Zoom Reading the Western Landscape Community Book Discussion

“[The book] is special because [the authors] infuse the searing brutality of casual racism with humor that’s appropriately deprecating & lighthearted. They have delightful banter & include much-needed asides about their fascinating upbringing as Black middle class nerds in Omaha. [It] feels like true kinship for Black readers. They will feel shaken to the core at the number of stories they have in common, but [they] offer …the comfort of talking to a friend who also understands our frustrations & feelings.—Bri Little, South Seattle Emerald

*A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND INDIE NEXT PICK* Now a writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Amber Ruffin writes with her sister Lacey Lamar with humor and heart to share absurd anecdotes about everyday experiences of racism.  Amber Ruffin lives in New York, where she is no one’s First Black Friend and everyone is, as she puts it, “stark raving normal.” But Amber’s sister Lacey? She’s still living in their home state of Nebraska, and trust us, you’ll never believe what happened to Lacey. From racist donut shops to strangers putting their whole hand in her hair, from being mistaken for a prostitute to being mistaken for Harriet Tubman, Lacey is a lightning rod for hilariously ridiculous yet all-too-real anecdotes. She’s the perfect mix of polite, beautiful, petite, and Black that apparently makes people think “I can say whatever I want to this woman.” And now, Amber and Lacey share these entertainingly horrifying stories through their laugh-out-loud sisterly banter. Painfully relatable or shockingly eye-opening (depending on how often you have personally been followed by security at department stores), this book tackles modern-day racism with the perfect balance of levity and gravity.

Choose the edition to read between the two editions and read to the end of chapter 21. “As often is the case when two … annotated texts of the same novel are published fairly close together, each will get more attention for the strengths and weaknesses of the other. …[Hearn’s edition] easily contains the most background information …Fischer and Salamo, …add 32 pages of manuscript revisions and thoughts on same at the end of their text. …Hearn gives his [annotations] in a split text manner … The Fischer and Salamo annotations are presented … at the end of the book…”—Errol Sull, Twainweb.net

A sumptuous new edition of the great American novel. “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” Ernest Hemingway once declared. First published in 1885, the book has delighted millions of readers, while simultaneously riling contemporary sensibilities,and is still banned in many schools and libraries. Now, Michael Patrick Hearn, author of the best-selling The Annotated Wizard of Oz, thoroughly reexamines the 116-year heritage of that archetypal American boy, Huck Finn, and follows his adventures along every bend of the mighty Mississippi River. Hearn’s copious annotations draw on primary sources including the original manuscript, Twain’s revisions and letters, and period accounts.Reproducing the original E. W. Kemble illustrations from the first edition, as well as countless archival photographs and drawings,some of them previously unpublished, The Annotated Huckleberry Finn is a book no family’s library can do without; it may well prove to be the classic edition of the great American novel. 274 illustrations, two-color throughout.

October 27, 2021

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain; E. W. Kemble (Illustrator); John J. Harley (Illustrator); Victor Fischer (Editor); Lin Salamo (Editor); Harriet E. Smith (Editor); Walter Blair (Editor), The Mark Twain Library Ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Part 2.

Continue the edition you read for part one and read chapter 22 to the end. “… ‘The Only Authoritative Text’ that appears on the Fischer & Salamo cover, it is just that. [This] edition … is the only text to rely exhaustively on the available documentary evidence (not limited to original manuscript alone, but also including changes Twain made on the typescript he sent to the printers) to ascertain, at every point, how Mark Twain wanted his text to read, not just in words but also in its punctuation, spelling, and emphasis on words. Hearn does not go this far–his text being essentially a reprint of the first American edition (1885).”—Errol Sull, Twainweb.net

This is the first edition of Huckleberry Finn ever to be based on Mark Twain’s entire original manuscript–including its first 663 pages, which had been lost for more than a hundred years when they were discovered in 1990 in a Los Angeles attic. The text of the Mark Twain Library edition (first published in 1985) has been re-edited using this manuscript, restoring thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation that had been corrupted by Mark Twain’s typist, typesetters, and proofreaders. The revised Mark Twain Library Huckleberry Finn is sure to become the standard edition for all students and readers of Mark Twain. The authoritative new edition of this beloved work includes all of the 174 first-edition illustrations by Edward Windsor Kemble, which the author called “rattling good.” It also contains a new gathering of manuscript pages, photographically reproduced, and an appendix of passages from the manuscript, including the long-lost “ghost story,” which illustrate how extensively Mark Twain revised his work. The editors have also revised and updated their explanatory notes, the maps of the Mississippi River valley, and the glossary of slang and dialect words. The story of Huck and his companion Jim, a runaway slave, as they travel down the Mississippi to escape from slavery and “sivilization” has been delighting readers around the world since Twain first published it in 1885. Simply put, it is a masterpiece: revolutionary in its narrative method, surpassingly funny, and at the same time deeply perceptive about human nature. No other American novel of the nineteenth century still commands so vast an audience, and certainly no other retains the capacity to stir controversy with its sharp satire on American racism.

A Responsible Critical Text–To produce this authoritative critical text, the editors studied all aspects of Mark Twain’s manuscript, working notes, proof sheets, and letters. To judge the authority of every variant, they created a unique electronic database that made it possible to analyze–by speaker and date of composition–every word in the manuscript and first edition.

An Inside View of How Mark Twain Wrote Huckleberry Finn–The new appendixes of “Three Passages” and “Manuscript Facsimiles” will give teachers and students as well as the general reader a close-up view of Mark Twain’s writing process. They can follow the evolution of three key passages, as the author searched for the right word, the truest dialect, and the most telling description.