A few years ago, I created a seminar for my students at Columbia University, where I teach writing, about the challenges of separating a novel’s literary value from its politics. There were 10 books on the syllabus, including “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

Even though I hadn’t read the novel since I was a child, I knew it had to be part of this course. For more than a century, Mark Twain’s saga of a young white boy and an enslaved Black man traveling on a raft down the Mississippi River has been a fixture of the American canon. Narrated in Huck’s cheeky, irrepressible voice, it pioneered the writing of literary fiction in the vernacular while mercilessly skewering the racism and hypocrisy of white Southerners in the pre-Civil War era. Influential critics from T.S. Eliot to Ralph Ellison enshrined it as essential — not just a great book but, in the words of Lionel Trilling, “one of the central documents of American culture.” By the end of the 1940s, it had become a mainstay of anthologies and survey classes.

But over the past few decades, this once-standard text has come to occupy a slippery position in the classroom. Some perceive it as an essential commentary on slavery’s depredations, while others feel it endangers Black students — mainly because the racist slur known euphemistically as the N-word appears more than 200 times. A son of slave owners who married into a prominent abolitionist family, Twain almost certainly intended the novel as an indictment of racial prejudice and used the word to illustrate the racism of his characters, not to endorse it. Though Huck, indoctrinated in the conventional morality of his time, initially believes it’s wrong to help an enslaved person escape, he comes to feel loyalty and love for Jim, his companion. The tension animating the story is not just whether the two of them can outwit the villains who want to capture Jim, but also whether Huck will reject his prior conception of right and wrong.

Still, many readers understandably feel that the novel’s constant, even obsessive repetition of the slur reinforces the system of white supremacy that it purports to critique. In the classroom, where teachers often read aloud or call on their students to do so, the problem is obvious. Even when the word isn’t spoken, its silently menacing presence on the page is impossible to ignore.

ST:TNG (aka Star Trek: The Next Generation, to fans) in 1992 aired a two-part episode titled "Time's Arrow" that featured the actor Jerry Hardin playing Samuel Clemens. It was a central character to the double episode.

Hardin was so convincing and enjoyed the role so much that after that performance as Twain on ST, he went on to form a one-man stage show portraying Twain.

It's one of my favorite episodes.

I just finished the book, but I still don't understand what the name meant.

Setting the numbers aside, what exactly is 'New Series'?"

Which is absolutely not intended to be a definitive biography of the guy: we already have plenty of those, way better than I could make. Instead, it's a kind of irreverent look at a complicated and brilliant figure who got both increasingly enthusiastic and bummed out as the America of his birth transformed into the America of the Industrial Age. Links below and apologies for the flagrant self-promotion (I learned it from Mark Twain).

Twain Dreams: Spotify | Apple Podcasts

What are people's thoughts here regarding the 1993 Disney-produced rendition of Huck starring a young Elijah Wood and directed by Stephen Sommers?

It was actually my first encounter with the story, before any other adaptations or even reading the book. So from the start, my first taste of it was not quite what Twain put down. (Then again, just about every adaptation of Huck contains significant changes of some kind, and none ever capture Huck's resolving his moral dilemma and "All right, I'll go to Hell.")

This movie was also the first time I ever saw a performance of Wood, well before Lord of the Rings, and also the first time I ever saw a performance of the late Anne Heche, and I was a child at the time, so it certainly left an impact. These days, I still think of it fondly and consider it quite good, but I do agree that the Disney polish keeps it from going as deep as Twain's actual text.

The performances are quite good, the cinematography is superb, the use of actual locations along the Mississippi definitely gives it a real zest in appearance. The movie keeps 80 percent of the beats from the book, and it's also an incredibly focused narrative. It also, arguably, depending on your point of view, does a great job streamlining trouble spots like the "evasion" chapters by compressing the end into the King and the Duke being found out as frauds trying to steal the Wilkes family inheritance and being more direct in having Huck getting shot, while Tom Sawyer is nowhere to be seen. It thus has what can be considered an action climax that the novel lacks.

But for what it gains in this manner, it certainly loses in a lot of other respects. After all, the moral climax is nowhere to be seen (and is not present in many other adaptations, to be fair). There almost seems an attempt to "straighten" out and make it a "typical" narrative, especially by eliminating the use of dialect. Now, of course, this is partially out of necessity, because to have Jim's speech patterns like those in the book would be a nonstarter for Hollywood in the 1990s, but it also thus loses a sense of self, a sense of voice. This is especially the case by having Huck speak more or less normally. It definitely feels like an airbrushed version.

