Pudd'nhead Wilson (Bantam Classics) [Paperback]

Mark Twain (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 1, 1984 | Series: Bantam Classics

At the beginning of Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant's son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's.  From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels.  On its surface, Pudd'nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery:  reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution.  Yet it is not a mystery novel.  Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes.  Written in 1894, Pudd'nhead Wilson glistens with characteristic Twain humor, with suspense, and with pointed irony:  a gem among the author's later works.

Editorial Reviews

Review

(in full The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins) Novel by Mark Twain, originally published as Pudd'nhead Wilson, A Tale (1894). A story about miscegenation in the antebellum South, the book is noted for its grim humor and its reflections on racism and responsibility. Roxana, a light-skinned mixed-race slave, switches her baby with her white owner's baby. Her natural son, Tom Driscoll, grows up in a privileged household to become a criminal who finances his gambling debts by selling her to a slave trader and who later murders his putative uncle. Meanwhile, Roxy raises Valet de Chambre as a slave. David ("Pudd'nhead") Wilson, an eccentric lawyer, determines the true identities of Tom and Valet. As a result Roxy is exposed, Wilson is elected mayor, Tom is sold into slavery, and Valet, unfitted for his newly won freedom, becomes an illiterate, uncouth landholder. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

From the Publisher

At the beginning of Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant's son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's. From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels. On its surface, Pudd'nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery: reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution. Yet it is not a mystery novel. Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes. Written in 1894, Pudd'nhead Wilson glistens with characteristic Twain humor, with suspense, and with pointed irony: a gem among the author's later works.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Classics; 22nd Bantam pt edition (January 1, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553211587
• ISBN-13: 978-0553211580
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.4 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #594,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Twain (1835-1910) was an American humorist, satirist, social critic, lecturer and novelist. He is mostly remembered for his classic novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

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#9 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#38 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

#75 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction

#9 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

#38 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

#75 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Story for all ages October 2, 1998

By [e-mail]

Format:Paperback

Pudd'nhead Wilson is a great story that can be read by those of all ages. For a book that was written over a hundred years ago, it is amazing to see all of the aspects that make todays books and movies so great; a murder, a great court scene, thrilling dectective work, a switched birth, and overall an ironic and surprising ending. Its not a long book and it can be read in one or two sittings. The social overtones in this book also really make you think about race relations today. Twain is a fablous author and although this book is not as great as Huck Finn, if you loved that as I did, you will certainly enjoy Puddn'head Wilson

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Forget Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn... August 23, 2006

By Brian A. Oard

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Huckleberry who?? "Pudd'nhead Wilson" is Mark Twain's best novel. Forget about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and the Connecticut Yankee and those lazy riverboat days on the Mississippi. This is the book that people should think of when they think of Twain. It's a masterpiece of American comedy, as well as a pointed satire of racism and American slavery and an entry in the nature-nurture debate. This is Twain at his best--even better, in my opinion, than the late novella "The Mysterious Stranger."

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Contrived, Curtailed and Quaint. But Delightful. January 24, 2004

By Peter Reeve VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

This was my third Twain novel, after Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Although this is a much later work, the similarities are striking: the contrived plot (we have to believe that two babies, entirely unrelated and one with some African heritage, are so alike that even their father cannot tell them apart), the device of having a male character disguise himself as a woman, the cruel treatment by a boy of his adoptive parents, and so on.

"Pudd'nhead Wilson" is Twain's shortest novel and shows signs of having been pruned. Some characters, -- Rowena, for example -- play a significant part early on, then disappear. Wilson himself plays no part throughout most of the story. My guess is that Twain originally intended a much longer novel, with more incidents and secondary plotlines.

The fingerprint aspects of the story will seem quaint, and often downright inaccurate, to the modern reader, but at the time they must have been quite startling. The technique had not yet been officially adopted by law enforcement. Some of you may remember an episode of "Alias Smith and Jones" in which Hannibal learns about fingerprinting from this book.

A (perhaps the chief) delight of the book is the selection of aphorisms from "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar", appended to each chapter heading. It's a great excuse for Twain to peddle some marvelous quotables. Every reader will choose a favorite; mine is "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry".

The Bantam Classics edition has a very poor introduction by Langston Hughes, consisting mostly of a plot synopsis (fine if you want to remove all suspense from your reading experience) padded out with generous quotations from the text.... Some editorial notes would have been nice too, to help out with a few unfamiliar phrases; this novel is after all more than a hundred years old. I'm sure there must be better editions out there. Read more ›

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Deceiving Appearances and Labels Have Profound Consequences! December 9, 2001

By Donald Mitchell HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Do others ever misjudge you? Did you, as a result, ever have a nickname you didn't like? Did you appreciate that experience? How did you overcome it?

