The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.”
So begins The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1884. It is the first book to be written completely in vernacular American English and in the voice of a rural boy in his early teens. Though surrounded by controversy from the beginning, making it one of the most banned books in America, Ernest Hemingway said of it, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. . ....
is a retired secondary teacher of English and philosophy. For forty years he challenged students to dive deep into the classics of the Western canon, to think and write analytically, and to find the cultural constants reflected throughout that literature, art, and thought.
Get Salvo in your inbox! This article originally appeared in Salvo, Issue #66, Fall 2023 Copyright © 2024 Salvo | www.salvomag.com https://salvomag.com/article/salvo66/a-boys-life-2
