Huck Finn

I love the Google search results

2008-11-13T11:33:00.000-08:00

I didn't realize how much the photo of Huck from the 2007 production of HUCK FINN looked like the classic drawing of Huck from the first edition (which was approved by Clemens himself) until I saw them together in Google search results. The photos from the 2007 show appear in the second page of search results for "Huck Finn" - not bad!

I plan to submit HUCK for this year's NYC Fringe Festival.

Our Huck is doing well

2008-08-13T18:04:00.000-07:00

Nick Fondulis, who will be reprising the role of Huck Finn in the upcoming reading on August 22 has been getting some nice notices for his current Fringe show The Boy in the Basement.

Backstage sez: Narrator Nick Fondulis knows just how to set the mood.

And NYTheatre.com sez: Nick Fondulis shows great range as the ghost writer, Catherine DuCheval. Off to the side, writing at a small table with a quill pen, he announces each scene as a chapter. Fondulis, with excellent timing and vocal variety, is alternately pensive, suggestive, energized, and physically passionate as he unfolds his plot.

Talk Entertainment says: "The high point of the show is the lingering kiss between Anna (the virgin) and Lance (the hunk) which seemingly goes on forever while the author describes it in every way possible. It is an aria – delivered to perfection by Nick Fondulis."

And he's all ours August 22.

Listen to Huckleberry Finn online

2008-08-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

Huckleberry Finn at Librivox

HUCK FINN reading

2008-07-27T04:25:00.000-07:00

HUCK FINN will have a staged reading at the Penny Templeton Acting Studio (home of Mergatroyd Productions' new reading space) Friday, August 22 7 - 10 PM. The Studio is at 261 West 35th Street Suite 304 New York, NY 10001.

Abolitionist Reel

2008-06-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

One aspect of producing that I really love is that it gives me a chance to do music for the shows. Since I don't have a degree in music, am not a professional musician, etc. etc. nobody would have given me a chance to do such a thing unless I was doing the producing. What I do have is Apple's Garageband, which allows you to create slick sounding music fairly easily.

I created this piece of music The Abolitionist Reel in the middle of the 2007 HUCK FINN rehearsals, and could only have done it with Garageband, since at the time it was Christmas, I had just moved, just started a new job, and was directing and producing the show, in a pretty hostile environment to boot. And I was sick.

It isn't Beethoven's 5th, but to me it's practically miraculous considering all the stress I was under at the time. I will post the other piece of music here, Yalla Gal soon.

click here to listen to a Quicktime version of Abolitionist Reel

The tune is meant to be played at the end of the play - Huck plays it on the banjo, which he has recently begun to learn how to play - thanks to the Duke and the King recruiting him for their Royal Nonesuch show. Then Jim is supposed to chime in with a harmonica. Then lights down, curtain call - the music gets fancy here with percussion and then piano and bass. The music eventually fades out.

I think what we'll do for the outdoor production is have live musicians play these tunes, and maybe incidental music throughout, the way the Pantaloons did for their 2007 Edinburgh Fringe production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

HUCK FINN reading

2008-06-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

We will be doing a reading of HUCK FINN in Manhattan in preparation for the outdoor performance - the public will be invited. Stayed tuned for more details.

This Time, Rumors of Demise May Be True

2008-06-03T01:06:00.000-07:00

This is such a cool house that Mark Twain built, in Hartford Connecticut. I visited it twice. It would be a shame if they closed it down.

But now the fanciful, three-story confection that was built by Mark Twain in 1874 at the height of his success may be forced to close because it is running out of money.

In a reversal of fortune that seems ripped from the pages of Twain’s classic “The Prince and the Pauper,” the nonprofit organization that has long run the 14,000-square-foot house as a museum told its trustees last month that it was “facing significant challenges” that could force it to shut down.

Though the staff had already been reduced to 17, from 49, the organization formally known as the Mark Twain House and Museum says it is having trouble meeting its payroll and paying suppliers. Unless salvation — in the face of a corporation, foundation, government group or other deep-pocketed benefactor — unexpectedly walks through the door, cash will run out in three to four weeks.

More at the NYTimes

Coming this summer....

2008-04-27T17:23:00.001-07:00

HUCK FINN in Central Park.

HUCK FINN's second production

2007-10-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

By the Steel City Theatre Company, directed by Cory Moosman.

An article about it in The Chieftain

HUCK FINN at the Metropolitan Playhouse

2007-01-08T10:04:00.000-08:00

At the Metropolitan Playhouse 220 East Fourth Street ~ New York, NY 10009

This Equity Showcase production if the world premiere of a new play by N.G. McClernan based on Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

This version of the story focuses tightly on Huck's dilemma - follow the law and be "respectable" - or risk eternal damnation and help Jim escape to freedom. Jim never forgets his goal is to free himself so that he can free his family.

Go to the HUCK FINN/Met production web page

View production photos here and here.

