He prefers the colored.

A conversation between Sam Clemens and his daughter Jean, as told by Clemens to his penpal Helene Picard.
Jean speaks first:

===========

"You have said the Virgin Mary was not white."

"Very well, where's the harm?"

"Why, it's shocking!"

"You numskull! What is there about it that's shocking?"

"Can't you see, Papa? The idea of saying the Mother of the Savior was colored! It's sacrilegious."

"Sac -- oh, nonsense! Jean, in her day the population of the globe was not more than a thousand millions. Not one-tenth of them were white. What does the fact suggest to you?"

"I -- I don't know. What does it suggest, Papa?"

"It most powerfully suggests that white was not a favorite complexion with God. Has it since become a favorite complexion with Him? No. The population of the globe is now fifteen hundred millions; one thousand and six millions of those people are colored -- two thirds, you see, of the human race. There was not a white person in Nazareth when I was there, except a foreign priest. The people were very dark. Don't you suppose they are the descendants of Mary's townsmen? Of course the are. Now what have you to say, Jean?"

"Well, I can't help it, Papa; the idea of a colored Mother of the Saviour is still revolting, and you must change it."

"My dear, I won't. To my mind one color is just as respectable as another; there is nothing important, nothing essential, about a complexion. I mean, to me. But with the Deity it is different. He doesn't think much of white people. He prefers the colored. Andrea del Sarto's pink-and-lily Madonnas revolt Him, my child. That is, they would, but He never looks at them."

Completed!

I finally have the HUCK FINN script completed. Now comes the readings and rewritings. But I'm pretty pleased with this first draft, so I'm hoping rewrites will also be relatively painless.

The Twilight Zone

While I was reading the evasion section of Huckleberry Finn, I was reminded of an episode of The Twilight Zone called It's a Good Life.

Here's the part in the book that reminded me. It's the end of chapter 38:

So Tom was stumped. But he studied it over, and then said Jim would have to worry along the best he could with an onion. He promised he would go to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in Jim's coffee- pot, in the morning. Jim said he would "jis' 's soon have tobacker in his coffee;" and found so much fault with it, and with the work and bother of raising the mullen, and jews-harping the rats, and petting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do on pens, and in- scriptions, and journals, and things, which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook, that Tom most lost all patience with him; and said he was just loadened down with more gaudier chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn't know enough to appreciate them, and they was just about wasted on him. So Jim he was sorry, and said he wouldn't behave so no more, and then me and Tom shoved for bed.

Basically what we have here is a kid, about twelve or thirteen, who puts the life of a man in jeopardy because he wants to have an exciting adventure. And when the man complains about the silly or even dangerous ideas the boy comes up with, the boy becomes angry with the man, and the man must apologize.

Twain doesn't spell it out, and I seriously doubt he meant the scenario to be taken this way, but I find it hard not to see this scene as one in which a man is humoring a child because he thinks that the child will help him get his freedom back. Of course as we find out at the very end of the novel, Jim has already been set free by his owner in her will, and Tom Sawyer knows this, but doesn't tell so that he can have fun. His selfishness almost results in Jim being lynched.

That's why I'm reminded of this episode of The Twilight Zone:

Now I'd like to introduce you to some of the people of Peaksville, Ohio. This is Mr. Fremont. It's in his farmhouse that the monster resides. This is Mrs. Fremont. And this is Aunt Amy, who probably had more control over the monster in the beginning than almost anyone. But one day she forgot. She began to sing aloud. Now, the monster doesn't like singing, so his mind snapped at her, and turned her into the smiling, vacant thing you're looking at now. She sings no more. And you'll note that the people in Peaksville, Ohio, have to smile.They have to think happy thoughts and say happy things because, once displeased, the monster can wish them into a cornfield or change them into a grotesque walking horror. This particular monster can read minds you see. He knows every thought, he can feel every emotion. Oh yes, I did forget something didn't I.

This is the monster. His name is Anthony Fremont. He's six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guiless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you'd better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind tem is absolutely in charge. This, is the Twilight Zone."

Interestingly, the town in which Tom prosecutes his "evasion" is Pikesville - similar to Peaksville.

Doo doo doo doo - doo doo doo doo!

HUCK FINN reading

I had another reading of HUCK FINN at NYCPlaywrights Wednesday and it went pretty well. I was curious to see how Roxana would go over - nobody realized I borrowed her from Puddin'head Wilson. I guess I'm not too surprised. Many people haven't even read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, especially not recently, and that's the Great American Novel, so it's no wonder that they haven't read Puddin'head, a much lesser work.

I have completely changed "the Evasion" section of the story. There's an evasion now, but it's in earnest, and Jim evades without the "help" of Tom Sawyer.

Reviews of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Right from the beginning, the book was seen as a story for children - or rather for boys. As the Athenaeum said

For some time past Mr. Clemens has been carried away by the ambition of seriousness and fine writing. In Huckleberry Finn he returns to his right mind, and is again the Mark Twain of old time. It is such a book as he, and he only, could have written. It is meant for boys; but there are few men (we should hope) who, once they take it up, will not delight in it. It forms a companion or sequel, to Tom Sawyer.

The Atlantic said

Mark Twain's new book for young folks, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (C.L. Webster & Co.), is in some sense a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, though each of the two stories is complete in itself.

