I'm reckoning there are so many paths here that they could wind you up when 'temptin to pitch this river tale. What I seed ajumpin out of it all is the black and white truth of lies. Dat Huck, he can make what's not there happen by inventin. Dat old Jim he only take to straight talkin. Dat Tom, he sees things that just aint there and gets mazed; but dat river is time.

I kept quiet with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, I reckon. I was floating along, of curse, four or five mile an hour; but you don't ever think of that. No, you feel like you are laying dead still on the water; and, if a little glimpse of a snag slips by, you don't think to yourself how fast you're going, but you catch your breath and think, my! how that snag's tearing along. If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in the fog that way, by yourself, in the night, you try it once - you'll see.

( )

In the words of one of my students, "Sometimes I forget that Huck isn't real." ( )

I've read a number of Twain's other works, but never got around to this one because what I knew of the characters of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn told me they were the obnoxious sort that would rub me the wrong way. Well, this book was chosen for a book club read for February 2024. Time to read it and check it off the list.

Twain is excellent at creating voice. The book is powerful in that way--you get a sense of how people talked and acted, in a very immersive form. As I suspected, though, Huck Finn irritated me from the start. He does everything in the most difficult way possible. Situations drag out endlessly because people don't engage in the simplest of discussions. It is exasperating. At the end, Huck loses agency in a major way and Tom Sawyer maneuvers himself to dominate the narrative.

On a technical level, my copy was challenging to read, as the library bestowed upon me a late 1960s pocket-sized paperback that seemed to be held together by tenuous glue and prayers. The text was tiny, and that meant that the often-large dialogue paragraphs were hard for me to read. It made it easy to start skimming.

Those negatives said, it's a classic for good reasons.

There is tremendous power in that this book, published in the 1880s, represents a true friendship between a young white boy and a black man. Huck evolves through the course of the book, too. His love for Jim shows through his actions. There's also power in the language that Twain uses. I'd known for ages about the controversy over the use of the n-word in the book, but I had no idea how often it was used. It's... a lot. That noted, it also felt like Twain was calling upon the lingo of the period. That derogatory word has a unique, dehumanizing meaning. If someone tried to replace it using a word like "Black," (as has been proposed) the replacement wouldn't work. The words don't carry the same function.

We should learn from what our ancestors did, and strive to do better. Be kinder. Acknowledge other people as human. Share a raft, like Huck and Jim did, and learn from the experience.

That's why a book like this, which I honestly didn't enjoy that much, is still a worthwhile read and should not be banned. ( )

Just reread. Loved every bit until they ran into the duke and the king. Then it felt like a bit of a caper. Loved the river and rafting descriptions again though. First half is 4.5 stars maybe. ( )

What's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”