HUCK FINN's first production!

2006-11-19T21:26:00.000-08:00

HUCK FINN was accepted for the Metropolitan Playhouse's Twainathon in January.

More details here.

Mark Twain's study

2006-09-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

I went on a literary pilgrimage recently to Elmira New York to see the study in which Mark Twain wrote Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, among other works.

I videoed much of it, and I'll have that online hopefully soon. I have less blogging time since I started a full-time technical writing gig.

New logo

2006-09-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

this looks more like a period image, and less messy...

Twins of Genius

2006-09-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

When we were eight or nine, my friend Laura McGowan and I were big fans of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, or rather, some film adaptation that Laura saw and told me about. We liked to imagine ourselves as sisters of Tom (her) and Huck (me). We began our own novel based on that premise - Laura actually did most of the writing, while I was supposed to illustrate, although I do remember typing out the story at her house. Below is all that survives from that endeavor:

“Strawberry, Strawberry!”
“Yeh?”
“Hi!”
“Hi”
“Why are you wearing shoes?”
“My sister Made me.”
“Are you going to wear em?”
“Of course I ain’t!”

Now this is one of many conversations between these two girls.They are thesisters of the famous Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Tom sister Is Robin. Huck’s sister is Strawberry.

Strawberry got her name because her hair was red and the freckles made her look like a Strawberry.

Robin got her name because when she was born she looked like a baby robin.

Their not like other girls, back than.They didn’t like dolls, dresses, shoes, cooking, sewing, (some stuff was erased here.)

None of them have mothers. Tom and Robin lived with their aunt.

Huck and straw live with their older sister and her husband.

Tom and Robin live with their cousin Mary, and half brother Sid. Mary is alright, but is too starched. Sid is a person you don’t like just by looking at him.

Sid was also a fink.

Strawberry and Robin weren’t well liked by the girls. The boys didn’t mind them.

They have the whole Saturday off.

“Wheres Tom and Huck?” asked straw.

“Swimmin I guess.”

“That’s right lets go!”

They rand down to the lake. The found Huck and Tom spalshing in the water. They went behind a tree.

“Get their clothes.” ordered strawberry.

“not me”

“I thought of it!”

“Be Quiet they’ll hear us.”

“You get Tom’s and I’ll get Huck’s.”
“Alright.”

“Com’ on.”

They crawled along the ground, Between two bushes. Both of them took a set, then climbed the nearest tree.

They just made it, Huck came out of the water. Then suddenly!

“They got ‘em” Screamed Huck.

As Tom bout Out of the water…

“Who got what?”

“Straw and Robin got our clothes”

Meanwhile in a tree.

“Let’s get out of here.” Advised Robin.

After getting out of the tree, they tried to figuer out what to do.

“What do you want to Do?” asked Robin

“I don’t know.” answered Straw.

“I have a feeling we’re bein watched.”

“Thirs noone watching……

“SLASH”

Two buckets of water came from a tree. They sat on the ground soaken wet.

“Robin.” Called Strawberry.

“What?”

“We was being watched.”

“yep”

Than roar of lagher came from the tree.

HUCK and Tom were the ones laughing.

:”Pardon us.” said Tom.

“You must excuse us.” Added Tom.

They then ran off, leaving Robin and Strawberry standing wet.

“Robin, you want to go swimming?”

“Yeh, Strawberry!”

As they started to leave Straw saw Huck’s dirty feet.

“You want to go swimmin Huck.” Asked Straw.

Huck agreed and jumbed down from the tree, Tom followed.

They jumped in, clothes of course.

They used a large rock as a pirate shop.

“I’ll be the captain!” yelled Tom.

“I’ll be the first mate!” added Huck.

“Can I be a pirate?” asked Strawberry. Knowing what the answer would be.

“Of course you ain’t.” said Huck.

“You ain’t alled either, Robin.” Added Tom.

Strawberry jumped on Huck and Robin jumped Tom. Rolled around in the water. Fanilly Mary came along and told them to stop. All of them went home to eat supper.

Sunday theywent to churck. They hated Sunday school. That wasted two hours of freedom.

Sidney and Mary liked it. How That Robin and Tom couldn’t understand.

After churc services they went to church services. Tom had a girlfriend but he meet someone different this day. Across the asile. She wore a yellow dress that cold pick up every piece of dust if it was Straw or Robin wearing it. She shoes were shined, she wore yellow ribbons in her hair and a matching bonnet.

Strawberry turned around to where Robin was sitting.

“See that girl at the door in the yellow dress?” Straw asked Robin.

“Yeh?”

“That dress has got to be covering something ugly.”

The Sunday teacher stepped in the room. Her name is Miss Wood.

“Children we have a new pupil.”

The girl stood in front of the room.

“This is Rebecca Thatcher.” Continued Miss Wood.

Strawberry turned around to Robin.

“Rebecca?”

“I hear.”

Miss Wood went on.

