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BONUS: Exploring Mark Twain and the Challenges of Teaching Huck Finn
This bonus episode delves into the complexities surrounding Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," particularly why it has faced challenges and bans over the years.
Guest Professor Thomas Smith explores the book's rich historical context, its impact on American literary culture, and the nuances of its language that continue to engage contemporary readers. We also discuss the importance of understanding the societal perspectives during the time the book was written, as well as Twain's own evolving relationship with his audience.
We also touch on Twain's multifaceted career as a writer and celebrity, and set the scene for a future biopic. What do you think - is this you want to hear on the podcast?
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Special guest on this episode:
- Thomas Smith, Professor of American Literature and Culture and Deputy Director of Area Studies at the University of East Anglia. Welcome back Tom…
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If you like this bonus episode, do go back and listen to the full episode right here:
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Highlights from this episode:
- The discussion emphasizes the importance of understanding the historical context of Huck Finn.
- Tom Smith highlights the engaging use of vernacular language that captivates contemporary readers.
- The conversation explores how Twain's personal experiences influenced his writing and celebrity status.
- Teaching Huck Finn requires navigating complex themes and perspectives from its publication era.
- Twain's humor, while often dark, remains relevant and relatable to modern audiences today.
- The episode suggests that Twain's life and career offer rich insights into 19th-century America.
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Transcript
Hello, and welcome to this little bonus episode, following on from the latest episode of America, a history podcast.
Host:Now, we've recently published why was Huck Finn banned?
Host:And I'm joined now by Tom Smith, who's stayed on the line to discuss this just a little bit more.
Host:Tom, thank you for hanging on.
Tom Smith:Oh, no, it's a pleasure.
Tom Smith:There's a lot to say about Huck Finn, so five to ten more minutes should be doable.
Host:Yeah.
Host:You were saying, actually, before we started recording, just how, like, you were kind of putting this one off for as long as possible because you just didn't know how to cram everything you had to say until, like, 30 minutes.
Tom Smith:That's it.
Tom Smith:I mean, it's just.
Tom Smith:It's a book where once you start talking about some aspects of its history and context, then, you know, that kind of opens up a whole map of american literary culture and critical culture, and just, you have to do justice to all of those parts of its history and its different statuses at different points of its existence.
Tom Smith:And it's one of those things where if you spend a lot of time too close to a subject, then it's one of those classic, can you see the wood for the trees?
Tom Smith:Issues about what people who have not spent many years thinking about this book might be interested in?
Host:Yeah, and that's an interesting point, actually.
Host:I wonder, what do you think someone reading it today for the first time might think about Huck Finn?
Tom Smith:Yeah.
Tom Smith:Gosh, that is an interesting one.
Tom Smith:I mean, I think what's.
Tom Smith:What's really arresting about the book is immediately that use of language.
Tom Smith:The fact that Twain hits you immediately with this.
Tom Smith:This vernacular dialect America, and that kind of force of voice and personality you have on the first page, I think, is still immediately engaging and immediately arresting.
Tom Smith: ht engage with still from the: Tom Smith:And, you know, one, you always hesitate to say that anything published in the 19th century is actively funny, but there are still, I think, bits of this book which are.
Tom Smith:Which are funny and which are, you know, bleakly funny or, you know, darkly funny, but nonetheless, it's a book that has a lot of humor in it alongside, you know, everything else that's going on in there.
Tom Smith:And I, you know, I.
Tom Smith:Again, it's, you know, always difficult to say something's funny, but, you know, I think some of that still, still carries over into the 21st century.
Host:Yeah.
Host:And there must be that additional challenge, you know, as a teacher sort of teaching this book in really any book from that far ago that you're not just teaching and reading it as a sort of piece of literature in isolation.
Host:You're also, at the same time, trying to understand the context and the perspectives at the time in which it was produced and published, because that's.
Host:That's so important to just understanding what's being written, right?
Tom Smith:Oh, yeah, definitely.
Tom Smith:I mean, I'm always.
Tom Smith:I'm always big on context.
Tom Smith:That's if anyone who's been one of my seminars or, in fact, read pretty much anything I've ever written knows that I'm almost obsessively interested in context.
Tom Smith:You know, where do these texts come from?
Tom Smith:You know, how are they.
Tom Smith:How are they received at the time?
Tom Smith:Yeah, those things I find endlessly, endlessly interesting.
