In a message dated 09/03/2005 03:07:00 GMT Standard Time, chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu (i.e. Brian Boyd) writes:

the second crassly and insensitively treating Jim as simply the appropriate object of demeaning "darkie" jokes. I would love HF to have been only the first two thirds of the
novel: then it would be a triumph. Alas, it is flawed and, while unequivocally anti-slavery, quite stolidly racist.

I will reread HF. I do not remember it like this. I remember it as showing (and surely ridiculing) the romanticism of Tom Sawyer putting poor Jim through all sorts of horrible experiences with creepy-crawly creatures before allowing him to "escape", and Jim's patient tolerance and courtesy about this. No doubt there's an element of showing up Jim as too ready to put up with this. But he's a kind man, dealing with boys. Isn't Mark Twain showing in comic fashion how patronising and subservience survive the possibility and reality of freedom and emancipation?

However, Brian Boyd is someone to be taken seriously, and I will have another look.

Anthony Stadlen