“Rebecca sit in back of Robin Sawyer.”

Robin turned around it was too late the seat was empty.

“Robin stand up, please.”

Robin stood up and sat down. As Rebecca went by she noticed the patch on Robin’s dress, the tear was made from climbing a face. Robin thought she should try to get along with her and smiled as she passed. As Rebecca went by she said…

“I don’t associate with vulgarity like you.”

Strawberry turned around with with asking what she did. Robin said nothing, Though the whole hour Rebecca kept fixing her hair and brushing her dress.

On the way home Tom started talking about her. The way she talked, the lovely way she spoke, and the way she dressed.

“Robin, did she say any thing to you,” Mary asked politly.
Robin tossed her head.

“I don’t associate with vulgarity like you.” Than ran up to meet Strawberry.

“Hi, Strawberry!”

“Hi, Robin. Did you say anything to that new girl?”
“No. I sittin there and she said that to me.”

“I have a feelin she ain’t gonna like u s.”

Yeh, but Tom likes her.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

Clearly we loathed Becky Thatcher and all she represented.

When I read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I had no idea it was considered a work of genius, the great American novel, but rather thought of it as a kid's adventure story sequel to Tom Sawyer.

A funny story gone horribly wrong

2006-09-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

William Dean Howells was a friend of Mark Twain, and included a lengthy rememberance of him in his book Literary Friends. You can read the entire Twain section here.

In this section Howells recounts a literary dinner at which Twain spoke. He decided to tell a story that sounds to me like pure genius: "It was
the notion of three tramps, three deadbeats, visiting a California
mining-camp, and imposing themselves upon the innocent miners as
respectively Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver
Wendell Holmes."

But apparently Emerson, Longfellow and Holmes and their friends and family, didn't get the humor and it was an embarrassing failure.

I bet it was hysterical, and it's tragic that Twain didn't write it down.

I suppose the year was about 1879, but here the almanac is unimportant,
and I can only say that it was after Clemens had become a very valued contributor of the magazine, where he found himself to his own great explicit satisfaction. He had jubilantly accepted our invitation, and had promised a speech, which it appeared afterward he had prepared with unusual care and confidence. It was his custom always to think out his speeches, mentally wording them, and then memorizing them by a peculiar system of mnemonics which he had invented. On the dinner-table a certain succession of knife, spoon, salt-cellar, and butter-plate symbolized a train of ideas, and on the billiard-table a ball, a cue, and a piece of chalk served the same purpose. With a diagram of these printed on the brain he had full command of the phrases which his excogitation had attached to them, and which embodied the ideas in perfect form. He believed he had been particularly fortunate in his notion for the speech of that evening, and he had worked it out in joyous self-reliance. It was
the notion of three tramps, three deadbeats, visiting a California mining-camp, and imposing themselves upon the innocent miners as respectively Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell, Holmes. The humor of the conception must prosper or must fail according to the mood of the hearer, but Clemens felt sure of compelling this to sympathy, and he looked forward to an unparalleled triumph.

But there were two things that he had not taken into account. One was the species of religious veneration in which these men were held by those nearest them, a thing that I should not be able to realize to people remote from them in time and place. They were men of extraordinary dignity, of the thing called presence, for want of some clearer word, so that no one could well approach them in a personally light or trifling spirit. I do not suppose that anybody more truly valued them or more
piously loved them than Clemens himself, but the intoxication of his fancy carried him beyond the bounds of that regard, and emboldened him to the other thing which he had not taken into account-namely, the immense hazard of working his fancy out before their faces, and expecting them to enter into the delight of it. If neither Emerson, nor Longfellow, nor Holmes had been there, the scheme might possibly have carried, but even this is doubtful, for those who so devoutly honored them would have
overcome their horror with difficulty, and perhaps would not have overcome it at all.

The publisher, with a modesty very ungrateful to me, had abdicated his office of host, and I was the hapless president, fulfilling the abhorred function of calling people to their feet and making them speak. When I came to Clemens I introduced him with the cordial admiring I had for him as one of my greatest contributors and dearest friends. Here, I said, in sum, was a humorist who never left you hanging your head for having enjoyed his joke; and then the amazing mistake, the bewildering blunder, the cruel catastrophe was upon us. I believe that after the scope of the
burlesque made itself clear, there was no one there, including the burlesquer himself, who was not smitten with a desolating dismay. There fell a silence, weighing many tons to the square inch, which deepened from moment to moment, and was broken only by the hysterical and blood-curdling laughter of a single guest, whose name shall not be handed down to infamy. Nobody knew whether to look at the speaker or down at his plate. I chose my plate as the least affliction, and so I do not
know how Clemens looked, except when I stole a glance at him, and saw him standing solitary amid his appalled and appalling listeners, with his joke dead on his hands. From a first glance at the great three whom his jest had made its theme, I was aware of Longfellow sitting upright, and regarding the humorist with an air of pensive puzzle, of Holmes busily writing on his menu, with a well-feigned effect of preoccupation, and of Emerson, holding his elbows, and listening with a sort of Jovian oblivion of this nether world in that lapse of memory which saved him in those
later years from so much bother. Clemens must have dragged his joke to the climax and left it there, but I cannot say this from any sense of the fact. Of what happened afterward at the table where the immense, the wholly innocent, the truly unimagined affront was offered, I have no longer the least remembrance. I next remember being in a room of the hotel, where Clemens was not to sleep, but to toss in despair, and Charles Dudley Warner's saying, in the gloom, "Well, Mark, you're a funny fellow." It was as well as anything else he could have said, but Clemens
seemed unable to accept the tribute.