What if you had been switched in the baby nursery at the hospital for another child? How might your life have been different?

These are the kinds of thoughts that will occur to you as you read Pudd'nhead Wilson.

I was attracted to the story after reading about its genesis in the new illustrated biography of Mark Twain.

Pudd'nhead Wilson is tragic story about the consequences of two children being switched at birth in the slave-holding society of the American South. Those who admire the eloquent portrayal of common humanity among African-Americans and whites in Huckleberry Finn will find more examples of this point to delight them in Pudd'nhead Wilson.

Pudd'nhead Wilson was a novel that gave Mark Twain a great many problems. The book started as a short story about Italian Siamese twins with a farcical character, as the drunken twin caused the Prohibitionist one to get into trouble with his woolly headed sweetheart. As Twain turned the story into a novel, the most important characters began to disappear in favor of new characters. Stymied, Twain realized that he had written two stories in one novel. He then excised the original of the two stories in favor of the tragedy, while leaving many satirical and ironic characteristics. Part of this switch no doubt related to Twain's growing pessimism as he grew older and to the personal tragedies and financial difficulties dogged his efforts and life.

Perhaps it is this deep plot difficulty that caused Twain to leave the novel with two rather large flaws, which vastly reduce its effectiveness.... The first flaw is building a plot around switching two children at birth to establish that perceived racial differences and slavery had been unjust. Unfortunately, the "bad" actor in the novel turns out to be the irresponsible Tom Driscoll (ne Valet de Chambre), who is 1/32 African-American but is raised as a white free man. Thus, those readers who wish to believe in racial differences affecting character can point to that underlying racial factor as still being present in explaining the misbehavior in the story . . . despite what appears to have been Twain's opposite intention. Had Twain developed his story to make the false Tom morally equal to his all-white counterpart Chambers (ne Thomas a Beckett Driscoll), the story would have worked much better in condemning racism and slavery. The second flaw involves having the story turn on establishing the unchanging nature of finger prints in a trial conducted in a small Missouri town many decades before that point was scientifically proven and legally accepted.

For us today, the story moves slowly because we know all about fingerprints as a means of identification which makes much of the eventual resolution easy to anticipate, and also because Twain left many unnecessary remnants of his other story in the book.

Despite these weaknesses, the Pudd'nhead Wilson has many brilliant sections that strikingly portray how the concepts and realities of slavery corrupted both African-Americans and slave-holders. Because of thefts in the Driscoll household, the real Tom's father threatens to sell his slaves down the river (a fate to be avoided). When three of them confess, he agrees to sell them locally. Frightened by the potential for her child to be sold in the future, Roxy plans to kill herself and her son. By accident, she realizes that she can successfully switch the two children's clothing, since both of them look the same to Tom's father, and ensure that her son will never be sold, because he will be raised as the master's son, a white person. Many of the ways for rearing white child are bad for Tom, making him spoiled and disagreeable. Chambers does much better on a simple diet, and from performing physical labor. Tom is arrogant and nasty. Chambers is uneducated and cowed. Later, when Tom realizes that he is 1/32 African-American, he begins to behave as a slave would towards white people.

But the story is much broader than that. Pudd'nhead (a derogatory term somewhat like "featherhead") Wilson is thought to be a fool by the townspeople because of something he said about a dog when he first came to town. Because of that perception, his legal career is delayed by 20 years . . . even though he is actually quite bright. In other areas of the story, a man dresses as women and a woman dresses as a man. A thief has his booty stolen from him, so he is also the victim. In many ways, the story reminds me of Shakespeare's many comedies and tragedies about misperceptions being harmful to all concerned.

Although you will not think this is one of Mark Twain's best books, it is one that will encourage you to have many valuable thoughts about questioning labels and assumptions that we apply to one another. For example, if someone is not very quick to grasp certain widely-accepted points, we may feel the person is stupid. The person may actually be able to grasp many nuances that make the situation ambiguous, and be the opposite of stupid. Or someone who is slow in one way may be a positive genius in other ways. Yet a label may be attached that is the opposite.

Keep an open mind, and observe vastly more about what is going on . . . and be able to create vastly better results!

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Puddin' Head is full of fun! December 17, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Library Binding

Puddin' Head Wilson, by Mark Twain, is full of fun twists and laughs. You will either extremely love or hate the characters in this novel. Puddin' Head gets a bad start in the town that he has recently moved to- to be a lawyer. Puddin' Head doesn't give up even when times are bad; you just have to admire that perserveerance! I believe that this was a wonderful book that is a timely classic.