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Ernest Hemingway asserted, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." Lionel Trilling said the novel was "not less than definitive in American literature." Published in 1884, Huck Finn has become one of the most widely taught novels in American curricula. But where did Huckleberry Finn come from, and what made it so distinctive? Shelley Fisher Fishkin suggests that in Huckleberry Finn, more than in any other work, Mark Twain let African-American voices, language, and rhetorical traditions play a major role in the creation of his art.
In Was Huck Black?, Fishkin combines close readings of published and unpublished writing by Twain with intensive biographical and historical research and insights gleaned from linguistics, literary theory, and folklore to shed new light on the role African-American voices played in the genesis of Huckleberry Finn. Given that book's importance in American culture, her analysis illuminates, as well, how African-American voices have shaped our sense of what is distinctively "American" about American literature.
Fishkin shows that Mark Twain was surrounded, throughout his life, by richly talented African-American speakers whose rhetorical gifts Twain admired candidly and profusely. A black child named Jimmy whom Twain called "the most artless, sociable and exhaustless talker I ever came across" helped Twain understand the potential of a vernacular narrator in the years before he began writing Huckleberry Finn, and served as a model for the voice with which Twain would transform American literature. A slave named Jerry whom Twain referred to as an "impudent and satirical and delightful young black man" taught Twain about "signifying"--satire in an African-American vein--when Twain was a teenager (later Twain would recall that he thought him "the greatest man in the United States" at the time). Other African-American voices left their mark on Twain's imagination as well--but their role in the creation of his art has never been recognized. Was Huck Black? adds a new dimension to current debates over multiculturalism and the canon.
American literary historians have told a largely segregated story: white writers come from white literary ancestors, black writers from black ones. The truth is more complicated and more interesting. While African-American culture shaped Huckleberry Finn, that novel, in turn, helped shape African-American writing in the twentieth century. As Ralph Ellison commented in an interview with Fishkin, Twain "made it possible for many of us to find our own voices."
Was Huck Black? dramatizes the crucial role of black voices in Twain's art, and takes the first steps beyond traditional cultural boundaries to unveil an American literary heritage that is infinitely richer and more complex than we had thought.
- Sales Rank: #2504369 in Books
- Published on: 1993-04-29
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x .95" w x 6.38" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Elaborating on a thesis that made news last summer, Fishkin, professor of American Studies at the University of Texas, convincingly argues that Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was influenced by African American voices. Mixing historical and literary research with close analysis of Twain's writings, Fishkin cites a newly discovered 1874 article by Twain that describes his encounter with a black child whose voice was later echoed by Huck; she also assesses the impact of his childhood friendship with a "signifying" slave named Jerry. Fishkin suggests Twain's blending of black and white voices was unconscious and maintains that his portrayal of "nigger" Jim was more subversive than racist. Though the book seems mainly aimed at academics, it also considers the question of whether Huckleberry Finn should be taught in high school. Black students might now more easily identify with Huck, Fishkin states, but the major African American figure remains the minstrel-voiced Jim. Therefore, she suggests that teachers also expose students to more powerful black voices, such as those of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Here is that rarity in criticism, a monograph almost sure to be definitive. Fishkin (American studies, Univ. of Texas, Austin) argues compellingly that an 1874 sketch by Mark Twain, about the black ten-year-old "Sociable Jimmy," served as the model for Huck Finn's African American-rooted dialect--along with "A True Story" (1874), based on a tale by an ex-slave, Mary Ann Cord. There was also a slave Twain knew in boyhood, Jerry, who taught him the African American art of "signifying" satire. Twain's genius with vernacular has always been acknowledged, but Fishkin shows, with formidable scholarship, how black speech (and life) influenced white culture and how, in American literature, the Twain do indeed meet. Recommended for informed readers and scholars. For a perspective on Twain's humor, see Mark Twain's Critical Humor , reviewed below.--Ed.
- Kenneth Mintz, Hoboken P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Direct, brief, well-informed, and polemical (``How will Americans respond to the news that Huck...was part black?''), Fishkin (American Studies/University of Texas, Austin) provides a questionable but dramatic genealogy of Huckleberry Finn's African- American ancestors as a gesture toward ``desegregating'' American literary history. Inspired by David Bradley's 1985 lecture, ``The First `Nigger' Novel,'' Fishkin argues that the prototypical American literary hero in what major writers have considered the archetypal American novel was based on a black child named Sociable Jimmy; that Twain's language (``raised to a level of literary eloquence,'' as Ralph Ellison said in 1970) is derived from African-American voices; and that his satirical social style was inspired by a black boy named Jerry whom he knew while still a child. But although Twain enjoyed black culture enough to appropriate it for his writings, he repressed the sources because, Fishkin says, he wanted to be respectable--and in the age of p.c. (of which this study is a monumental example), that makes Twain a hypocrite, a character-type that he himself found particularly contemptuous. To prove that an imaginary hero in a work of art (or even a popular commercial novel, as Huckleberry Finn was originally conceived) is multiracial, multicultural, even androgynous, would be to explain his perennial appeal. But Fishkin treats the novel and its lead character as a social commentary or textbook, referring often to its presentation in the classroom and shaping her argument for literary critics. Isolating Huck's African-American traits--some based on stereotypes, others uncovered through sophisticated linguistic analysis--seems to create its own form of segregation, to oversimplify a complex literary character, and to compromise the universality to which a wide range of authors (whom Fishkin quotes) have paid tribute--authors such as Ellison, Faulkner, Hemingway, Toni Morrison, and others, who claim to have learned their language and acquired their voices from Twain. In spite of the confused motives: an exhaustive and provocative work, already creating a stir. (Eighteen halftones) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Who was Huck Finn?