I stayed the night with him, and the next morning, after a haggard breakfast, we drove about and he made some purchases of bric-a-brac for his house in Hartford, with a soul as far away from bric-a-brac as ever the soul of man was. He went home by an early train, and he lost no time in writing back to the three divine personalities which he had so involuntarily seemed to flout. They all wrote back to him, making it as light for him as they could. I have heard that Emerson was a good deal mystified, and in his sublime forgetfulness asked, Who was this gentleman
who appeared to think he had offered him some sort of annoyance! But I am not sure that this is accurate. What I am sure of is that Longfellow, a few days after, in my study, stopped before a photograph of Clemens and said, "Ah, he is a wag!" and nothing more. Holmes told me, with deep emotion, such as a brother humorist might well feel, that he had not lost an instant in replying to Clemens's letter, and assuring him that there had not been the least offence, and entreating him never to think of the matter again. "He said that he was a fool, but he was God's fool,"
Holmes quoted from the letter, with a true sense of the pathos and the humor of the self-abasement.

To me Clemens wrote a week later, "It doesn't get any better; it burns like fire." But now I understand that it was not shame that burnt, but rage for a blunder which he had so incredibly committed. That to have conceived of those men, the most dignified in our literature, our civilization, as impersonable by three hoboes, and then to have imagined that he could ask them personally to enjoy the monstrous travesty, was a break, he saw too late, for which there was no repair. Yet the time
came, and not so very long afterward, when some mention was made of the incident as a mistake, and he said, with all his fierceness, "But I don't admit that it was a mistake," and it was not so in the minds of all witnesses at second hand. The morning after the dreadful dinner there came a glowing note from Professor Child, who had read the newspaper report of it, praising Clemens's burlesque as the richest piece of humor in the world, and betraying no sense of incongruity in its perpetration in the presence of its victims. I think it must always have ground in
Clemens's soul, that he was the prey of circumstances, and that if he had some more favoring occasion he could retrieve his loss in it by giving the thing the right setting. Not more than two or three years ago, he came to try me as to trying it again at a meeting of newspaper men in Washington. I had to own my fears, while I alleged Child's note on the other hand, but in the end he did not try it with the newspaper men. I do not know whether he has ever printed it or not, but since the thing happened I have often wondered how much offence there really was in it. I
am not sure but the horror of the spectators read more indignation into the subjects of the hapless drolling than they felt. But it must have been difficult for them to bear it with equanimity. To be sure, they were not themselves mocked; the joke was, of course, beside them; nevertheless, their personality was trifled with, and I could only end by reflecting that if I had been in their place I should not have liked it myself. Clemens would have liked it himself, for he had the heart for
that sort of wild play, and he so loved a joke that even if it took the form of a liberty, and was yet a good joke, he would have loved it. But perhaps this burlesque was not a good joke.

Google gold

2006-09-06T01:11:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Shelley Fisher Fishkin (I love to say that name aloud), Googling her name brought me this fascinating tidbit from the NYTimes

Politely put, Mark Twain was not known for his skills as a dramatist. Despite one early commercial success and many subsequent attempts, most of Twain's output as a playwright is, as one scholar puts it, ''well worth burying.''

This fall, however, the University of California Press is publishing a three-act play it says is not only worthy of Twain's legacy as America's greatest humorist but that also has already been optioned by a Broadway producer.

The play, a comedy titled ''Is He Dead?,'' was unearthed by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, a professor of American studies and English at the University of Texas and a noted Twain scholar. Ms. Fishkin says she came across the script in October 2001 in the course of researching a book about Twain and race at the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, which holds the world's largest archive of Twain's papers.

She didn't expect much. ''I knew most of them were totally awful,'' Ms. Fishkin said of the Twain theatrical canon. ''But I felt I needed to become as familiar with them as I could, as bad as they were.''

But what she found surprised her. The manuscript of ''Is He Dead?,'' its edges still marked with corrective notes in Twain's handwriting, was well thought out, well structured and, most important, funny.

''I think it has a lot of Twain's characteristic humor in it,'' she said. ''It has some really intriguing characters and sets up complicated situations that he also knows how to unravel.''

