[book_talk] book review--Samuel Clemens
- From: "Bonnie L. Sherrell" <blslarner@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Blind Chit Chat" <Blind-Chit-Chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Books for the Blind" <Books4theblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Blind Book Lovers Cafe" <bblc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Book Talk" <book_talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 11:20:24 -0800
_The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
read by Elijah Wood
As a child, I was urged by my mother several times to read "Huckleberry
Finn," but I never could, mostly because my mind could not take in the
dialect in which it was written. I do remember getting to the chapter
where Huck goes back onto land to find out how the news about his
alleged murder was being handled dressed as a girl and speaks of
himself as both Sarah and Mary, but no further than that the first
three attempts to read it.
I was a senior in high school when I finally read it through all the
way. The rest of my family was gone for some reason or other. Big Bro
was understandable--he'd moved out a year and a half earlier now that
he was graduated from high school and had enrolled in the local
community college, and he'd been married for a month or two by that
point. But where Mom, Dad, Little Bro and my sister had got off to
that evening I cannot remember. I didn't mind being left home alone,
and I'd finally restarted Huck Finn intent on getting through it this
time. I remember that the power went out partway through the evening,
so I got my camp flashlight and read by its light, laughing as I read
the descriptions of the None-such and such doings by the King and Duke,
and the final scene of them being run out of town on a rail by the
people of the village near which Tom's relatives lived.
But my loudest laughter was saved for the chapters surrounding Jim's
imprisonment and Tom's grandiose ideas on how it should be dealt with.
All of the inscriptions and the ladder pie--they are the stuff of grand
comedy as well as tragedy, and of course Tom Sawyer, knowing all along
that Jim was a free man already, would want to try them all on for size
before admitting the far more blase truth of the matter!
Ah, me! Anyway, I've watched a number of film renditions of the book
over the years, and the only one that even addresses the time at the
Phelps home was that in which Ron Howard, Opie in the Andy Griffiths
show, played Huck. But even that could not do justice to the slapstick
described in the book, a slapstick that in spite of being rendered in
words is still hilarious--something slapstick rarely achieves. And
this version read by Elijah Wood is a true treasure. Wood played Huck
in the Disney version, in which he awakes from grave injury in just
such a bed as Frodo awakes first in Rivendell and later in the Houses
of Healing in the Peter Jackson LOTR. Considering the way that Wood
hung from a cliff by one hand in "The Good Son," Jackson managed to get
Wood to reprise still another former scene as well--heh!
Anyway, Elijah Wood manages to get the accents perfectly throughout the
reading, and I easily envisioned the scenes described all through
listening to the book. A masterful reading of a masterful book that
encapsulates a period of our history we should never forget.
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large
"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise
cannot see all ends." LOTR
"Don't go where I can't follow."
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