On This Day In History Mark Twain Published The Great American Novel, 'The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn'

As History.com notes, on February 18, 1885, Mark Twain published his famous - and famously controversial - novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the U.S.

Twain (the pen name of Samuel Clemens) first introduced Huck Finn as the best friend of Tom Sawyer, hero of his tremendously successful novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Though Twain saw Huck’s story as a kind of sequel to his earlier book, the new novel was far more serious, focusing on the institution of slavery and other aspects of life in the antebellum South.

At the book’s heart is the journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway enslaved person, down the Mississippi River on a raft. Jim runs away because he is about to be sold and separated from his wife and children, and Huck goes with him to help him get to Ohio and freedom. 

Huck narrates the story in his distinctive voice, offering colorful descriptions of the people and places they encounter along the way. The most striking part of the book is its satirical look at racism, religion and other social attitudes of the time. 

While Jim is strong, brave, generous and wise, many of the white characters are portrayed as violent, stupid or simply selfish, and the naive Huck ends up questioning the hypocritical, unjust nature of society in general.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

Mark Twain publishes “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” | February 18, 1885 | HISTORY

Meet The American Who Served As The Model For Huck Finn, 'Kindly Young Heathen' Tom Blankenship

Kerry J. Byrne at Fox News offers a piece on the man who inspired Mark Twain and was the model for the great American character Huckleberry Finn in Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn. 

“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" enjoys acclaim as the "Great American Novel," its title character a uniquely beloved figure in our national heritage.

Author Mark Twain's riverfront Missouri boy was poor in manners and material wealth, but rich in spirit and charisma. 

Huckleberry Finn "is part of the tapestry of not just American culture but American education," said Matthew Seybold, scholar-in-residence at the Center for Mark Twain Studies (www.marktwainstudies.com) at Elmira College in Elmira, New York. He also told Fox News Digital in an interview, "It is inescapably and irrepressibly American in all its beauty and horror."

Huck Finn, however, was more than just a fictional figure forged from the imagination of a great writer and wit. Huckleberry was a real-life, hardscrabble, all-American boy. 

His name was Tom Blankenship.  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

Meet the American who served as the model for Huck Finn, 'kindly young heathen' Tom Blankenship | Fox News

British University Issues ‘Trigger Warning’ For Mark Twain’s ‘Huckleberry Finn’

Lee Brown at the New York Post reports on a Brit University placing a “Trigger Warning” On Mark Twain’s great novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

A British university has issued a “trigger warning” on Mark Twain’s literary classic “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” because of supposed “problematic” violence and language.

Exeter University warned students that the 1884 novel — widely deemed one of the great American novels — is “classic but contentious,” according to The Times of London.

Twain’s masterpiece “is problematic in a number of ways, not least because of Huck’s use of the N-word throughout the novel,” students in the American literature module were warned. 

“Please be aware that this novel also features scenes of murder, violence and child abuse,” the warning reportedly adds.

Exeter University warned that the 1884 novel “is problematic in a number of ways,” including its use of the N-word as well as “scenes of murder, violence and child abuse.”

Twain’s tale of 13-year-old Huck Finn’s travels down the Mississippi River with an escaped slave named Jim has for generations been taught as a condemnation of the racist values of the time.

“It’s the best book we’ve had,” Ernest Hemingway once said of it. “All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before.”

It is also a pioneering work for Twain’s use of colloquial dialect, making it a timeless snapshot of the Antebellum South.

However, his reliance on the era’s racially charged language — including the N-word, which appears 219 times — has long sparked controversy. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

University gives 'trigger warning' for 'Huckleberry Finn' (nypost.com)

On This Day In History Mark Twain Published 'The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn'

As History.com notes, on this day in 1885 Mark Twain published his classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

You can read about Mark Twain and the novel via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/twain-publishes-the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2017-0218-02182017&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=150000935&kx_EmailCampaignID=9914&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2017-0218-02182017&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

You can also read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of Chasing the Last Laugh: Mark Twain's Raucous and Redemptive Round-The-World Comedy Tour via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2016/10/my-philadelphia-inquirer-review-of.html

Visit The Mark Twain Room When in Buffalo, New York

Mary Kunz Goldman at the Buffalo News offers a piece on the Mark Twain Room at the city's Central Library.

The Mark Twain Room is free. It’s open to all. It is a glassed-in space right off the main drag in the downtown Central Library. Yet most will walk on by, and never the Twain shall meet.

That’s a shame, and I’m not just talking about the pun.

You do not have to be a Twainiac to know that the great man lived in Buffalo for a couple of years, from 1869 to 1871, when he was involved with the Buffalo Express. He resided on Delaware Avenue, in a big old Victorian house demolished long ago. And Buffalo has an enviable Twain souvenir, the handwritten manuscript to his legendary novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

So what are you waiting for? Why should adventures belong only to Huckleberry Finn? That was what I asked myself that the other day. And instead of walking past the Twain Room as I had always done, I stopped, and I went in.

