Product Description

Called "the veriest trash" by a member of the Concord, Massachusetts Library Board that banned the novel when it was first published, Huckleberry Finn has come to be viewed, as H.L. Mencken put it, as "one of the great masterpieces of the world." Ernest Hemingway wrote that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn....There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." A daringly ironic attack on racism American-style, Twain's story of what he once called a "sound heart" triumphing over a "deformed conscience" is poignant, powerful, and fresh. It is no wonder that this extraordinary book continues to captivate readers around the world. This handsome Oxford World's Classic edition uses the reliable 1885 text and includes in-depth, up-to-date editorial apparatus.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #140175 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780199536559
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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About the Author
Emory Elliott is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside.

Customer Reviews

indeed, a classic--and never boring
Maybe this book should not, as one reviewer noted, be assigned in high school. But then maybe no books should be assigned to people who are quicker to judge than to understand. Stupid, boring, difficult...hardly.

Well--of course it's difficult (like everything that's good), for some good reasons. First of all, it's an illiterate white boy from the deep South--of course he speaks dialect (which is not the same as "he cain't spell"). Second, it's tough subject matter Twain tackles. What would you do in this situation? The right thing, which is what you've been told to do--turn Jim in? Or should you follow your heart, as Huck finally does, thinking it'll send him straight to hell? What would Jesus do?

I find this book a rollercoaster ride, one adventure after another. Like many other readers, I am disturbed by the last couple of chapters, but given how Huck is under the influence of Tom Sawyer, it's not unintelligible.

However, I have a bone to pick with this particular edition, by the Oxford UP. The introduction by Emory Elliot is less than satifying. For instance, he claims Twain was highly original in making this illiterate character the narrator of his novel, when of course there was a plethora of for instance slave narratives, often told by semi-literate narrators. He goes on to state that Twain was the first American author to explore "divorce, social strife, and violence"--seemingly forgetting all about, for instance, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," written well before "Huck," where all these issues are discussed.

That said, I am happy to see that this edition features as an appendix the infamous "Raftmen's Passage," essential to the plot but excised by Twain (really, by his editor), and this restores the "original" structure of the novel, making the turn downstream, down South, acceptable. Also, the explanatory notes are quite good. Finally, this OUP edition is worth buying for the cover alone, which has a detail from a gorgeous Homer-painting.

Missing pages
The original writing was wonderful and Twain, of course, deserves 5 stars. However the edition I received, which was printed by Oxford World Classics, was missing pages 123-154. Luckily, I could go on line and actually read those pages (chapters 21 through 25) but that did not make up for the hole in the book that is now part of my library. Very disappointing! This is a classic I had hoped to pass on to the younger members of my family.
I rated this edition 2 stars (rather than 1 star) because it did include Twain's "The Raftsmen's Passage" in an appendix as a bonus.

Neither fish (a young adult romp) nor fowl (a coherent serious literary achievement) but entertaining and thought-provoking
Like many people growing up in the US, I read THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN as an obligatory assignment at school. No one likes obligatory reading, and it was like water off a duck's back. Regretting that I remembered nothing of the novel, I recently re-read it, and I found it entertaining reading, and also much more for a grown-up audience than I expected. Of course the book was only started as a sequel to Twain's novel for boys THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER before being turned towards much more serious themes, such as child abuse and the conflicts in antebellum southern society. But even much of the novel's humour is intended for older readers, requiring some knowledge of European history and of Shakespeare.

The book's status as one of the Great American Novels is curious when it paints so bleak a picture of America. Any signs of refined culture among these inhabitants of the Mississippi comes not even for the East Coast but from Europe. For all of Twain's love of the land--indeed, the Mississippi River is itself a character--he was clearly a cosmopolitan figure by this point. Or perhaps the praise of America is subtle, as it is a portrait of a land free of aristocracy (the characters who call themselves the "king" and "duke" are scoundrels), and the novel is written in the honest vernacular of country people.

The novel cannot in any way be considered a perfect work of literature when it is an arc that soars towards quality only in the middle. The opening pages are still in the realm of children's literature, while the final section reads as a tiresome parody with far too much serendipity to be believable. For that reason I've rated it four stars.