Huckleberry Finn

edited July 18 in Books
Who's read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? I just finished it for my English Comp II class this past Sunday night. I'm curious what you all think, either about the novel or about the never-ending critical analyses there of.
Originally e-mailed by John R. Filleau III
Prof. Price,

I just finished the novel, and I can not wait until tomorrow at class to tell you how I feel. I need to let it out now.

The last chapters are probably the most frustrating groupings of words that I have ever had the misfortune of reading. Finishing this novel was like watching a Nicholas Cage movie all the way through: it is painful. I think I should be proud for accomplishing such a Herculean feat, but all I'm left with is this sickly vomit-taste in my brain. That being said, I think Mark Twain is brilliant. He knew what he was writing when he wrote this steaming pile of slop. He was performing the Royal Nonesuch on everybody who reads this. A modern example would be the movie The RIng. I know I have seen evil, and I feel pain for it, but I know the only thing left for me to do is to recommend it to all my friends. Continuing on with the parallel, just like in the novel, there is a third performance of Twain's real world Royal Nonesuch. That performance is every wall-of-text literary analysis that has ever been written about this book.

"We'll pay back Twain for making fools of us," is the battle cry of every English scholar who was fooled into watching either of the first two performances of this Nonesuch. And so they write critical analysis of the work. They deconstruct it. They find the allegories and the metaphors, and all the while they argue over the ending. They don't get that they are making fools of themselves for the third night in a row. Just like the Duke and the Dauphin, Twain has run off. He's gone. He's sitting in Hell, sipping on a piña colada, LAUGHING at us. Twain's Huck Finn is not a critical analysis of slavery in the South. It is not a critical analysis of anything. It is not a satire. It is not an adventure. This novel, at its beating-heart core, is the unholy tool of a psychopathic author who had only the utmost contempt for humanity. Huck Finn is Mark Twain's Lance of Longinus, and he used it for its purpose: he pierced the side of human rationality to prove that it was dead.

I'll see you at class tomorrow.

-John R. Filleau III
«13

Comments

  • edited July 2008
    You really didn't like that book huh? Maybe I should read it.
  • edited July 2008
    I vaguely remember Mark Twain saying that there was absolutely no symbolism or hidden meanings in one of his books and that anybody that looked for them was wasting their time and making things up. But I have no idea which story it was.
  • edited July 2008
    Amoeba Boy wrote: »
    I vaguely remember Mark Twain saying that there was absolutely no symbolism or hidden meanings in one of his books and that anybody that looked for them was wasting their time and making things up.
    Yes, but what was he really saying when he wrote that?
  • edited July 2008
    Well, I have to say that I have never taken a class in later American literature, so I haven't read any Twain save "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court". And it was a long time ago... I think maybe in the beginning of high school, so I wonder what I'd think of it now...
  • edited July 2008
    American literature is nothing more than a vain, low quality recreation of true English literature.
  • edited July 2008
    I read Huck Finn in high school. I forget what happened in it. I think there was a raft, a steamboat, and some guns.
  • edited July 2008
    Night Lord wrote: »
    American literature is nothing more than a vain, low quality recreation of true English literature.

    A Song of Ice and Fire.

    But other than that, yes, you're quite right.
  • edited July 2008
    Do they compare to Narnia and Lord of the Rings? Who knows, I haven't read them (The ice and fire ones). If I were more elitist I would say they didn't with no evidence to the contrary.
  • edited July 2008
    add House of Leaves.

    and Night Lord - watching the Harry Potter movies doesn't count as literature, nice try though.
  • edited July 2008
    Doing English Literature does though!
  • edited July 2008
    Well, that depends... Narnia and Lord of the Rings are more about ideas, and the characters are generally archetypes on an archetypal quest.

    Ice and Fire does surpass those series in scope, I would say, but is far from archetypal.

    The story contained within is told from the point of view of a number of characters, alternating with each chapter. There are about 10 PoV characters per book, some recurring in later books. The characters are also more realistic, as they are not really good or evil, and aren't necessarily bound by some great destiny or quest. They play, for the most part, large parts in the political movement of the nation/world they live in, and because the events in it are so huge, you get a number of different views of the same events as well as more personal happenings.

    Also, no character is safe. George R. R. Martin kills whom the storyline deems necessary, no matter how major the character.

    Oh, and it's really gritty... it was based very loosely on the War of the Roses, but with a touch of fantasy, and takes a cue from what life was like for the common folk back then... rape, murder, starvation, all that.

    They're fascinating, I got Ryan to read them as well, and though he didn't like the latest installment as much as I did, I am very much awaiting the next volume. The first book is called "A Game of Thrones" if you're interested.