By JLind555
There is probably no book in American literature more loved and hated than "Huckleberry Finn". Twain's masterpiece has been reviled as a racist rant; parents have tried to get it banned from school libraries, and people have claimed that not only is the book racist, so is its author. But Twain was hardly a racist; Jim is presented as one of the few characters in the book who has real dignity, humanity and common goodness; and Huck learns to see Jim as a friend and a fellowman. But how does Huck reach this epiphany and who did Twain base his character on? In a solidly researched and fascinating book, Shelly Fishkin posits that Huck was based on two young African-Americans Twain knew personally, one a ten year old boy named Jimmy and the other a young slave in Missouri named Jerry.
Jimmy was described in Twain's newspaper article "Sociable Jimmy", which was published in The New York Times in November of 1874. Jimmy's family was employed in a village inn where Twain was staying, and Twain was clearly fascinated by "the most artless, sociable and exhaustless talker I ever came across... I listened as one who receives a revelation." Twain invited Jimmy to sit and chat, and Jimmy planked himself down in an easy chair and proceeded to regale Twain with stories about his family in the inn; in particular, their aversion to having cats around. "When dey ketches a cat bummin' aroun' heah... dey snake him into de cistern -- dey's been cats drownded in dat water dat's in yo' pitcher. I seed a cat in dare yistiddy -- all swelled up like a pudd'n." (Imagine the look on Twains face as Jimmy fed him this tidbit.) As Fishkin shows, Jimmy and Huck share some key characteristics. They both launch into long family narratives to hold their listener's attention. They both have a visceral loathing of violence and cruelty, and they speak with a remarkable similarity. The are both "unpretentious, uninhibited, easily impressed and unusually loquacious." When we close our eyes and listen to Jimmy, we can easily hear Huck in Jimmy's voice.
Jerry was young black man in the 1850's who Twain idolized when he was himself a teenager, much to the dismay and disgust of Twain's mother. Actually, Mom could be a stand-in for Tom Sawyer's Aunt Polly, who didn't want Tom associating with Huck because he was unwashed, uncouth, and the envy of every boy in the neighborhood of good family who admired him and wished they dared to be like him. Here we see Huck as Jerry. Jerry was a master at "signifying", or indirectly satirizing whatever he held in contempt. There is a lot of Jerry in the characters of both Huck and Jim, who compensate for their lack of formal education with a large store of mother-wit and down to earth common sense.
We don't know if Twain directly based Huck on Jimmy and/or Jerry, and it may be impossible to determine for certain. But there are enough similarities in all three characters to make the point that Twain thoroughly liked and respected both Jimmy and Jerry, and turned some of the best qualities of each of them into one of the most endearing and enduring people in all of American fiction.
Judy Lind
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Ignore the Kirkus Review above...
By A Customer
The high-toned wording of the Kirkus Review might just turn you off of the this book before having given it a chance... and that would be a great loss. I've read the review three times now and I still can't tell if it is praising the book or condemning it. Ms. Fisher-Fishkin's prose is very readable and this book can be enjoyed by plain ol' Twain fans and academia alike.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating Read for Twainophiles
By Steve Vrana
Mark Twain offers this explanatory at the beginning of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn":
IN THIS BOOK a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.
I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.
THE AUTHOR.
I have been teaching this book to high school sophomores for thirty years, and I always took Twain at his word. And critics have long supported--and praised--Twain's use of dialect in this greatest of American novels. However, in "Was Huck Black?" Fishkin makes a substantial case that Twain infused Huck's language with the vernacular of Black influences.
It is a fascinating read. The book breaks down into four parts:
Part One: Jimmy - This is a reference to Twain's publication of an article in 1874 entitled "Sociable Jimmy," based on a "bright, simple, guileless little darkey boy...." It was the first of Twain's published writings to be dominated by the voice of a child.
Part Two: Jerry - This refers to s boyhood slave acquaintance of Twain's. Fishkin quotes from Twain's essay "Corn-Pone Opinions" about Jerry: "He was a gay and impudent and satirical and delightful young black man--a slave--who daily preached sermons from the top of his master's woodpile, with me for the sole audience."
Part Three: Jim - This section deals with the possible origins of the character of Jim in "Huck Finn."
Part Four: Break Dancing in the Drawing Room - Here Fishkin writes of Twain's introduction of Huck as the "author" of his new novel, thereby allowing Huck to (in Fishkin's words): "...enter the drawing room uninvited and unannounced and start talking immediately--coarse talk, irreverent talk, black talk."
Nearly half of the book's 270 pages are notes (72p), works cited (29p.), and index (18p.). It also includes a reprinting of the 1874 article "Sociable Jimmy" that Twain wrote for the New York Times.
While Fishkin's book will probably have an appeal only to the most devout of Mark Twain's fans, her writing style is easily understood and provides a greater understanding of Twain's use of dialect. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
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