false 3 4 false false Mon Apr 21 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 11 09:22:02 -0700 2007 Wed Jul 02 09:08:09 -0700 2008
You'll love it, because without a doubt, Clinch has a talent as a writer. He feels like a modern-day Faulkner. His language is fluid, poetic, evocative, and then in an instant, sparse and nearly mechanical it its accuracy and sharpness.

You will hate it because it is so very brutal. Many reviewers have noted the violence of Finn, suggesting stridently, but somewhat obliquely, that they were ill-prepared for the violence in the novel. As a womyn of color reading this novel, I felt extremely uncomfortable with the character positioning of womyn of color: as victims who are viciously mistreated at the hands of Finn.

According to Mary Gaitskill, "Finn is as dark, as brutal, as ambivalent, and as insane as the history and legacy of American racial slavery. It is also graceful, imaginative, and relentlessly intelligent." Finn is indeed brutal and in my opinion, the book goes beyond dark, it is macabre, revealing scenes that literally caused me to have a visceral physical reaction. Yet, without a doubt, Clinch’s literary skill is evident. Language pops – is evocative, harsh, subtle, and as Gaitskill notes, graceful – even as it reveals horrors.

It is interesting that while the question of Huck's multiracial heritage is a debatable piece for many readers, the issue of brutal violence - the pornographic violence visited on Mary (Huck's mother) is not as often discussed. For me, this is why I have such an ambivalent reaction to the book. In a literary sense, it is crafted with sophistication and verve - a definite experiment in stretching the narrative style of the novel, and further juxtaposing it from the original. The violence, however, visited on the Black characters in the novel - Mary, her father, the Black people in "the Bottom," I found confusing, gratuitous, and horrifying.

In his review of Finn, William J. Cobb says, “Clinch's story focuses on Huckleberry Finn's father, here identified simply as Finn. Alcoholic, murderer, rapist and world-class ne'er-do-well, Finn is as despicable and unwholesome as they come. In the Author's Note, Clinch acknowledges "this is Finn's book," and the novel is certainly permeated by the whiskey-breath of Clinch's (not Twain's) creation, being a gruesome tale of sexual abuse, murder and dismemberment. As a revisionist statement, it provides an update on the curse of slavery, although at times it reads like a 19th-century classic retold as torture porn.” (Reimagining Huck's bad dad: Dark revision of Twain classic could use dose of the master's optimism. WILLIAM J. COBB. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life...). The racialized sex scenes, import so many issues of power and privilege, topped with Finn’s, the author’s, the society’s, (it’s confusing to know whose vision of brutality this truly is, and who the author intends us to contribute this vision of violence to) voyeuristic and pornographic gaze turned constantly on the Black citizens in the novel. Too often, I found myself discomfited. Felt an unruly reaction within my gut. As a reader, I felt I had little defense against a truly profound fantasy (made real by Pap Finn’s actions) of violence against Black womyn. I wonder then, is the author trying to bring that abuse to light? Trying to reveal the entanglement of race, class, gender and power in U.S. society – through one of the most beloved and controversial American novels?

I found myself wondering about the author. Why this level of detail of the violence? Why Black female characters who acquiesce and appear so one-dimensional (for that matter, why such one-dimensional female characters overall. The only female character, truly drawn is the Widow Douglas.) Does Pap Finn have an excuse for his behavior because of his own emotionally abusive childhood? How can the author suggest that he feels the book should be taught in high school classes (and he is actively seeking to get it added to the curriculum), when it has so much degradation - uses the n-word so liberally)? As Clinch explains on his blog, thehorsehaircouch, “Now that a lower-cost edition is available, I'm hoping to see it adopted into more and more college and high school classes. The hardcover has already made a good dent -- and that's a tough road, so the signs are good.” This I found particularly troubling.

To assume that high school students will grasp the nuances of such graphic scenes, and that teachers will be able to guide and teach Finn in a way, that those nuances will flatten, evolve and reveal themselves, is, I think, a rather tall (and unrealistic order), which I think places students, particularly students of color at a pedagogical disadvantage. Does that mean the Huckleberry Finn will be replaced? What would that mean? What are high school students supposed to pull from the novel? Unlike Twain’s original, Finn, is not a period book. It’s not placed in a historical context, which make the messages, race dynamics, politics, and themes more rich and bountiful for study and dissection. It makes me wonder if the author truly understands what he's written: the power of the fantasy of the brutalized, captured, raped, and then ultimately submissive Black slave woman; freed only by lies, deception, of the giving up of her own life and body.

Pap Finn, drawn in parallel to his own father and brother, appears pathological. The violence, is pathological. This suggests too that Pap Finn's family was a deeply unhealthy family. His brother never leaves home, the wife is cowed, the Judge has complete control. Another interesting tidbit, that may indeed feel gimmicky, is that the parentage of Pap Finn's mother is rather suggestive of a multiracial identity - afterall she's from Philadelphia. Instead of going down the road of multiracial identity however, the author draws out the class dynamics that spur the judge to work so hard.

I hated Huckleberry Finn as a high school student (after having been asked one too many times, for the "Black perspective a.k.a what might Jim think/feel), what I read and pulled from the book always seemed far more complex, tangled, and resonant than the simple story so many of my classmates, all of whom were white, seemed to enjoy about a boy getting out into the wild and having adventures. Twain was far more complicated than that. Huckleberry Finn when read for nuance, history, and social dynamics - when taught well, is far more complex than that.

That said, I am not a fan of censorship or banning books. I am, however, extremely uncomfortable with suggesting that Finn would be good to add to a high school curriculum.

For me it's less about the believability of Huck being biracial. In fact, I didn't find it difficult to "suspend disbelief," around at all. Why not? U.S. history is one abundant with tangled race and identity complexities. Huck is so young and traumatized by the loss of his family - by the violence that he witnesses, why wouldn't he forget his parentage? What Clinch does is bring a psychological aspect to the novel, which adds edges and angles to the "wayward" boy that Huck represents. I wonder, how much race impacts how one reads both Huckleberry Finn - and now this new take Clinch offers us?
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