Hmm.  I posted TWO messages to TWAIN-L today but so far only the
second has been distrubuted.  It was a followup to my own first post, hence
the confusion.  Well, I'll repost the first post here, which
undoubtedly means the Listserv will decide to post it five seconds
later.

===== [repost: Re: Was Huck 12?  8?]

No, MT explicitly said he envisioned Huck as 12 or 13.  But the
age is less important than the casting.  Tucson has a movie
reviewer with a good ironic bite, so I can do no better than
quote Robert Cauthorn of the Arizona Daily Star:

        Huck, that feral boy whose every reaction comes as a surprise,
    arrives on screen with the look of a cherub and the manners of a
    Smurf, courtesy of actor Elijah Wood.  His eyes are as big as
    saucers, his lip trembles, and there can be little doubt he's never
    gone barefoot longer than a minute or two.  No dirt lurks under this
    Huck's fingernails.  No scabs mar his milky skin.  If you asked him
    to clean a fish, he'd start looking for the soap.  Thus, our great,
    gawky, ever-reluctant hero of American fiction has been reduced to a
    Mouseketeer. . . .

    The voices of Huck and Jim, one of the marvels of fiction, have been
    hammered into vomitous triviality.  At one point, when Jim suggests
    something to Huck, the boy chirps, "No way!"  At least he doesn't
    say "dude," as much as he might want to.

Sigh.  My dad worked for Disney Productions.  I was an extra on the
Mickey Mouse Club Show as a kid.  I went to college on a Mickey Mouse
scholarship (literally).  But I'm burning my old "E" tickets in protest.
Anyone on this list probably has a moral obligation to picket your local
theatre if it's showing the stupid thing.  And no, I haven't seen it--
a 30-second commercial told me all I needed to know.

Anyone for a restaging of the Yippies' liberation of Tom Sawyer's Island
at Disneyland?

David Sewell
U of Rochester