You can read the rest of the piece and view some good photos via the below link:

http://www.buffalonews.com/life-arts/100-things-western-new-yorkers-should-do-at-least-once-visit-the-mark-twain-room-20160220

Media History: On February 2nd In 1863, A Reporter Named Samuel Clemens Became Mark Twain

David Shedden at poynter.org offers a piece on the day former reporter Sam Clemens became the writer Mark Twain.

What do Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain have in common?

They were all reporters.

Twain began his journalism career with his real name, Samuel Clemens, but on February 2, 1863, he first signed his work as Mark Twain.

You can read the rest of the piece and watch several videos via the below link:

http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/316117/today-in-media-history-in-1863-a-reporter-named-samuel-clemens-became-mark-twain/

Note: Clemens/Twain, the author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Roughing It and Life On the Mississippi, is one of my favorite writers.

Happy Birthday To Mark Twain

As Biography.com notes, today is Mark Twain's birthday.

Born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, Samuel L. Clemens wrote under the pen name Mark Twain and went on to pen several novels, including two major classics of American literature, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He was also a riverboat pilot, journalist, lecturer, entrepreneur and inventor. Twain died on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut.

You can read the rest of the piece and watch a video clip via the below link:

http://www.biography.com/people/mark-twain-9512564?et_cid=57455388&et_rid=704027439&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.biography.com%2fpeople%2fmark-twain-9512564 

Note: You can also read my old South Philadelphia American column on visiting Mark Twain's house in Hartford via the below link:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/MarkTwainHartford.jpg

What The Huck Did They Do To The Mark Twain Classic?

Neil S. Friedman at sheepshead.com wrote an interesting piece on the censorship of Mark Twain's classic American novel, Huckleberry Finn.

This argument subsequently resurfaced when a publisher issued a revised edition of Huck Finn and changed more than 200 mentions of the “N” word, plus a smaller number from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and replaced them with the word “slaves.” Other alterations included “Injun Joe” changed to “Indian Joe” and “half-breed” to “half-blood,” presumably to avoid an added chorus of disapproval from Native Americans in search of equal treatment.

When political correctness is used to alter celebrated works, which contain conventional language and attitudes at the time they were published, it’s deceptive and disgraceful, no matter how repugnant some might perceive them.

When Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were published, in 1885 and 1876 respectively, the “N” word was not necessarily uttered with malice, but rather out of habit. As a result, censoring the word today dilutes and misrepresents the original narratives.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.sheepsheadbites.com/2012/06/what-the-huck-did-they-do-to-the-mark-twain-classic/

Scholar Unravels The Story Behind 'The Father of American Literature' Mark Twain

Allen Pierleoni wrote an interesting piece that appeared in the Kansas City Star about Robert H. Hirst and the late, great author and humorist Mark Twain.

It seems there's nothing Robert H. Hirst doesn't know about humorist Mark Twain, aka "the father of American literature."

A bold statement, but true. Hirst is among the world's pre-eminent Twain scholars. As such, he is the editor-in-charge and curator of the Mark Twain Papers and Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley.

It was Hirst who led his team of editors in sorting through and annotating Twain's 5,000-page manuscript that is the basis of last year's best-selling "The Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1" (University of California Press, $34.95, 736 pages).

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/09/28/3172296/scholar-unravels-the-story-behind.html

Light Out, Huck, They Still Want To Sivilize You

Michiko Kakutani at The New York Times weights in against the idea of changing Mark Twain's great classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Kakutani writes:

Haven’t we learned by now that removing books from the curriculum just deprives children of exposure to classic works of literature? Worse, it relieves teachers of the fundamental responsibility of putting such books in context — of helping students understand that “Huckleberry Finn” actually stands as a powerful indictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character), of using its contested language as an opportunity to explore the painful complexities of race relations in this country. To censor or redact books on school reading lists is a form of denial: shutting the door on harsh historical realities — whitewashing them or pretending they do not exist.

Mr. Gribben’s effort to update “Huckleberry Finn” (published in an edition with “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by NewSouth Books), like Mr. Foley’s assertion that it’s an old book and “we’re ready for new,” ratifies the narcissistic contemporary belief that art should be inoffensive and accessible; that books, plays and poetry from other times and places should somehow be made to conform to today’s democratic ideals. It’s like the politically correct efforts in the ’80s to exile great authors like Conrad and Melville from the canon because their work does not feature enough women or projects colonialist attitudes.

You can read his piece via the link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/books/07huck.html?_r=1

Don't Rewrite Mark Twain

I agree with Rich Lowry, no one should rewrite Mark Twain.
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Lowry, a syndicated columnist and editor of National Review, wrote a column about Twain and the new edition of Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that replaced the "offensive" words from the text.
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You can read Lowry's column via the link below:

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http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/256555/don-t-rewrite-mark-twain-rich-lowry