Writing Huck Finn: Mark Twain’s Creative Process by Victor A. Doyno

Abstract

374 Western American Literature with Paul Horgan (from whom the epigraph istaken),that in the Southwestand in comparative cultural studies there is, indeed, “no such thing as a short journey.” ROBERT FRANKLIN GISH CatPoly, San Luis Obispo WritingHuckFinn: Mark Twain’s CreativeProcess. ByVictor A. Doyno. (Philadel­ phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. 273 pages, $29.95.) The debate over the merits and sins of Mark Twain’s Adventures ofHuckle­ berryFinn has been so strong and so comprehensive that we only nod when, in his preface to WritingHuckFinn, Victor Doyno asks, “Isit possible to sayor think anything new about Huck?” Doyno’s answer, of course, is yes. His yes is informed by long and meticulous study of four sources. Two of these—the manuscript version and Clemens’s correspondence—have been part of earlier studies (Doyno completed this projectjust before the discovery of the first half of the manuscript early in 1991. The issues surrounding the ownership of that manuscript have notyetbeen resolved.) Doyno, however, shines a new interpre­ tive light upon two other sources: Clemens’s record of his children’s sayings and, in Doyno’s words, “full, sympathetic explorations of then-current laws, of Twain’s lawsuits, and of his opinions about international copyright.” It is a bright light. It is fueled by a detailed look at the accumulated records of Clemens’s personal and our social history with textual evidence of Clemens’s constant search for the right word and expression. Doyno’s genetic criticism helps us understand the intricate and interde­ pendent patterns that tie the book together on both the micro/stylistic level and the macro/thematic level. He leads us through a myriad of revisions and stylistic and thematic echoes and helps us see and hear Clemens’s careful tuning ofHuck’svoice. Bytracing Clemens’srevisions, Doyno introduces us to a writer of immense and focused creative energy. By accumulating textual, per­ sonal, and social evidence, Doyno resurrects Clemens’s concern with the na­ tional questions of literacy that are part of the debate over copyright. He also introduces the intensely personal battles waged by the illiterate and semi­ literate who are forced to exist on the margins. Huck’s choice to enter the literate world becomes an act of rebellion and self determination. He is, after all, taking a step into foreign territory—territory that has been Tom Sawyer’s exclusively. The power of reading and writing is at the heart of HuckleberryFinn. Books or the information gotten from books or the myth and half-truths that grow out of an obsession with literature are everywhere in Huck. And the power of the literate culture—of the laws that allow the hunting of men and the literature Reviews 375 that encourages notions of excess for the sake of the effect—is the cement that binds the Phelps farm section to the rest of the text. Doyno’s argument for the inherent connections within the novel is fascinating and convincing. It is also extremely disturbing because it demonstrates how easily our culture has ig­ nored its own violent and abusive history. We have become too sanguine about Clemens’s indictments of the “damned human race.” Times have dulled our appreciation of the outrage that lurks within Huck’syarn. Doyno has managed to resurrect the times and the disgust and the pain inherent in the struggle to tell a terrible and sad story. MICHAELJ. KISKIS SUNY-EmpireState College Mark Twain and theFeminineAesthetic. By Peter Stoneley. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 205 pages, $44.95.) Mark Twain and theFeminine Aesthetic examines Twain’s literary and nonliterary writings for his responses to the ideology of gender. Envisioning “the feminine aesthetic” as “an ideological process that involved men and women, both in its creation and its effects,”Stoneley traces the bifurcation between the adventurous, picaresque, or “male” world of Roughing It, Adventures ofHuckle­ berryFinn, and HuckFinn and TomSawyeramongtheIndiansversusworks corrobo­ rating “feminine”values. Readers interested in Twain’swestern experience will enjoy Chapter One’streatment ofthe Nevada-California literary apprenticeship and two early gender parodies: “Lucretia Smith’s Soldiers” (1864) and “Aurelia’s Unfortunate Young Man” (1864). Chapter Two examines Twain’s evolving masculine aesthetic in Life on the...