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From:
Hal Bush <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:29:16 -0500
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This is an interesting thread, and I greatly appreciate the cordial manner
in which it is being carried out.

The consensus so far seems to be that MT was progressive, way ahead of his
time, and so forth.  To some extent I can agree, of course, as I have
written along those very lines in several pieces over the years.

I just wonder about the hesitancy of some to admit that there are competing
voices within the texts (and possibly within the man himself).  Surely this
is not that theoretically audacious, is it?  In other words, why the
hesitancy to admit that Huck Finn very likely exhibits  symptoms of the
extremely racist cultures of the late nineteenth century, in which the book
was written and published?

I certainly am not being so blunt to call HF a "racist" text--whatever that
might mean--but I certainly think one can underestimate (or simply overlook)
elements of the book that reveal the culture in which it was penned (a
largely racist culture).  It is pretty hard for any of us to completely
overcome our native cultures.

On a related note -- I noticed that James McPherson's review of the new book
on Lincoln and Douglass got attacked in the new issue of the New York Review
for seemingly underplaying Lincoln's own tendencies to act and speak in
typically mid-nineteenth-century ways toward African Americans.  I see these
cases as rather similar--insofar as both figures, progressive though they
surely were, were still revealing symptoms of an extremely biased and
stubborn cultures.  Is that so hard to admit?



Dr. Harold K. Bush, Jr., Associate Professor
Saint Louis University
St. Louis, MO

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