The True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by John Seelye

Book Overview

"Seelye's version seems even
funnier than the original, and also more moving, since Seelye's Huck Finn is
even less sentimental about life and Tom Sawyer than Twain's Huck Finn. He is
also more perceptive about black people than the original."
-- Hughes Rudd, CBS News
"Seelye has stitched together
a whale of a book. Without reference to Twain's own version, it is almost impossible
to see the seams where 1970 joins 1884."
-- Geoffrey Wolff, Newsweek

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252014324
• ISBN13: 9780252014321
• Release Date: December 1987
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A ribald Huck Finn for the 'crikits'

Seelye's tongue-in-cheek rewriting of Twain's classic is a joy to read, in no small part because his Huck as engaging as Twain's. Seelye's project is largely critical discourse--as Huck's introduction to this edition makes clear--but of the best sort. In allowing "the real Huck" to write his own book, Seelye compels us to see the beauty of Twain's. Seelye's Huck cusses and fantasizes in ways that seem natural to readers today but that would have shocked readers in Twain's day. But if his characters are more realistic than Twain's, we see in Seelye's ending just why Twain was compelled to compose such a frustrating close for his novel. A book for all fans of Twain, or Huck. See Seelye's _The Kid_ for a different take on similar themes, Huck Finn and Jim in the Territory.