Published in 1884, Huck Finn has become one of the most widely taught novels in American curricula. But where did Huckleberry Finn come from, and what made it so distinctive? Shelley Fisher Fishkin suggests that in Huckleberry Finn, more than in any other work, Mark Twain let African-American voices, language, and rhetorical traditions play a major role in the creation of his art. In Was Huck Black?, Fishkin combines close readings of published and unpublished writing by Twain with intensive biographical and historical research and insights gleaned from linguistics, literary theory, and folklore to shed new light on the role African-American speech played in the genesis of Huckleberry Finn. Given that book's importance in American culture, her analysis illuminates, as well, how the voices of African-Americans have shaped our sense of what is distinctively "American" about American literature. Fishkin shows that Mark Twain was surrounded, throughout his life, by richly talented African-American speakers whose rhetorical gifts Twain admired candidly and profusely. A black child named Jimmy whom Twain called "the most artless, sociable and exhaustless talker I ever came across" helped Twain understand the potential of a vernacular narrator in the years before he began writing Huckleberry Finn, and served as a model for the voice with which Twain would transform American literature. A slave named Jerry whom Twain referred to as an "impudent and satirical and delightful young black man" taught Twain about "signifying"--satire in an African-American vein--when Twain was a teenager (later Twain would recall that he thought him "the greatest man in the United States" at the time). Other African-American voices left their mark on Twain's imagination as well--but their role in the creation of his art has never been recognized. Was Huck Black? adds a new dimension to current debates over multiculturalism and the canon. American literary historians have told a largely segregated story: white writers come from white literary ancestors, black writers from black ones. The truth is more complicated and more interesting. While African-American culture shaped Huckleberry Finn, that novel, in turn, helped shape African-American writing in the twentieth century. As Ralph Ellison commented in an interview with Fishkin, Twain "made it possible for many of us to find our own voices." Was Huck Black? dramatizes the crucial role of black voices in Twain's art, and takes the first steps beyond traditional cultural boundaries to unveil an American literary heritage that is infinitely richer and more complex than we had thought.
Elaborating on a thesis that made news last summer, Fishkin, professor of American Studies at the University of Texas, convincingly argues that Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was influenced by African American voices. Mixing historical and literary research with close analysis of Twain's writings, Fishkin cites a newly discovered 1874 article by Twain that describes his encounter with a black child whose voice was later echoed by Huck; she also assesses the impact of his childhood friendship with a "signifying" slave named Jerry. Fishkin suggests Twain's blending of black and white voices was unconscious and maintains that his portrayal of "nigger" Jim was more subversive than racist. Though the book seems mainly aimed at academics, it also considers the question of whether Huckleberry Finn should be taught in high school. Black students might now more easily identify with Huck, Fishkin states, but the major African American figure remains the minstrel-voiced Jim. Therefore, she suggests that teachers also expose students to more powerful black voices, such as those of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. Illustrations not seen by PW. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Here is that rarity in criticism, a monograph almost sure to be definitive. Fishkin (American studies, Univ. of Texas, Austin) argues compellingly that an 1874 sketch by Mark Twain, about the black ten-year-old "Sociable Jimmy," served as the model for Huck Finn's African American-rooted dialect--along with "A True Story" (1874), based on a tale by an ex-slave, Mary Ann Cord. There was also a slave Twain knew in boyhood, Jerry, who taught him the African American art of "signifying" satire. Twain's genius with vernacular has always been acknowledged, but Fishkin shows, with formidable scholarship, how black speech (and life) influenced white culture and how, in American literature, the Twain do indeed meet. Recommended for informed readers and scholars. For a perspective on Twain's humor, see Mark Twain's Critical Humor , reviewed below.--Ed. - Kenneth Mintz, Hoboken P.L., N.J. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Shelley Fisher Fishkin's broad, interdisciplinary research interests have led her to focus on topics including the ways in which American writers' apprenticeships in journalism shaped their poetry and fiction; the influence of African American voices on canonical American literature; the need to desegregate American literary studies; American theatre history; the development of feminist criticism; the relationship between public history and literary history; literature and animal welfare; and the challenge of doing transnational American Studies. Although much of her work has centered on Mark Twain, she has also published on writers including Gloria Anzaldua, John Dos Passos, Frederick Douglass, Theodore Dreiser, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Erica Jong, Maxine Hong Kingston, Tillie Olsen, and Walt Whitman.
