Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

1885, 1987 Signet Classic edition
Mark Twain
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer's Comrade
Probably bought new for $1.75
Very tattered paperback with back cover probably going to come off with another reading or two
B-

Not only isn't this The Great American Novel, it's not even as good as I remember.  I do appreciate the irony of Huck's situation, that he has to do "wrong" to do good, in this case not turning in Miss Watson's "property," the slave Jim.  I also enjoy the "King" and the "Duke," and how Huck reacts to their various scams.  However, I find the descriptions of steering up and down the Mississippi to be very confusing, although there are some nice descriptions of nature.  I also get annoyed with Tom Sawyer showing up in the last part of the book to "free" Jim using a very elaborate scheme, when Huck could release Jim in minutes, and it turns out that Tom knows all along that Miss Watson has already freed Jim.  And after portraying Jim in a more complex and sympathetic way than most of Twain's contemporaries, it's like a slap in a face when we get the simple-minded slave guarding Jim.

Early in the book, there's a section on "Tom Sawyer's Gang," where Tom explains how they'll embark on a life of crime, and it's very similar to the plan in Tom Sawyer, down to not killing the kidnapped women, who'll fall in love with them. Huck comes across as very chivalrous of women and girls in this book, but he does get the name of Tom's girlfriend wrong, "Bessie Thatcher."