Huckleberry Finn

You want my opinion of “Huckleberry Finn?” That takes a long explanation. Just prior to World War II, My dad read Huck’s story to me nightly, three times in a row, when I was just four years old! Growing up in Kirkwood, Missouri, just before WWII, I became a life-long Mark Twain fan.

My father was a policeman, fingerprint expert and former boxer. He had only a fifth grade education himself.  But he set me on course to become a professional writer and editor in newspaper writing, public relations, and editing Government publications. (When I started school, dad had me read to him, saying his eyes were weak, his way of encouraging my lifelong reading habit.)

 

Growing up in suburban St. Louis, I got to know people of character and those who were just “characters.” I volunteered, for example, to help the janitor at my Catholic Grade School move furniture after class. That 50-something janitor told me of his youthful adventures, real or partly imagined, moving log rafts on the Mississippi. Remind you of anyone?

 

Both Huck and Tom Sawyer were among my youthful companions growing up. And I passed on my dad’s example of storytelling to nieces and nephews, and then to my two sons, one of whom followed in my footsteps as a technical writer. (Both sons are well-educated professionals, who also love stories and their own forms of adventures, traveling “at home and abroad.”)

 

Experts say “Huckleberry Finn” is the great American novel. People should also read “Puddin’ Head Wilson” and other Samuel Clemens (Twain) stories. Twain’s cousin Cyril Clemens lived in my hometown and was a minor writer in his own right, having interviewed Benito Mussolini prior to WWII. I was aware of this, though never talked to him, when I sat behind him at early mass.

Later, at the University of Missouri, where I majored in History and took writing and literature courses; one of my favorite teachers was John Neihardt who wrote about the plains Indians. Mark Twain, in his own right, wrote about an early America where he seriously satirized the racial divide. My own view is that he helped to set the stage, conformed in my own experience, for a fully integrated society.