Huckleberry Finn
Who's read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? I just finished it for my English Comp II class this past Sunday night. I'm curious what you all think, either about the novel or about the never-ending critical analyses there of.
Originally e-mailed by John R. Filleau III
Prof. Price,
I just finished the novel, and I can not wait until tomorrow at class to tell you how I feel. I need to let it out now.
The last chapters are probably the most frustrating groupings of words that I have ever had the misfortune of reading. Finishing this novel was like watching a Nicholas Cage movie all the way through: it is painful. I think I should be proud for accomplishing such a Herculean feat, but all I'm left with is this sickly vomit-taste in my brain. That being said, I think Mark Twain is brilliant. He knew what he was writing when he wrote this steaming pile of slop. He was performing the Royal Nonesuch on everybody who reads this. A modern example would be the movie The RIng. I know I have seen evil, and I feel pain for it, but I know the only thing left for me to do is to recommend it to all my friends. Continuing on with the parallel, just like in the novel, there is a third performance of Twain's real world Royal Nonesuch. That performance is every wall-of-text literary analysis that has ever been written about this book.
"We'll pay back Twain for making fools of us," is the battle cry of every English scholar who was fooled into watching either of the first two performances of this Nonesuch. And so they write critical analysis of the work. They deconstruct it. They find the allegories and the metaphors, and all the while they argue over the ending. They don't get that they are making fools of themselves for the third night in a row. Just like the Duke and the Dauphin, Twain has run off. He's gone. He's sitting in Hell, sipping on a piña colada, LAUGHING at us. Twain's Huck Finn is not a critical analysis of slavery in the South. It is not a critical analysis of anything. It is not a satire. It is not an adventure. This novel, at its beating-heart core, is the unholy tool of a psychopathic author who had only the utmost contempt for humanity. Huck Finn is Mark Twain's Lance of Longinus, and he used it for its purpose: he pierced the side of human rationality to prove that it was dead.
I'll see you at class tomorrow.
-John R. Filleau III
Comments
A Song of Ice and Fire.
But other than that, yes, you're quite right.
and Night Lord - watching the Harry Potter movies doesn't count as literature, nice try though.
Ice and Fire does surpass those series in scope, I would say, but is far from archetypal.
The story contained within is told from the point of view of a number of characters, alternating with each chapter. There are about 10 PoV characters per book, some recurring in later books. The characters are also more realistic, as they are not really good or evil, and aren't necessarily bound by some great destiny or quest. They play, for the most part, large parts in the political movement of the nation/world they live in, and because the events in it are so huge, you get a number of different views of the same events as well as more personal happenings.
Also, no character is safe. George R. R. Martin kills whom the storyline deems necessary, no matter how major the character.
Oh, and it's really gritty... it was based very loosely on the War of the Roses, but with a touch of fantasy, and takes a cue from what life was like for the common folk back then... rape, murder, starvation, all that.
They're fascinating, I got Ryan to read them as well, and though he didn't like the latest installment as much as I did, I am very much awaiting the next volume. The first book is called "A Game of Thrones" if you're interested.
And if we're talking books on par with Lord of the Rings and especially Chronicles of Narnia... His Dark Materials, bitches. Freakin' awesome. The atheist refutation to Narnia. It has a very subtle, but central, message that I would judge is based in humanism, but also tells an extremely original, imaginative story. Golden Compass is your first stop.
Okay, I'm intrigued. I'll have to check that out.
Unlike Ice and Fire, which is usually about 1000 to 1300 pages per book.
I've already expressed my opinions before, but I didn't like Feast for Crows as much because it seemed to sidestep too far away from everything else that was going on in the story. He brought in almost a whole new cast of characters, most of which I had little emotional attachment to. And I know it's a minor thing, but his retitling of different characters at each new chapter title just made it more frustrating for me, because I didn't like having to keep trying to figure out whom he was talking about.
And, of course, there was no Tyrion.
As for Huckleberry Finn, I think I read it in middle school. I remember it was a big deal, because the teachers had to give a big disclaimer for the book's usage of the word nigger. The teachers had to make it very clear that they didn't approve of the word, we couldn't say it, etc. I think that's where I learned it, actually. As for the story, no, I remember nothing of it.
He decided that instead of splitting it up chronologically, he would split it up roughly by geographic region of the PoV characters. He only did people in the south part of Westeros and the Iron Islands, next book he'll do all the others... Tyrion and a certain fellow on The Wall, two of my favorites, among others (we probably shouldn't mention names, as it could spoil who lives and who dies).
If I hadn't know about it before, (Living in Boston does that), I probably would have heard it the same way except from all the Mexican kids around town. And, not to be racist or anything, they try to be black harder than some white people do.
Some people just hold a generations-long grudge and project it onto the rest of the world.
Back to books, have any of you read or heard of the twilight series? It is possibly the best book you can read to get girls to talk to you.
Racist against white people, check. Sexist against women, check.
THIS.¹
¹By 'this' I mean read this book. It is awesome. Like, so awesome that your brain can't comprehend it.
Also, the book lies to you as often as possible, and yet it becomes the only source of truth in your life as you read it.