I think it is very important to discern between the following questions:

1.) Did Samuel Clemens at any point in his life express racist views? (Yes.)
2.) Do some of Mark Twain's published works present overt, cohesive cases
for anti-racism? (Yes.)
3.) Do some of Mark Twain's published works present harmful racial
stereotypes? (Yes.)
3.) Did Samuel Clemens sometimes remain silent on issues of racial
discrimination, exploitation, and violence, demonstrating his white
privilege and complicity? (Yes.)
4.) Did Samuel Clemens sometimes speak up on issues of racial
discrimination, exploitation, and violence, risking his reputation, his
livelihood, and even personal harm, and by so doing contribute to
meaningful reform? (Yes.)
5.) Is the use of the N-word (or, for that matter, other BIPOC epithets) in
a classroom, regardless of context, volatile? (Yes.)
6.) Can *Adventures of Huckleberry Finn *be taught without a narrow focus
on the N-word while also doing justice to the complex ways in which white
supremacy and other systems of inequality are woven into the narrative?
(Yes.)
7.) Were Twain's works, and particularly the characters from *Tom Sawyer *
and *Huckleberry Finn, *appropriated and canonized during the 20th-century
expressly as part of exceptionlist (New Criticism), imperialist (Cold War),
and white supremacist (Lost Cause) programs which sought to portray
America's racial problems as already solved? (Yes.)
8.) Do these propagandized versions of Twain's works only hang together
when they are isolated from his broader corpus and the historical contexts
in which he lived? (Yes.)
9.) Has the habit of secondary school curriculums (and most college
curriculums for that matter) been to teach these works in isolation from
his broader corpus and the historical contexts in which he lived? (Yes.)

I would like to add (and what follows will, I expect, provoke broader
disagreement than any of my answers to the above questions) that I strongly
disagree with the conventional interpretation of the ending of *Huckleberry
Finn. *By conventional interpretation, I mean that which Prof. Railton
glossed and which is famously essayed by Marx, Henry, Smiley, and Arac. As
this interpretation goes, the return of Tom Sawyer's idyll, Huck's willing
embrace of Tom's romantic imagination, the burlesquing of Jim's torment,
and the trivialization of Jim's emancipation demonstrate Twain's laziness,
a betrayal of the novel's foregoing chapters in both form and conceit, and
a capitulation to racist readers.

I think these critics fail to take seriously one of the most obvious
aspects of this maligned section of the novel: it is a satire of Walter
Scott. We know from Twain's eviscerations of Walter Scott, most
famously in *Life
On The Mississippi, *that there were few individuals upon whom he laid more
blame for the romantic delusions of the antebellum South which sustained
the idealization of the plantation economy, the "chivalry" of the
slaveholders, that echo chamber of southern literature, the delusion of
secessionism, and thus the brutality of the Civil War.

*Adventures of Huckleberry Finn *is Twain's attempt to deal a final
deathblow to the influence of Scott's romantic novels. The aesthetics of
Southern utopia cannot survive what Huck sees from that tree in Orion
County. The romance keels over alongside Buck Grangerford and his brothers.
Via the senseless death of Buck, the bloated corpse of Pap, the murder of
Old Boggs, the lynchings, the grievings, the tar-and-featherings, and, let
us not forget, the drowning of *Walter Scott, *the reader witnesses the
slow suffication of Clemen's antebellum nostalgia (still evident in *Tom
Sawyer*) and the paralysis of Huck's romantic imagination.

When the muse of that imagination, Tom Sawyer, reenters the novel, it is a
macabre puppeteer. The final section of *Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn *is *Weekend
at Bernie's *with Walter Scott for the corpse.

In St. Petersburg, Sawyer was a precocious purveyor of compelling fictions,
the charismatic captain of a gang of ethical pirates. At the Phelps Farm,
however, Tom's theatrics are as incomprehensible as they are inhumane. The
Scottian romance cannot possibly survive what Twain has Tom do to it. It is
not enough to drown Walter Scott after all the damage he has done to
American culture. Twain feels obliged to parade the decaying corpse of
Scott's sensational plots across the stage, so there can be no mistake:
romance is dead.

Twain is saying: I dare you to take Walter Scott seriously after THIS. And,
so far as I can tell, we haven't.

Now, to TEACH the ending in this fashion, students have to be introduced to
a range of supplementary readings and contexts (Scott, Alger, southern
literary magazines, *Life, *etc.), which probably isn't realistic in most
secondary school classrooms. And you can certainly argue that Twain
decapitating zombie Walter Scott had unintended consequences. But if that
was the goal (and I believe it was), it's hard to call the ending a failure.

*Matt Seybold, PhD*
Assistant Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies
Scholar-in-Residence, Center for Mark Twain Studies
Editor, MarkTwainStudies.org
Host, The American Vandal Podcast
<https://marktwainstudies.com/the-american-vandal-podcast/>

Peterson Chapel Vestry, Cowles Hall
[log in to unmask]
MattSeybold.com
<https://www.elmira.edu/>


On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 11:26 AM Railton, Stephen F (sfr) <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Bob, Barbara and all -- I'm hoping to hear from others about this issue,
> and so won't say much here, except that I don't think we should take "what
> Sam Clemens said or thought or wrote but didn't publish" as the final
> authority on "what 'Mark Twain' meant and means to American culture" or to
> "what Huck Finn said and says to its readers over the generations,
> including the students and parents and others in the 21st century."   To me
> part of the story of racism and anti-racism in HF is what Sam Clemens did
> not let Mark Twain publish.
> It's amazing how tempting it is to want to go on defending my position!
> But what I am hoping for is a discussion, Steve
> ________________________________
> From: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Robert H. HIRST <
> [log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Sunday, March 28, 2021 10:48 AM
> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject:
>
> from SLC to Josephine and Karl the Gerhardts, 1 and 3 May 1883, UCCL 02380.
> Charles E. Porter was the black painter the Clemenses were supporting in
> Paris.
>
> mr. porter has written to ask me to get some orders for him, as his money
> is nearly spent and he wants to remain some time longer in paris. this
> places me in a bothersome position; because, a long time ago, josephine
> intimated in one of her letters that porter had gone to the dogs or was on
> his way there. she gave no details, brought forward no facts. i meant to
> write her, then and there, and say that whenever one a flask of dynamite
> under a person’s character, he should always go into the details of the
> matter, and state exactly why he felt justified in doing that thing. i
> hav[e
> ]n’t answered porter; cannot answer him until i learn from you how he
> stands. tell me all you have heard against him, keep back nothing whatever.
> also tell me what part of the evidence rests upon trustworthy authority,
> and what part of it doubtful. i want to know everything about him, good and
> bad; for if he is worthy of help i want to turn out and see what can be
> done for him; and if he is not, i want to at least act with caution. at the
> same time i must remember, and you must also remember, that on every sin
> which a colored man commits, the just white man must make a considerable
> discount, because of the colored man’s antecedents. the heirs of slavery
> cannot with any sort of justice, be required to be as clear and straight
> and upright as the heirs of ancient freedom. and besides, whenever a
> colored man commits an unright action, upon his ̭heaḓ is the guilt of only
> about one tenth of it, and upon your heads and mine and the rest of the
> white race lie fairly and justly the other nine tenths of the guilt. so,
> when you have told me all there is to tell about porter, i shall doubtless
> judge his case charitably enough.
>