Written in January 1898 while Twain was living in Vienna, ''Is He Dead?'' tells the story of a group of destitute painters outside Paris who, in a desperate effort to deal with their debts, fake the death of one of their friends to try to drive up the worth of his paintings. Along the way, Twain takes jabs at artists, art dealers, art buyers and art journalists, as well as at Frenchmen, Irishmen, Germans and Americans.

Several scholars had read ''Is He Dead?,'' elements of which are based on an earlier Twain short story, ''Is He Living or Is He Dead?,'' without making much note of it. But Ms. Fishkin said she found herself laughing out loud.

''I thought, 'Am I crazy?' '' she recalled. ''But in my mind's eye, I could see it onstage.''

Ms. Fishkin, however, didn't trust her theatrical taste. So she began seeking out other opinions, one of them from -- who else? -- the actor Hal Holbrook, who has been playing Twain in various incarnations and in various mediums for half a century.

Mr. Holbrook read the script and liked it. (In promotional material for the play, he calls the piece ''another gold nugget.'') Then, on the advice of a mutual friend, Ms. Fishkin sent the script to Bob Boyett, a former television producer who has produced several shows on Broadway in recent years. Mr. Boyett read the script in July 2002 and said he, too, was surprised that Twain seemed to understand how to write for the stage.

''The first time I read it, I almost read it as literature,'' Mr. Boyett said. ''But I thought this could absolutely be staged today and work.''

Twain no doubt would be happy to hear it. He had a lifelong interest in the theater, working as a critic and attending shows regularly.

Robert H. Hirst, general editor of the the Mark Twain Project in Berkeley, said Twain traveled to Vienna in late 1897 in part to try to master the art of playwriting, spending time ''essentially apprenticing himself to several local playwrights,'' working on translations and trying to learn German.

There were a couple of reasons for Twain's sudden interest in playwriting, Mr. Hirst said.

''He's fed up with the way in which the works of fiction have failed to earn him much money,'' he said. ''And he's also looking for a project to do fast.''

Ms. Fishkin said Twain had reason to believe the theater could be his ticket out of the stifling debt that he had incurred after several bad investments. In the 1870's he had made a nice profit on a stage version of his book ''The Gilded Age,'' featuring the exploits of a rakish character named Colonel Sellers. There were also adaptations during his lifetime of his novels ''Tom Sawyer,'' ''Pudd'nhead Wilson'' and ''The Prince and the Pauper.''

That said, Twain's own later efforts as a playwright, like the obscure ''Ah, Sin,'' and the even lesser known ''Death Wafer,'' were largely ''boring, unreadable plays,'' Ms. Fishkin writes in the foreword to ''Is He Dead?''

Unlike those failures, ''Is He Dead?'' was written in a flash, probably in less than a month. (Twain was famous for writing some on a project, then dropping it, only to pick up with a new idea months or years later.) His speed is especially surprising, Mr. Hirst said, considering his money woes and that he was still struggling with a depression brought on by the death of his daughter, Susy, in 1896.

''He manages to knock it off fast, and he doesn't labor over it,'' he said. ''There's a newness to it.''

Twain was enormously optimistic during the writing of ''Is He Dead?,'' writing to friends that his wife had read the script and found it ''very bully.'' That hope, however, would soon curdle.

Shortly after finishing the script, Twain sent it to his London-based agent, Bram Stoker (author of ''Dracula''), who was unable to find a producer. Twain then turned to a friend, the industrialist H. H. Rogers, who tried to find an American producer, to no avail.

By August 1898 Twain was done with ''Is He Dead?'' and, to a large extent, playwriting as a whole.

''Put 'Is he dead?' in the fire,'' Twain wrote to Rogers. ''God will bless you; I too.''

Now, however, a mere 105 years later, there are plans afoot to allow American audiences to see the play at last. Mr. Boyett said yesterday that he had obtained the rights this spring, and that he planned to give the play two ''kitchen table'' readings over the summer to get a feel for the piece.

As indicated by Twain's notes on the original manuscript, it still needs work. With three acts and 23 characters, ''Is He Dead?'' will probably require some pruning, Mr. Boyett said, and may also require some sort of polishing by a present-day playwright.

Still, he said, no major changes would be made. ''If you're presenting a play by Mark Twain,'' he said, ''people want to hear Mark Twain's voice.''

It's exactly that voice, Ms. Fishkin said, that first had her laughing in the Twain archives. ''I sensed that there was just a lot of energy, and a lot of exuberance and wit,'' she said. ''Especially coming at a time when we tend to think of Twain as being very cynical and very gloomy.''

The first chapter is available online.

