Review—The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Nov 5th, 2007 by Nut
How I got here: A great article by George Saunders in his latest book, The Braindead Megaphone, which I reviewed here.
This is one of those books that everyone has read or recognizes they should read. A classic. Well, this was one of the ones I just never read. Sometimes you just need something to remind you or give you a push to get you started and Saunders’s book did just that.
I wrote out a whole, long, drawn-out review of this book and then deleted it. It just sounded too hollow.
What I like about the book: The way Twain teaches you to read the characters’ language. Just by arranging letters in certain ways you can actually hear what Jim and Huck and Tom all sound like. Doing dialects is tough and risky, but he does it very well here. I like the philosophical nuggets that Huck drops every now and then amongst all these crazy adventures he is on. Even though he “ain’t learned,” Huck is no dummy and I really relate to him when he says stuff like “[A person's conscience] takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same.”
What I don’t like about it: There’s a lot of unnecessary chatter. Tom Sawyer loves it and I guess it serves a purpose in the book, but I don’t like it. It’s a waste of time. And yes, Saunders is right, the end is kind of a cop out. It sucks but he had to end it somehow.
Favorite Line: THE END—I like it when a book ends this way, it’s classic.
Coming up next: The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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