Coming to Grips with Huckleberry Finn: Essays on a Book, a Boy, and a Man [Paperback]

Tom Quirk (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0826210333 | ISBN-13: 978-0826210333 | Publication Date: June 1, 1995

In Coming to Grips with HUCKLEBERRY FINN, Tom Quirk traces the history of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from its inception in 1876 to its problematic presence in today's American culture. By approaching Twain's novel from several quite different perspectives, Quirk reveals how the author's imagination worked and why this novel has affected so many people for so long and in so many curious ways.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

To readers already familiar with Mark Twain's masterpiece (and with the huge body of criticism it has inspired), these six essays will provide fresh insights. Instead of offering still another interpretation of the novel, Quirk (English, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia) approaches it from different angles: its origin and difficult seven-year gestation; the way Twain's identification with Huck helped shape his autobiographical writing; the character of Jim as it mirrors Twain's complex view of African Americans; the novel's relation to 19th-century American realism; and its impact on Willa Cather, Ring Lardner, and Langston Hughes. Clear, occasionally witty, and free of academic jargon, Quirk's essays offer new ways to view a century-old classic.
- Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, Mo.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Coming to Grips with HUCKLEBERRY FINN provides an illuminating vision of both the character and the book--a vision telling in its unpretentiousness, its clarity, and its grace. Readers who believe they know Huckleberry Finn well will be surprised at how much they learn."--James M. Cox

"I think that readers will find this a 'book' rather than a collection, a book that demonstrates prolonged, open-minded musing about Twain's novel rather than forcing some idea toward wordy originality. It is highly, highly intelligent, quietly urbane, thought-provoking, original, and totally independent of dogma and fashion."--Louis J. Budd

"Tom Quirk's richly speculative and lucid study confronts the reader with new lights and sidelights on those central artifacts of American culture: Huckleberry Finn, Huck, Jim, and the man who created them."--American Literature

"Quirk's essays are not of the ivory tower kind. That is, his provocative ideas are the kind meant to spark classroom discussion. I intend to use my well-marked copy of the text to do just that."--David Tomlinson, Mark Twain Forum

"Quirk is an accomplished critic, as the audience of this work will discover. However, he is also a reader who writes as a reader and for readers. In doing so he offers a nice swath of ground where critics, scholars, and readers can sit together as they contemplate once again the world of a novel that never seems settled."--The Twainian

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: University of Missouri (June 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826210333
• ISBN-13: 978-0826210333
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,616,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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