I write letters

2006-09-06T00:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Shelley Fisher Fishkin,

On the “Mark Twain’s America” page of the PBS Online NewsHour

you say:

In the book's famous ending--variously maligned as a failure, a mistake, a retreat, or worse--what do we find? Incarcerated in a tiny shack with a ludicrous assortments of snakes, rats and spiders put there by an authority figure who claims to have his best interests at heart, Jim is denied information that he needs and is forced to perform a series of pointless and exhausting tasks. After risking his life to get the freedom that unbeknownst to him is already his, after proving himself to be a paragon of moral virtue who towers over everyone around him, this legally-free black man is still denied respect--and is still in chains. All of this happens not at the hands of charlatans, the duke and the king, but at the initiative of a respectable Tom Sawyer and churchgoing citizens like the Phelpses and their neighbors.

Is what America did to the ex-slaves any less insane than what Tom Sawyer put Jim through in the novel? Where do we go for a window on the "contrast between our ideals and activities," that was "inescapable" after "the war to 'free the slaves,'" as Ralph Ellison put it in our 1991 interview? "People didn't want to talk directly about it," Ellison observed. But Twain did take it on: "One of the functions of comedy," Ellison said, "is to allow us to deal with the unspeakable. And this Twain did consistently." What is the history of post-Emancipation race relations in the United States if not a series of maneuvers as cruelly gratuitous as the indignities inflicted on Jim in the final section of Huckleberry Finn? Why was the Civil Rights movement necessary? Why were black Americans forced to go through so much pain and trouble just to secure rights that were supposedly theirs already? Huckleberry Finn may end in farce--but it is not Twain's farce: it is ours. Twain's book is not escapist. It is an escape from the denial of the farce we've made of what was--and still is--a noble social and political experiment.

I’ve recently finished a play based on the novel; finished recording the entire novel of Huckleberry Finn for an audio book, read up on Clemens’s career as a performer; and read “Tom Sawyer, Detective” and “Tom Sawyer Abroad” and I think your assessment is wrong.

We all love Mark Twain and want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it’s clear to me that he truly loved the evasion section of Huckleberry Finn because he loves Tom Sawyer.

And that’s why the Tom Sawyer character always dominates – Huck and Jim both immediately become supporting players whenever Tom appears, in spite of the fact that it’s Huck narrating. Before Tom Sawyer appears for the evasion, Jim is goal-oriented – he not only wants to get out of slavery himself, he wants to get his wife and children out of slavery. Once Tom Sawyer shows up, that goal is never mentioned again. So much so that by the end of the novel, all three of them, Huck, Tom and Jim, are considering lighting out for the Territory. By the end of the novel, Jim’s journey is far from over. His sudden freedom doesn’t solve the problem of buying or if necessary, stealing his own family. But that is totally subverted for the Tom Sawyer story.

Tom Sawyer Abroad takes up right after Huckleberry Finn left off, and in it Jim is content to travel around Africa and the Middle East with two white boys, and not a peep about his family.

Furthermore, Clemens liked to read from the evasion section of the book in his live performances.

And it is funny and entertaining, but it’s completely different, in tone and substance, from the pre-evasion section of the novel.

Twain was no fool when it came to marketing his work. When Huckleberry Finn was published, there were still people all over the South who either had once owned slaves themselves, or had parents and other relatives who owned slaves. He knew he could only go so far in portraying the actual brutalities of slave owners and still have a popular book. Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally are presented as loveable and even silly and certainly non-threatening. The worst that Uncle Silas does to his slaves is force religion on them – a solid virtue in 1880s American opinion, even more so than today. And that’s why Twain used the evasion scene to promote the book. He wanted to make sure everybody knew the book was all in good fun, in spite of some serious bits.

It’s clear that no matter how disgusting we today might consider Tom Sawyer’s behavior in regards to Jim, Twain considered Tom a lovable scamp and wanted everybody else to feel that way. And he can only maintain that attitude if he sacrifices Jim’s feelings of urgency about rescuing his family. Portraying Jim as a “paragon of moral virtue” certainly does not make up for that sacrifice. If anything, that portrayal turns Jim into some cardboard cutout of the impossibly noble good darkie.

This does not lessen the very important achievement of the first two-thirds of the book. But really, Twain should have ended the book shortly after Huck vows to go to hell, and created another short novel, “Tom Sawyer on the Farm” out of the evasion, to go along with Abroad and Detective.

Your take on the last one-third of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn may be what fans of Twain want to hear, but I don’t think it’s justified by the text or Twain’s actions.

Nancy McClernan
Hoboken, NJ

No response yet, but then it's the beginning of the semester and I just sent it today.

He prefers the colored.

2006-08-16T19:31:00.000-07:00

A conversation between Sam Clemens and his daughter Jean, as told by Clemens to his penpal Helene Picard.
Jean speaks first:

===========

"You have said the Virgin Mary was not white."

"Very well, where's the harm?"

"Why, it's shocking!"

"You numskull! What is there about it that's shocking?"

"Can't you see, Papa? The idea of saying the Mother of the Savior was colored! It's sacrilegious."

"Sac -- oh, nonsense! Jean, in her day the population of the globe was not more than a thousand millions. Not one-tenth of them were white. What does the fact suggest to you?"

