Jane Smiley,
Say It ain't so, Huck
I agree with Jane Smiley on a few topics. I agree with her on the subject of why people think Huck Finn is a great novel. She says that people only think it is a great novel because the great writers and poets say it is so. The people who have argued against it have gotten stampeded back because of the mainstream thoughts that the book is a masterpiece, because people like T.S. Elliot say so. She goes on to note that T.S. cannot sympathize with Huck because he never played around like Huck and other children did. Thus reasoning that a book is good, just because some famous guy said so, is flawed.
She brings several things to light. She says that there is more to be learned from how the novel is written than from the novel itself. Also she says that Mark Twain didn't realize that his story went from a story for boys, to a novel for men because of the long pause that was taken in writing the book. I agree a little bit on this part because it could have happened. Twain could have been scrapping for ideas and forgot about certain details about the book. This is also why she says that the last 12 chapters of the book were failures. Also at this point, Jim apparently stops developing as a character. All the things depicted in the book seem, to me, to be ideas that seemed to be popular at the time, and appealing to the readers of that time.
I don't quite agree with the other stuff that she says. For example. she argues a lot about how race plays into the text. In addition to that, she focuses on the development and also the underdevelopment of Jim, "the slave." She seem's to show bias towards Uncle Tom's Cabin and the subject thereof. This is kind of an unfair comparison because the book being discussed is Huck Finn, where Uncle Tom's Cabin is a random book that she likes. It serves no purpose. I believe that back in the day, what Twain wrote is just what people talked about, and what people were thinking, or at least what Twain was thinking. The only thing that I agree with her on is her view on the definition of racism as a definition convenient for the oppressors but not the victims. This is what I think about Jane Smiley's article, and the things I do and do not agree with.
Say It ain't so, Huck
I agree with Jane Smiley on a few topics. I agree with her on the subject of why people think Huck Finn is a great novel. She says that people only think it is a great novel because the great writers and poets say it is so. The people who have argued against it have gotten stampeded back because of the mainstream thoughts that the book is a masterpiece, because people like T.S. Elliot say so. She goes on to note that T.S. cannot sympathize with Huck because he never played around like Huck and other children did. Thus reasoning that a book is good, just because some famous guy said so, is flawed.
She brings several things to light. She says that there is more to be learned from how the novel is written than from the novel itself. Also she says that Mark Twain didn't realize that his story went from a story for boys, to a novel for men because of the long pause that was taken in writing the book. I agree a little bit on this part because it could have happened. Twain could have been scrapping for ideas and forgot about certain details about the book. This is also why she says that the last 12 chapters of the book were failures. Also at this point, Jim apparently stops developing as a character. All the things depicted in the book seem, to me, to be ideas that seemed to be popular at the time, and appealing to the readers of that time.
I don't quite agree with the other stuff that she says. For example. she argues a lot about how race plays into the text. In addition to that, she focuses on the development and also the underdevelopment of Jim, "the slave." She seem's to show bias towards Uncle Tom's Cabin and the subject thereof. This is kind of an unfair comparison because the book being discussed is Huck Finn, where Uncle Tom's Cabin is a random book that she likes. It serves no purpose. I believe that back in the day, what Twain wrote is just what people talked about, and what people were thinking, or at least what Twain was thinking. The only thing that I agree with her on is her view on the definition of racism as a definition convenient for the oppressors but not the victims. This is what I think about Jane Smiley's article, and the things I do and do not agree with.
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