Notwithstanding this, I set upon reading Huckleberry Finn recently. My primary motivation was that I liked the sound of the title, and have always had a strong attraction to stories named after protagonists - I'll always remember a good strong, metrical Huckleberry Finn over the The [Insert Noun] Of [Insert Noun] formula, or anything that relies on the words 'Tiger', 'Heart', 'Love', 'Book', 'History' or 'Piano'. Does this make me shallow?
I'd heard dim rumours of its controversy in book groups, around the use of the 'N' word and the possibility of censorship. Laziness prevents me googling to put flesh on these rumours, but suffice to say that the use of offensive language is if anything the least potentially offensive thing about the novel. Publishers dream of novels that have 'Book Club Potential' - that will divide opinion and provoke debate, and if ever there were a novel that could do that, this must be the one.
Like many others, my own idea of discussions of American race issues was initially informed by Harper Lee at school. While To Kill A Mockingbird is undoubtedly a fine novel, its black and white treatment of black and white seems to reflect something like a patrician attitude on behalf of white people. I think can think of enough reasons why I might have written the story the same way - not least that it is dramatically stronger for a persecuted minority to be defended by another party whose selfish interest lies elsewhere, than for each character to simply be fighting for their own interests. Yet one can't be human without feeling uncomfortable about the rather cardboard nature of black representation in that novel.
This is at least as true of Huckleberry Finn. There's no doubt that the escaped slave Jim is described in terms that have him childlike in his ignorance and innocence, and it's not merely the attitude of the narrator colouring our perception of him. But this is a different kind of novel - one both bolder, and more subtle. There is not a white character to be found who we could acquit of racism; not one who would consider an accusation of 'abolitionist' to be anything other than the vilest slur on their character. Even Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, though risking all to protect Jim, are products of their environment, and Twain does not flinch from showing us Huck Finn's upside-down moral struggle of what he believes is right (ownership of slaves as property) against what he feels is right, but to him is intellectually immoral (helping Jim to evade capture). Under Tom Sawyer's direction, there is the darkest satire of good intentions; the two boys conspire to free Jim in the most inefficient, 'stylish' way possible, such that Jim is reduced to the status of a plaything in a children's adventure. There is apparently no 'learning' to be had; the boys appear not to achieve any kind of conscious moral epiphany. The decent, brave, loyal Huck Finn, even though he has effectively endured slavery himself under his vicious captor and father, never makes the intellectual connection between his experience and escape and Jim's.
The genius of Mark Twain is in telling a tale in which his own view is entirely invisible, and the lessons, such as they are, are revealed only through events and irony. In the end, apart from a rollicking, absorbing adventure story, this is a tale in which the heart is shown a surer guide to morality than the intellect. Twain describes it better; it is "a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat".
It's not a Great American Novel, thank heavens. It's a great novel, full stop. And that, without the capital letters to lessen it, and without a nation, is something altogether greater.
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