"I -- I don't know. What does it suggest, Papa?"

"It most powerfully suggests that white was not a favorite complexion with God. Has it since become a favorite complexion with Him? No. The population of the globe is now fifteen hundred millions; one thousand and six millions of those people are colored -- two thirds, you see, of the human race. There was not a white person in Nazareth when I was there, except a foreign priest. The people were very dark. Don't you suppose they are the descendants of Mary's townsmen? Of course the are. Now what have you to say, Jean?"

"Well, I can't help it, Papa; the idea of a colored Mother of the Saviour is still revolting, and you must change it."

"My dear, I won't. To my mind one color is just as respectable as another; there is nothing important, nothing essential, about a complexion. I mean, to me. But with the Deity it is different. He doesn't think much of white people. He prefers the colored. Andrea del Sarto's pink-and-lily Madonnas revolt Him, my child. That is, they would, but He never looks at them."

Completed!

2006-08-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

I finally have the HUCK FINN script completed. Now comes the readings and rewritings. But I'm pretty pleased with this first draft, so I'm hoping rewrites will also be relatively painless.

The Twilight Zone

2006-08-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

While I was reading the evasion section of Huckleberry Finn, I was reminded of an episode of The Twilight Zone called It's a Good Life.

Here's the part in the book that reminded me. It's the end of chapter 38:

So Tom was stumped. But he studied it over, and then said Jim would have to worry along the best he could with an onion. He promised he would go to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in Jim's coffee- pot, in the morning. Jim said he would "jis' 's soon have tobacker in his coffee;" and found so much fault with it, and with the work and bother of raising the mullen, and jews-harping the rats, and petting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do on pens, and in- scriptions, and journals, and things, which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook, that Tom most lost all patience with him; and said he was just loadened down with more gaudier chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn't know enough to appreciate them, and they was just about wasted on him. So Jim he was sorry, and said he wouldn't behave so no more, and then me and Tom shoved for bed.

Basically what we have here is a kid, about twelve or thirteen, who puts the life of a man in jeopardy because he wants to have an exciting adventure. And when the man complains about the silly or even dangerous ideas the boy comes up with, the boy becomes angry with the man, and the man must apologize.

Twain doesn't spell it out, and I seriously doubt he meant the scenario to be taken this way, but I find it hard not to see this scene as one in which a man is humoring a child because he thinks that the child will help him get his freedom back. Of course as we find out at the very end of the novel, Jim has already been set free by his owner in her will, and Tom Sawyer knows this, but doesn't tell so that he can have fun. His selfishness almost results in Jim being lynched.

That's why I'm reminded of this episode of The Twilight Zone:

Now I'd like to introduce you to some of the people of Peaksville, Ohio. This is Mr. Fremont. It's in his farmhouse that the monster resides. This is Mrs. Fremont. And this is Aunt Amy, who probably had more control over the monster in the beginning than almost anyone. But one day she forgot. She began to sing aloud. Now, the monster doesn't like singing, so his mind snapped at her, and turned her into the smiling, vacant thing you're looking at now. She sings no more. And you'll note that the people in Peaksville, Ohio, have to smile.They have to think happy thoughts and say happy things because, once displeased, the monster can wish them into a cornfield or change them into a grotesque walking horror. This particular monster can read minds you see. He knows every thought, he can feel every emotion. Oh yes, I did forget something didn't I.

This is the monster. His name is Anthony Fremont. He's six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guiless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you'd better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind tem is absolutely in charge. This, is the Twilight Zone."

Interestingly, the town in which Tom prosecutes his "evasion" is Pikesville - similar to Peaksville.

Doo doo doo doo - doo doo doo doo!

HUCK FINN reading

2006-08-07T21:04:00.000-07:00

I had another reading of HUCK FINN at NYCPlaywrights Wednesday and it went pretty well. I was curious to see how Roxana would go over - nobody realized I borrowed her from Puddin'head Wilson. I guess I'm not too surprised. Many people haven't even read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, especially not recently, and that's the Great American Novel, so it's no wonder that they haven't read Puddin'head, a much lesser work.

I have completely changed "the Evasion" section of the story. There's an evasion now, but it's in earnest, and Jim evades without the "help" of Tom Sawyer.

Reviews of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

2006-08-07T21:03:00.000-07:00

Right from the beginning, the book was seen as a story for children - or rather for boys. As the Athenaeum said

For some time past Mr. Clemens has been carried away by the ambition of seriousness and fine writing. In Huckleberry Finn he returns to his right mind, and is again the Mark Twain of old time. It is such a book as he, and he only, could have written. It is meant for boys; but there are few men (we should hope) who, once they take it up, will not delight in it. It forms a companion or sequel, to Tom Sawyer.

The Atlantic said

Mark Twain's new book for young folks, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (C.L. Webster & Co.), is in some sense a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, though each of the two stories is complete in itself.