And because of this perception, many reviewers were very upset by the book, as in this one from The San Francisco Evening Bulletin:

The author starts out by telling his juvenile readers that there are some lies in his book--that most people lie, and that it is not very bad after all. Of course the warning is timely that persons attempting to seek a moral in the story should be banished.

And Life wrote this sarcastic piece:

A very refined and delicate piece of narration by Huck Finn, describing his venerable and dilapidated 'pap' as afflicted with delirium tremens, rolling over and over, 'kicking things every which way,' and 'saying there are devils ahold of him.' This chapter is especially suited to amuse the children on long, rainy afternoons.

Finally, the book was banned from the Concord Public Library on the grounds that it was inapproporiate for children. Louisa May Alcott (author of 'Little Women') a member of the library's council said 'If Mr. Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them.'

But the San Francisco Chronicle defended the book, saying

The action of the Concord Public Library in excluding Mark Twain's new book, 'Huckleberry Finn,' on the ground that it is flippant and irreverent, is absurd. The managers of this library evidently look on this book as written for boys, whereas we venture to say that upon nine boys out of ten much of the humor, as well as the pathos, would be lost.

The N word

The N word, "nigger" is used freely and often in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and so an N word policy has to be developed by anybody doing an adaptation of the story. Some versions leave out the word entirely. I left it in because I feel it's authentic, however repulsive it is. My own policy was to allow the unsavory characters like The Duke and The King to use the word more often than Huck or Jim. The only exception is when Huck is trying to decide whether to write a letter to Miss Watson (Jim's owner) telling her where Jim can be found. During that scene, he's trying to harden himself against Jim - using the "N" word is a good way to represent his attempt to dehumanize Jim.



After a recent reading of the play somebody suggested that the N word is no longer quite so taboo since the movie Pulp Fiction. Perhaps in some circles, but plenty of people are still scandalized by the word, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing. It's certainly more offensive, to me at least, than the F word.

Disney's Huck Finn

I saw Disney's 1995 travesty of the Huck Finn story last night. There was so much that was wrong, I don't know where to begin.

The casting was wrong - Elijah Woods looks like he's about 7 years old. Although Twain never says exactly how old Huck was, he should be at least 12 or 13.

UPDATE: Twain described Huck Finn as a 12-year-old to William Dean Howells

In the opening scene, Huck is in a fistfight with another boy. This is so wrong. Although Tom Sawyer got into fistfights, the striking thing about Huck was that he was never portrayed as fighting anybody.

Instead of $6,000 in robbers gold, they instead give him $600 from his recently deceased, religious mother. The only thing we ever know from Twain about Huck's mother was that she was dead, and never learned how to read.

I thought it was fascinating that in the trailer that came with the DVD, they show a clip where Miss Watson threatens Huck with 'the bad place' and Huck says he wishes he was there. This scene was completely excised from the final cut.

But most egregiously, they completely cut out the most dramatic, pivotal scene in the entire story - where Huck has to make a choice between doing what his society says is right, and helping Jim and as a result, going to hell.

This is always the problem with adaptations of the Huck Finn story. People believe it's a story for children, and so bowlderize it freely to make it palatable for children, and most importantly, for their parents. No Disney film is going to allow the free and easy parodying of religion as a force for evil, or point out how integral slavery was to the antebellum South. So they not only have Jim teaching Huck that slavery is wrong, they have Widow Douglas explain to Huck at the end of the story that slavery is wrong.

By trying to cram an adult story into children's clothes, they strangle the life out of it.

And I have to wonder if Peter Jackson saw the Huck Finn film before starting on Lord of the Rings. The scene where Huck is lying in bed, recuperating from a bullet to the back (in the book it was Tom Sawyer, shot in the leg), receiving friends when he wakes looked exactly like the scene in Return of the King when Frodo is waking up and sees Gandalf and Sam.

The disappearance of Tom Sawyer

The University of Virginia has a very good site devoted to Mark Twain, call Mark Twain in His Times, including an examination of his works. In the section on Tom Sawyer there is an exhibit of various film versions of the Tom Sawyer story throughout the years.


Tom Sawyer was once so popular that the 1931 movie "Huckleberry Finn" sticks Tom on the raft with Huck and Jim. And Jim doesn't show up in the advertisting art. But the author notes:

most Americans born since 1975 mainly know Tom through Huck's novel, and know the plot of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer only through the Disney film that ends the list below. In another generation it might be time for Tom to say, "You don't know about me except you have read a book by the name of 'Huckleberry Finn.'"

The latest Disney version of Huck's story doesn't include Tom Sawyer at all - and neither does my play. My reasons are probably somewhat different from Disney's, but I'll have to watch the Disney version and see what they do about the necessary change in story line due to Tom's disappearance.

Huck Finn advertising flyer

See a larger version here.

It's curious that the flyer makes it sound as if Tom Sawyer is a bigger part of the story than he is. The flyer says:
In the abstract, the book is the story of the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and a negro named Jim, who in their travels fall in with two tramps engaged in TAKING IN the different country towns through which they pass, by means of the missionary dodge, the temperance crusade, or under an pretext that offers to EASILY raise a dishonest dollar.
The writer follows these characters through their various adventures, until we find the tramps properly and warmly clothed - WITH A COAT OF TAR AND FEATHERS - and the boys and Jim escape their persecutors and return safely to their friends.