26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A neglected American masterpiece, October 10, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Puddnhead Wilson : And, Those Extraordinary Twins (The Penguin English Library) (Mass Market Paperback)
It seems like hardly anybody reads Mark Twain anymore, which is a shame, because he has so much to say about American society and human nature. "Pudd'nhead Wilson" is unquestionably one of his greatest books, maybe even his best. It's at least the equal of "Huckleberry Finn," which I had the good fortune to read with a superb high school English teacher in 1975, a year before her department banned it from the school's curriculum because of its supposedly racist portrayal of Jim.
"Pudd'nhead Wilson" manages to be a social satire, a murder mystery, a compelling commentary on race and racism, a brief against slavery, a courtroom drama, and a lifelike portrait of a particular time and place in American history, all packed into a short novel of some 170 pages. The story moves along quickly, hilarious in places and appalling in others. It's hard to understand why this easy-to-follow, entertaining and instructive novel isn't more widely read and appreciated, especially given the importance of race as a topic for thought, discussion and historical inquiry in the United States.
"Pudd'nhead Wilson" is set in a small Mississippi River town in the slave state of Missouri in 1830-1853. The critical event of the story occurs early on, when Roxy, a slave woman caring for two infant boys of exactly the same age, one her son and the other the son of one of the leading citizens of the town, secretly switches their identities. This deception is possible because her son is only 1/32 African-American and appears white (his father is in fact another leading citizen), yet by custom if not by law, the boy is a slave. The deception results in Roxy's son growing up in privileged circumstances, treating blacks with contempt, having the other boy as his personal slave, and attending Yale; yet the son, despite having all the advantages, develops no moral grounding whatsoever, and spends much of his adult life stealing, drinking and gambling. At one point, aware of his true identity but desperately needing money, he sells his own mother "down the river," into a more southerly cotton-growing region where the overseers are said to be especially cruel.
Twain gives us fewer details about the fate of the boy who in reality is all white, but we are made to understand that the boy's upbringing is typical of male slaves: he grows up with violence and degradation, illiterate, and with few skills either for making a living or existing in white society. This proves to be a cruel fate when the deception is exposed. Though he eventually comes into a substantial inheritance, he is never comfortable with or accepted by the town's respectable citizens, yet the prevailing racial code prohibits him from associating too closely with the blacks with whom he grew up.
Pudd'nhead Wilson, a lawyer, exposes the deception during a murder trial. Wilson, the town oddball, is an amateur fingerprinter, and it turns out that he kept the fingerprints he took of the boys before their switch, and is able to prove both their true identities and the identity of the killer. Wilson is the only halfway honorable character in the book; most of the rest, black and white, are exposed as dishonest, selfish and corrupt.
Mark Twain published "Pudd'nhead Wilson" in 1894, but its meaning still resonates today. A book that says so much about the ironies of appearance vs. reality, about the injustices of a rigid racial classification system, about the importance of values and upbringing rather than skin color in the formation of character, and about the realities of American slavery, deserves a more important place in our national literature.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb Puddn, June 27, 2000
This review is from: Puddnhead Wilson : And, Those Extraordinary Twins (The Penguin English Library) (Mass Market Paperback)
Twain was interested in twins and the problem of identity. His pen name "Twain" is an archaic word meaning two. In this enertaining novel he starts out to write about siamese twins who are opposites in taste and temperment, a humorous farce. As he gets on with the story other themes and characters develop and he decides to pull the twins apart, making them ordinary twins, and develop the story into a comedic tragedy. Twain leaves, for whatever reason, plenty of evidence in the story that the twins were siamese. The twins speak of themselves as an only child, are always together even in bed, and are exhibited in Europe for two years when they were children. One twin when explaining why he risked himself to save his brother from murder says "If I had let the man kill him, wouldn't he have killed me, too?. I saved my own life you see." The larger part of the story fixes on Puddnhead Wilson, a local unemployed lawyer, and focuses on the pattern of a folktale of switched infants: the slave child becoming master and the master's child a slave. Roxy, an almost pure white slave, switches her baby for her masters baby so that her boy will escape slavery. Early in the story Tom Driscoll learns that he is really Valet de Chambers a slave and not the son of the leading citizen York Driscoll. Twain uses this novel to slam the stupidity and evil of slavery as well as throw some light and mockery on other foolery of society. Wilson sorts things out due to his passion for finger printing over the years. Sayings from Puddnhead Wilson's calender preface every chapter and are highly enertaining. At the conclusion of this superb novel Puddnhead Wilson comes out on top, but he is about the only one. Possibly Twain's most honest book, a masterpiece!
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Memorable, April 25, 2002
This review is from: Puddnhead Wilson : And, Those Extraordinary Twins (The Penguin English Library) (Mass Market Paperback)
Puddnhead Wilson is a very short book that can bear repeated reading. Not because it is a great literary work (it is) or because it is so important (which it is), but because in it Mark Twain exposes himself -- his nostalgia, his bitterness, his resignation, and his hope for his own life and for post-Civil War America with brutal frankness, and yet humorous approachability.
The novel may be called "Puddnhead Wilson" but the most memorable character is a highly intelligent slave woman named Roxana. Through Roxana and the rest of the townspeople living in a pre-Civil War Missouri, we find some of Mark Twain's most oft-quoted statements among biting characterizations of the American mentality.
I cannot recommend this little book enough. It has its weaknesses (so many critical essays have been written about them that it's unnecessary to discuss them here) but they are really minor and certainly do not detract from the sheer enjoyment and contemplation that it gives the reader. Not to mention that the apologetic forwards to both Puddnhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins are brilliant short letters from Twain on writing.
I cannot speak about Those Extraordinary Twins because I've never been able to get into it, or read past the first chapter. It's extremely odd, being about a circus freak -- siamese twins joined at the hip -- with each side having the complete opposite philosophy and constitution than the other. That is, one side drinks alcohol and doesn't feel affected while the other side gets drunk; each side has different taste in clothing; etc.
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