And because of this perception, many reviewers were very upset by the book, as in this one from The San Francisco Evening Bulletin:

The author starts out by telling his juvenile readers that there are some lies in his book--that most people lie, and that it is not very bad after all. Of course the warning is timely that persons attempting to seek a moral in the story should be banished.

And Life wrote this sarcastic piece:

A very refined and delicate piece of narration by Huck Finn, describing his venerable and dilapidated 'pap' as afflicted with delirium tremens, rolling over and over, 'kicking things every which way,' and 'saying there are devils ahold of him.' This chapter is especially suited to amuse the children on long, rainy afternoons.

Finally, the book was banned from the Concord Public Library on the grounds that it was inapproporiate for children. Louisa May Alcott (author of 'Little Women') a member of the library's council said 'If Mr. Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them.'

But the San Francisco Chronicle defended the book, saying

The action of the Concord Public Library in excluding Mark Twain's new book, 'Huckleberry Finn,' on the ground that it is flippant and irreverent, is absurd. The managers of this library evidently look on this book as written for boys, whereas we venture to say that upon nine boys out of ten much of the humor, as well as the pathos, would be lost.

Disney's Huck Finn

2006-08-07T21:01:00.001-07:00

I saw Disney's 1995 travesty of the Huck Finn story last night. There was so much that was wrong, I don't know where to begin.

The casting was wrong - Elijah Woods looks like he's about 7 years old. Although Twain never says exactly how old Huck was, he should be at least 12 or 13.

UPDATE: Twain described Huck Finn as a 12-year-old to William Dean Howells

In the opening scene, Huck is in a fistfight with another boy. This is so wrong. Although Tom Sawyer got into fistfights, the striking thing about Huck was that he was never portrayed as fighting anybody.

Instead of $6,000 in robbers gold, they instead give him $600 from his recently deceased, religious mother. The only thing we ever know from Twain about Huck's mother was that she was dead, and never learned how to read.

I thought it was fascinating that in the trailer that came with the DVD, they show a clip where Miss Watson threatens Huck with 'the bad place' and Huck says he wishes he was there. This scene was completely excised from the final cut.

But most egregiously, they completely cut out the most dramatic, pivotal scene in the entire story - where Huck has to make a choice between doing what his society says is right, and helping Jim and as a result, going to hell.

This is always the problem with adaptations of the Huck Finn story. People believe it's a story for children, and so bowlderize it freely to make it palatable for children, and most importantly, for their parents. No Disney film is going to allow the free and easy parodying of religion as a force for evil, or point out how integral slavery was to the antebellum South. So they not only have Jim teaching Huck that slavery is wrong, they have Widow Douglas explain to Huck at the end of the story that slavery is wrong.

By trying to cram an adult story into children's clothes, they strangle the life out of it.

And I have to wonder if Peter Jackson saw the Huck Finn film before starting on Lord of the Rings. The scene where Huck is lying in bed, recuperating from a bullet to the back (in the book it was Tom Sawyer, shot in the leg), receiving friends when he wakes looked exactly like the scene in Return of the King when Frodo is waking up and sees Gandalf and Sam.

The N word

2006-08-07T21:01:00.000-07:00

The N word, "nigger" is used freely and often in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and so an N word policy has to be developed by anybody doing an adaptation of the story. Some versions leave out the word entirely. I left it in because I feel it's authentic, however repulsive it is. My own policy was to allow the unsavory characters like The Duke and The King to use the word more often than Huck or Jim. The only exception is when Huck is trying to decide whether to write a letter to Miss Watson (Jim's owner) telling her where Jim can be found. During that scene, he's trying to harden himself against Jim - using the "N" word is a good way to represent his attempt to dehumanize Jim.

After a recent reading of the play somebody suggested that the N word is no longer quite so taboo since the movie Pulp Fiction. Perhaps in some circles, but plenty of people are still scandalized by the word, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing. It's certainly more offensive, to me at least, than the F word.

The disappearance of Tom Sawyer

2006-08-07T19:44:00.000-07:00

The University of Virginia has a very good site devoted to Mark Twain, call Mark Twain in His Times, including an examination of his works. In the section on Tom Sawyer there is an exhibit of various film versions of the Tom Sawyer story throughout the years.

Tom Sawyer was once so popular that the 1931 movie "Huckleberry Finn" sticks Tom on the raft with Huck and Jim. And Jim doesn't show up in the advertisting art. But the author notes:

most Americans born since 1975 mainly know Tom through Huck's novel, and know the plot of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer only through the Disney film that ends the list below. In another generation it might be time for Tom to say, "You don't know about me except you have read a book by the name of 'Huckleberry Finn.'"

The latest Disney version of Huck's story doesn't include Tom Sawyer at all - and neither does my play. My reasons are probably somewhat different from Disney's, but I'll have to watch the Disney version and see what they do about the necessary change in story line due to Tom's disappearance.