread to those, like me, about to tackle Everett's James. Even if it's not strictly necessary, it can't help but shed useful light on what Everett is trying to do. ( )

Recently re-read this book of my childhood and was not disappointed. ( )

I just could not seem to get into this book and be interested. I don't typically like books where I have to almost say the words out loud in order to understand the sounds as opposed to read the word (it's why I tend to not like sci-fi. I don't like learning a whole new language/world in order to read a book). ( )

I quit this book. ( )