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Club de Lectura Enjoy Reading 22/12/2016: We are going to read ...

Mark Twain pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910) Clemens was an American humorist, journalist, lecturer, and novelist who acquired international fame for his travel narratives and for his adventure stories of boyhood, especially The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). A gifted raconteur, distinctive humorist, and irascible moralist, he transcended the apparent limitations of his origins to become a popular public figure and one of America’s best and most beloved writers. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age", and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature”.

He left school at the age of 13, a year after his father death, to become a printer's apprentice. After two short years, he joined his brother Orion's newspaper as a printer and editorial assistant. It was here that young Samuel found he enjoyed writing. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

Twain was born shortly after a visit by Halley’s Comet and he predicted that he would "go out with it", too. He died the day after the comet returned.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) The novel begins where The Adventures of Tom Sawyer concludes, with Tom and Huck Finn each receiving $6000 from the treasure they found which will be the source of many of Huck’s problems. Miss Watson and Widow Douglas’s desire that Huck be clean, well-fed, clothed, and schooled become code for Pap that he is becoming “sivilized,” the result of education and religion. Money leads his father to kidnap and abuse him in an effort to drink away his windfall.

Huck approaches each of these problems with his native wit. He runs away to Jackson’s Island where he meets another runaway, Jim, Miss Watson’s slave who is running to freedom in fear of being separated from his family and sold south.

As they raft toward freedom, Huck questions what is commonly accepted as right and wrong in the world and chooses to align himself with friendship, kindness, love, and freedom.

Among their adventures with wrecked ships, murderers, heavy fog, slave hunters, and accidents, the two encounter cruelty, trickery, violence, and hardship along the Mississippi River. Huck is taken in by the Grangerfords, well-to-do plantation owners who actively feud with the Shepherdsons, leading to the deaths of many of their men and boys. Jim is cared for by the family’s slaves until they can reunite and head toward their next and most disturbing liaison—with the Duke and the King, two con-men who use them as they go from town to town scheming people out of their money. Huck’s ultimate escape from these rascals comes at the price of Jim’s being sold by the King and held captive at the Phelps farm, coincidentally the home of Tom Sawyer’s aunt. Tom and Huck then conspire to rescue Jim, who has already been freed by Miss Watson at her death. Since Jim is free, Huck’s Pap is dead, and Aunt Sally has plans to adopt Huck, the boys determine to head for Indian Territory lest they be “sivilized” further.

Huck and Jim’s adventures are rife with life lessons, various with the hope for freedom, the pain and loss of missed opportunities, the memories of family and friends, the cruelty they’ve witnessed, and the moral dilemmas they encounter.

And yet among these trials, they meet with kindness among strangers, the comfort of life on a raft, lovely days and nights of long conversations, the redemption of real friendship, and the healing beauty of nature itself on the river.

Source: penguin.com

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Listen & Read New York Times Obituary - Mark Twain in His Times