Considering the overwhelming, negative response to Alan Gribben’s revision
of Huck, I was wondering if Charles Neider provoked similar outrage when
he deleted most references to the “evasion” in his 1985 edition. That
edition does not seem to be available now, but as indicated in the Publishers
Weekly review quoted on Amazon, Neider triumphantly described how many lines
he had been able to cut from the last third of the book. While Neider's
revisions were less likely to inflame, and the PW reviewer — possibly a
Hemingway fan – congratulated Neider for “achiev[ing] a brisker read,” there
must have been some less appreciative reactions.
From Publishers Weekly
In this centenary year of the first American edition of Huckleberry Finn,
Neider, who has worked long and well in the thickets of Twain scholarship
(this is the ninth Twain volume he has edited), offers a most fitting
tribute, for which he will be thanked in some quarters, damned in others.
Neider's contribution is twofold: he has restored to its rightful place the great
rafting chapter, which the author had lifted from the
manuscript-in-progress and dropped into Life on the Mississippi, and he has abridged some of the
childish larkiness in the portions in which Huck's friend Tom Sawyer
intrudes into this novel. For decades, critics have lamented the absence of the “
missing” chapter and deplored the jarring presence of Tom in episodes that
slow the narrative, but not until now has anyone had the temerity to set
matters right. In paring back the “Tom” chapters (which he fully documents
in his lengthy, spirited introduction, with literal line counts of the
excised material), Neider has achieved a brisker read. Though there may be some
brickbats thrown at him for this “sacrilege,” few should object to the
belated appearance of the transplanted rafting chapter in the novel in which
it clearly belongs. October 25
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an
out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Paul Kleven
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