Dr. Fishkin is a Professor of English and Director of the Program in American Studies at Stanford University. After receiving her B.A.from Yale College (summa cum laude, phi beta kappa), she stayed on at Yale for a masters degree in English and a Ph.D. in American Studies, and was Director of the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism there. She taught American Studies and English at the University of Texas from 1985 to 2003, and was Chair of the Department of American Studies. She is a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, England, where she was a Visiting Fellow, and has twice been a Visiting Scholar at Stanford's Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She has been awarded an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, was a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Japan, and was the winner of a Harry H. Ransom Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Texas.
Dr. Fishkin is the author, editor or co-editor of over forty books and has published over eighty articles, essays and reviews. Her work has been translated into Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Georgian, and Italian, and has been published in English-language journals in Turkey, Japan, and Korea. She is the author of: From Fact to Fiction: Journalism and Imaginative Writing in America (winner of a Frank Luther Mott/Kappa Tau Alpha Award for outstanding research in journalism history) (Johns Hopkins, 1985); Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African-American Voices (selected as an "Outstanding Academic Book" by Choice) (Oxford, 1993); Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture (Oxford, 1997), and Feminist Engagements: Forays Into American Literature and Culture (selected as an "Outstanding Academic Title" by Choice) (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009). She is the editor of the 29-volume Oxford Mark Twain (Oxford, 1996; Paperback reprint edition, 2009), the Oxford Historical Guide to Mark Twain (Oxford, 2002), "Is He Dead?" A New Comedy by Mark Twain (University of California, 2003), Mark Twain's Book of Animals (Univerisity of California Press, 2009), and The Mark Twain Anthology: Great Writers on his LIfe and Work (Library of America, 2010). She is also a producer of the adaptation of Twain's "Is He Dead?" which had its world debut on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre in 2007, and was nominated for a Tony Award. She is the co-editor of Listening to Silences: New Essays in Feminist Criticism (Oxford, 1994); People of the Book: Thirty Scholars Reflect on Their Jewish Identity (Wisconsin, 1996); The Encyclopedia of Civil Rights in America (M.E. Sharpe, 1997); Mark Twain at the Turn of the Century, 1890-1910 (Arizona Quarterly, 2005); 'Sport of the Gods' and Other Essential Writing by Paul Laurence Dunbar (Random House, 2005), Anthology of American Literature, ninth edition (Prentice-Hall, 2006), Concise Anthology of American Literature, seventh edition (Prentice-Hall, 2010), and a special issue of African American Review devoted to the work of Paul Laurence Dunbar (autumn 2007). From 1993 to 2003 she co-edited Oxford University Press's "Race and American Culture" book series with Arnold Rampersad. She was co-founder of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman society, and has been president of the Mark Twain Circle of America and chair of the MLA Nonfiction Prose Division. She recently finished a term as President of the American Studies Association, and gave keynote talks during the last five years at national American Studies conferences in China, Denmark, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. Her research has been featured twice on the front page of the New York Times, and in 2009 she was awarded the Mark Twain Circle's Certificate of Merit "for long and distinguished service in the elucidation of the work, thought, life and art of Mark Twain." She is t a member of the Board of Governors of the Humanities Research Institute of the University of California, and is a founding Editor of the new online Journal of Transnational American Studies [see http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/march11/fishkin-publishes-american-studies-journal-030409.html and http://humanexperience.stanford.edu/twainanimals].