Tom Smith:And with Twain and with Huck Finn, this is a book that really does come out of a lot of interesting places.
Tom Smith:You've got all of Twain's youth along the Mississippi river and his time as a steamboat man that's absolutely in there.
Tom Smith:And I think that is another thing that contemporary readers might be interested in, is just the setting, the milieu, the environment, that sense of America that's being transmitted through the massive river that cuts down the middle of the continent.
Tom Smith:You know, there is something extremely evocative about that still, even though you know that, how come Jim's journey does not take them anywhere that you might necessarily want to go?
Tom Smith:There is still something absolutely evocative about some of those scenes on the river.
Tom Smith:That sense of isolation, that sense of freedom.
Tom Smith:Those things are still captivating.
Tom Smith:So, yes, you've got that built in there.
Tom Smith:You've got a whole trajectory of american children's literature built in there.
Tom Smith:You've got a whole history of american vernacular built in there, history of american comedy built in there.
Tom Smith:Just a history of Twain as a celebrity and an author.
Tom Smith:And where this book sits in relation to that, you know, all of that's in there.
Tom Smith:And he's such a mesmerizing personality, I think, that, you know, you know, he's an easy author to devote a career to, in some senses, just to studying, because, you know, there's so many phases to his life, to his writing, to his career.
Tom Smith:He writes in so many different styles over a number of decades.
Tom Smith:You know, he's a travel writer, he's a historical writer, he's a comic writer, he's a children's writer.
Tom Smith:He's a philosopher.
Tom Smith:You know, all of these things are flowing through him.
Tom Smith:And at the same time, he's living a life that is just unbelievable.
Tom Smith: g in London, first of all, in: Tom Smith:It's just extraordinary, the people he's meeting, the place he's going, the way that he's being received as an american celebrity, as an avatar of America, there is nothing like it in the 19th century.
Host:I think, really, I think we forget that, don't we, that celebrities still existed in the 19th century.
Host:They were just a slightly different form than what we understand celebrity to be today.
Host:And actually, there's a really interesting angle to understanding the books that someone writes based on also their life and their career, which you sort of touched on, because we don't read a Harry Potter book in the same way that we did 20 years ago, because now Harry Potter is a whole brand and its own, and JK Rowling is a whole personality in our own right.
Host:So we understand that a lot differently than we would have if we'd read it blind.
Host:And Jacob Allen was an unknown author, right?
Tom Smith:Sure.
Tom Smith:Yeah.
Tom Smith:Yeah, that's true.
Tom Smith:And, I mean, that's absolutely true.
Tom Smith:In the 19th century as well, you know, you can see audience, you know, London audiences, british audiences taking up Twain's work, you know, engaging with him as a celebrity, thinking of him as an american humorist.
Tom Smith:And at the moment, I'm writing about the time when, you know, London was in love with Twain and Twain was in love with London.
Tom Smith:But over the coming decades, as twain, in a sense, wanted to move out of that pigeonhole that he'd been put into early in his career.
Tom Smith:You know, some interesting tensions developed between him and his british audiences.
Tom Smith: And, you know, in the: Tom Smith: people, and, you know, in the: Tom Smith: l be what he was in the early: Tom Smith:It's ebbs and flows, and he's a way to track, in a sense, the sense of transatlantic friendliness through the reception of his celebrity.
Host:I mean, I think there's a whole, a whole new episode there on just Mark Twain.
Host:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Host:So I think we've just earmarked a future podcast episode.
Tom Smith:We'll need a few episodes, but that would be brilliant.
Tom Smith:Definitely.
Host:Yeah.
Host:Yeah.
Host:Well, I'm pencilling that one in, but yeah.
Host:Tom, thank you so much.
Host:I think, you know, I'm sure you could talk about Huck Finn and Mark Twain and all associated topics all day long, but I'm not going to blow the minds of our Patreon sports too much.
Host:Thank you for joining us for this.
Host:And if you could just remind everyone where they can contact you.
Tom Smith:Yeah, sure.
Tom Smith:Thomasroy Smith.com is probably the best and easiest place to find me.
Host:Wonderful.
Host:Thank you, Tom, for joining me for this and for the main episode as well, which if you haven't listened to yet, please do go and find it and listen to it and follow the show and review us and do all the nice things that would really help other people find it, which would be awesome.
Host:Thank you for continuing to listen and.
