Twain's Reward for His Longtime Followers

Young New York lawyer and fingerprint collector David Wilson comes to the fictional Antebellum town of Dawson's Landing, Missouri, where his propensity for koan-like aphorisms is misunderstood as nonsense and confers him the nickname "Pudd'nhead." He is the reader's observer of two intertwined tales of mistaken identity: One of the slave woman Roxy, who switches her Black infant son Valet de Chambre "Chambers" with his half-brother born the same day, Tom Driscoll; the other of Luigi and Angelo Capello, a set of twin visitors who claim to be noblemen in their native Florence, Italy. The novel is written for [author:https://www.librarything.com/author/twainmark">Mark Twain's "Constant Reader," as Stephen King calls them, and there are allusions to his earlier work throughout. Among others, the courtroom climax is a nod to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876(; the "switched at birth" of two young men from different social strata is straight from The Prince and the Pauper (1881); Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) also has a slave's fear of being sold down the river as a major plot point; and like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), the novel juxtaposes European nobility with its American counterparts - in this case, the "First Families of Virginia" (FFVs). Even such travelogues as The Innocents Abroad (1869) and the observations and witticisms of his essays are referenced. It differs from his earlier novels, however, in that it is more tightly plotted. It has an ending which fully and in great detail ties up all threads and resolves all conflicts, while his more picaresque novels tend to end abruptly when he runs out of adventures to tell - Twain writes in the conclusion of Tom Sawyer he is stopping "where best he can" before Tom grows up into a man. So new readers may find the satire of The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson a bit obtuse, but those well-versed in Twain may more readily grasp the in-joke and enjoy it much more, and perhaps find a refreshing departure. ( )

One thing I like about Mark Twain is his theme of people being different than everything thinks they are. He explored that theme in Huckleberry Finn and The Prince and the Pauper, and also in Pudd'nhead Wilson. In PW, the title character is intelligent, but everyone thinks he's stupid (a pudd'nhead). Everyone thinks the foreign twins are wonderful, until they change and think the twins are villains. And everyone thinks they can identify a black person, until they can't.

I didn't like this book as well as some of Twain's others. It felt unfinished. The title character didn't get much airtime. It's hard to judge how effective the denouement with the fingerprinting would have been to a contemporary reader. It may have been a clever revelation, since using fingerprinting as evidence was brand new at the time. But to a modern reader, the outcome of Pudd'nhead's hobby of taking fingerprints is obvious from the beginning.

This book feels dated, where most of Twain's other works have stood the test of time. But it's still Twain. ( )

The court case at the end saved this story. I found this book to be very predictable with no characters that I could really latch on to, whether for good or evil. Everyone seemed to be a supporting character with no one stepping up to be a star until Pudd'nhead takes on that final case. It is a short story (139 pages) and an easy read. Entertaining, but far from exceptional. ( )

I use the history tag because the book teaches a lot of history, perhaps unwittingly, and it's a fascinating look at race, slavery, and perception. It reads like a forerunner of Faulkner. Although I gave it a 4 star rating for its shape, I enjoyed it as if it were a 5 star. ( )

Two babies are switched in their infancy. One is pure white blood and heir to an estate. The other is 1/16 black, and a slave, although he looks as white as any. The slave child's mother switches the infants, to guarantee that her own son is never "sold down the river" but will instead inherit an estate.
The character of the two boys becomes clear as they grow older, and the imposter child (now educated and dignified) is clearly the one lacking in empathy and moral integrity. When that young man commits a heinous murder, it is up to "Pudd'nhead Wilson," a local eccentric who has always wanted to be a lawyer, to find the murderer.
The upsetting aspect of this book was that Twain seems to be suggesting that Roxy (the 1/8 negro mother) and Tom (the 1/16 negro boy) were as awful as they were because of their black heritage. Far from being an indictment of the "one drop" rule - this story seems to encourage that idea. Roxy and Tom are the clear villains of the story, and they are both considered black, because they have trace degrees of "black blood" in them. The underlying theme of the book seemed racist to me, and therefore not something I would recommend. ( )