This review is from: Was Huck Black?: Mark Twain and African-American Voices (Oxford Paperbacks) (Paperback)
There is probably no book in American literature more loved and hated than "Huckleberry Finn". Twain's masterpiece has been reviled as a racist rant; parents have tried to get it banned from school libraries, and people have claimed that not only is the book racist, so is its author. But Twain was hardly a racist; Jim is presented as one of the few characters in the book who has real dignity, humanity and common goodness; and Huck learns to see Jim as a friend and a fellowman. But how does Huck reach this epiphany and who did Twain base his character on? In a solidly researched and fascinating book, Shelly Fishkin posits that Huck was based on two young African-Americans Twain knew personally, one a ten year old boy named Jimmy and the other a young slave in Missouri named Jerry.
Jimmy was described in Twain's newspaper article "Sociable Jimmy", which was published in The New York Times in November of 1874. Jimmy's family was employed in a village inn where Twain was staying, and Twain was clearly fascinated by "the most artless, sociable and exhaustless talker I ever came across... I listened as one who receives a revelation." Twain invited Jimmy to sit and chat, and Jimmy planked himself down in an easy chair and proceeded to regale Twain with stories about his family in the inn; in particular, their aversion to having cats around. "When dey ketches a cat bummin' aroun' heah... dey snake him into de cistern -- dey's been cats drownded in dat water dat's in yo' pitcher. I seed a cat in dare yistiddy -- all swelled up like a pudd'n." (Imagine the look on Twains face as Jimmy fed him this tidbit.) As Fishkin shows, Jimmy and Huck share some key characteristics. They both launch into long family narratives to hold their listener's attention. They both have a visceral loathing of violence and cruelty, and they speak with a remarkable similarity. The are both "unpretentious, uninhibited, easily impressed and unusually loquacious." When we close our eyes and listen to Jimmy, we can easily hear Huck in Jimmy's voice.
Jerry was young black man in the 1850's who Twain idolized when he was himself a teenager, much to the dismay and disgust of Twain's mother. Actually, Mom could be a stand-in for Tom Sawyer's Aunt Polly, who didn't want Tom associating with Huck because he was unwashed, uncouth, and the envy of every boy in the neighborhood of good family who admired him and wished they dared to be like him. Here we see Huck as Jerry. Jerry was a master at "signifying", or indirectly satirizing whatever he held in contempt. There is a lot of Jerry in the characters of both Huck and Jim, who compensate for their lack of formal education with a large store of mother-wit and down to earth common sense.
We don't know if Twain directly based Huck on Jimmy and/or Jerry, and it may be impossible to determine for certain. But there are enough similarities in all three characters to make the point that Twain thoroughly liked and respected both Jimmy and Jerry, and turned some of the best qualities of each of them into one of the most endearing and enduring people in all of American fiction.
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This review is from: Was Huck Black?: Mark Twain and African-American Voices (Oxford Paperbacks) (Paperback)
The high-toned wording of the Kirkus Review might just turn you off of the this book before having given it a chance... and that would be a great loss. I've read the review three times now and I still can't tell if it is praising the book or condemning it. Ms. Fisher-Fishkin's prose is very readable and this book can be enjoyed by plain ol' Twain fans and academia alike.
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First Sentence:
Twentieth-century American criticism abounds in pronouncements about how Twain's choice of a vernacular narrator in Huckleberry Finn transformed modern American literature. Read the first pageKey Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
blue vittles, dat steeple, natural racial hierarchy, dialect geographers, southwestern humorists, git drunk, negro speech, white speech, black dialect, dialect writing, negro dialect, jubilee songs, serial verbs, tense marking, black speech, vernacular speech, racial discourse
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, Was Huck Black, Sociable Jimmy, Black English, True Story, Tom Sawyer, United States, Aunt Rachel, Huck Finn, New York, Mary Ann Cord, Tom Blankenship, African Americans, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Atlantic Monthly, New World, Uncle Remus, Kenneth Lynn, Standard English, David Bradley, Quarry Farm, The Bancroft Library, Black John
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