    And if we're talking books on par with Lord of the Rings and especially Chronicles of Narnia... His Dark Materials, bitches. Freakin' awesome. The atheist refutation to Narnia. It has a very subtle, but central, message that I would judge is based in humanism, but also tells an extremely original, imaginative story. Golden Compass is your first stop.
  • edited July 2008
    His Dark Materials, bitches. Freakin' awesome. The atheist refutation to Narnia. It has a very subtle, but central, message that I would judge is based in humanism, but also tells an extremely original, imaginative story.

    Okay, I'm intrigued. I'll have to check that out.
  • edited July 2008
    They're technically children's literature, too, so they should be pretty quick reads.

    Unlike Ice and Fire, which is usually about 1000 to 1300 pages per book.
  • edited July 2008
    I have read his dark materials, and I have to say they are some of the best books I have read.
  • edited July 2008
    They're fascinating, I got Ryan to read them as well, and though he didn't like the latest installment as much as I did, I am very much awaiting the next volume. The first book is called "A Game of Thrones" if you're interested.

    I've already expressed my opinions before, but I didn't like Feast for Crows as much because it seemed to sidestep too far away from everything else that was going on in the story. He brought in almost a whole new cast of characters, most of which I had little emotional attachment to. And I know it's a minor thing, but his retitling of different characters at each new chapter title just made it more frustrating for me, because I didn't like having to keep trying to figure out whom he was talking about.

    And, of course, there was no Tyrion.

    As for Huckleberry Finn, I think I read it in middle school. I remember it was a big deal, because the teachers had to give a big disclaimer for the book's usage of the word nigger. The teachers had to make it very clear that they didn't approve of the word, we couldn't say it, etc. I think that's where I learned it, actually. As for the story, no, I remember nothing of it.
  • edited July 2008
    Well, I don't know if I responded to you... but anyway, the reason that he added new characters and ignored some characters was because he had to for size reasons. The fourth book was just getting to be way too big... like 1800 pages or something, so they made him split it up.

    He decided that instead of splitting it up chronologically, he would split it up roughly by geographic region of the PoV characters. He only did people in the south part of Westeros and the Iron Islands, next book he'll do all the others... Tyrion and a certain fellow on The Wall, two of my favorites, among others (we probably shouldn't mention names, as it could spoil who lives and who dies).
  • edited July 2008
    Aww... now I want to reread them. Maybe I'll pick up the paperbacks in August.
  • edited July 2008
    I'm check those out too. Also, His Dark Materials isn't exactly what I would call a trilogy of childrens books, but they're damn good. They made a movie of The Golden Compass that they of course completely ruined.
  • edited July 2008
    Serephel wrote: »
    As for Huckleberry Finn, I think I read it in middle school. I remember it was a big deal, because the teachers had to give a big disclaimer for the book's usage of the word nigger. The teachers had to make it very clear that they didn't approve of the word, we couldn't say it, etc. I think that's where I learned it, actually. As for the story, no, I remember nothing of it.
    I learned that word from all the black kids on my bus that used it to refer to each other in every single sentence.
  • edited July 2008
    hlavco wrote: »
    I learned that word from all the black kids on my bus that used it to refer to each other in every single sentence.

    If I hadn't know about it before, (Living in Boston does that), I probably would have heard it the same way except from all the Mexican kids around town. And, not to be racist or anything, they try to be black harder than some white people do.
  • edited July 2008
    America is too oversensitive to racism. Most other countries in the world don't make that big a deal about it. I can't remember if we talked about it here, but does anyone remember the White PSP advertisements in Europe that pissed off America? Americans were the only ones who got pissed off. All it was was a white women standing over a black woman, with some subtitle at the bottom about how White's coming.
  • edited July 2008
    Yeah, I do remember that. It never even was displayed in America, seriously.

    Some people just hold a generations-long grudge and project it onto the rest of the world.
  • edited July 2008
    Fun times?
  • edited July 2008
    I hate white people.
  • edited July 2008
    I hate stupid people... that's it.
  • edited July 2008
    I hate people people.

    Back to books, have any of you read or heard of the twilight series? It is possibly the best book you can read to get girls to talk to you.
  • edited July 2008
    That's cool, Queen, it's just that I disagree. Whenever I see a girl reading a book, I see a man who isn't having his dinner cooked.

    Racist against white people, check. Sexist against women, check.
  • edited July 2008
    geoko wrote: »
    add House of Leaves.

    THIS.¹

    ¹By 'this' I mean read this book. It is awesome. Like, so awesome that your brain can't comprehend it.
  • edited July 2008
    It's true, that book killed my brain several times. Geoff's copy sits in a pile of my books, silently mocking me. I got to a chapter containing a window with a separate stream of consciousness moving backwards through the pages as I read forward, and I didn't know how to cope!

    Also, the book lies to you as often as possible, and yet it becomes the only source of truth in your life as you read it.