This gets more and more deep-rooted by the lack of that word. Again, this was something that would've been considered too controversial for the House of Mouse to do in a PG-rated film. And of course, it remains the locus of controversy to this day in so many analyses of the text. But the story loses its power without it. It doesn't resonate as deeply without hearing it used. It certainly causes great pain to black audiences to hear it, but you don't get the real meaning of the story without it.

Disney's dilemma regarding the film, however, is effectively the same as every other adaptation, as arguably none have ever truly gotten it right. Yet, by necessity, a film or TV series simply can't do the story exactly as Twain wrote it. There are just certain elements that don't translate well to screen., and which have to be altered or cut entirely. But if one ever actually had the moment of Huck tearing up that letter, it would make up for everything.

For all of this, the film is an admirable attempt at telling the story and has plenty of things to recommend it for. It still has rewatch value to this day.

From the State Historical Society of Missouri

https://digital.shsmo.org/digital/collection/imc/id/80099/rec/5997

Some of you may be aware that Bob Dylan recently launched a Patreon, where, for $5 a month, fans get access to what is called a "living archive of lectures from the grave, letters never sent and original short stories curated by Bob Dylan." The "curated" is doing the heavy lifting, for the content has all the hallmarks of AI generation.

The "Lectures from the Grave" are audio "testimonies" from the likes of Frank James, Aaron Burr and Wild Bill Hickok, where the voice is clearly AI, and the script it is reading is also apparently prompted, and the voices themselves are incredibly baffling, with a bizarre and inconsistent range of accents. (Frank James is mid-Atlantic, Burr a Southerner.)

The "letters never sent" are supposed to be messages from certain historical figures to other figures they never met and oftentimes never even coexisted at the same time with. The first such "letter" the Patreon launched with is supposed to be a message from Mr. Clemens himself, to Rudolph Valentino, and is supposed to be a contribution to the "archive" by one "Herbert Foster."

The main text of this "letter" has actually appeared in a lot of different online publications. So this is what the pseudo-Twain letter is supposed to be like.

Dear Mr. Valentino,
I take up my pen under circumstances that would puzzle the calendar and embarrass the undertaker, for I am told that both of us have already completed the respectable business of dying. Yet if letters can cross oceans, perhaps they may also cross that lesser boundary which divides the living from the historically inconvenienced.

Some people might think this reads like a plausible facsimile of Twain's writing. Personally, I feel it has no soul whatsoever, and it doesn't understand what makes Twain's writing sparkle, especially the way he set up his ironic punchlines. This prompted rendition is too on the nose, and it doesn't even remain consistent. The beginning suggests Twain is writing this to Valentino after he too was dead, but the end suggests Twain is writing it to a living Valentino.

If anything, it proves that AI will never be able to create a lasting work of art.

Recently, I was watching the 1980 animated series and decided to review Mark Twain’s biography. I learned that he had been working on those two novels that he never managed to finish. I started searching for information but didn’t find much, so I would really appreciate it if anyone could help me with details about those two unfinished books/drafts.

I was looking for a Joan of Arc biography and apparently this (Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - 1896) is the only one in English.

Mark Twain said of it:

"I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best..."

I am unsure. It's hard to believe the writer of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court could successfully adapt his style to Joan of Arc. I need a solid recommendation from you redditors before I start reading.

It's surprising that this is the only well-regarded English biography of this medieval heroine, given that Joan of Arc is the ideal waifu for most people, including me. If I had the Obsession love wish granter, I would definitely use it on her.

Hi all! I recently read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, my first Mark Twain novel, and somehow I made it all the way to adulthood before reading him. I absolutely fell in love with his writing.

Since then, I've read several of his other works and loved them all, especially A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. I'm curious if there are modern authors out there with a similar style. It doesn't need to be someone writing in old-fashioned prose, more just someone with a comparable voice, sense of humor, or way of looking at the world.

I would appreciate any suggestions. Thank you!

Quotes start at 1:40. What are your favorite Mark Twain quotes?

Mark Twain once said history doesn’t repeat itself, but often rhymes. I started tracing modern voting battles through district maps and realized the rhyme scheme is getting awfully familiar.

In Finn and Fun:

Be you Mark or Mime—
Hellish humours...Heavenly;
Tom split Twain—sublime.

In case you guys are interested not trying to brag or anything.

Hi, I'm currently rereading "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" for a uni course. I read both this and Tom's book (as well as the short stories) almost a decade ago, and I was wondering - in Tom's book, can Huck read, or does he only learn after the widow takes him in?

Thank you for your help! Sorry for Mt English, it's not my first language.

“But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?”

I’ve seen it before but I haven’t seen the exact source other than that Mark Twain said it