The following is the text of an article published in the London Sunday Times this summer. It is posted with the kind permission of the author who has just returned from his honeymoon. I thought it might be of interest to some members of the list. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- _Twain's lost words give new life to Huck Finn_ Published in 'The Sunday Times', June 18, 1995. By Geordie Greig, Literary Editor. THERE is a new twist to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Academics have been amazed by the revelation of a new chapter in the life of the ragamuffin hero of one of America's greatest novels. A missing 15-page section from Mark Twain's most famous work, discovered in a Hollywood attic, will be published in The New Yorker magazine tomorrow. "It is as if a new act was found for King Lear or Hamlet," said Victor Boyno, professor of English and American literature at the State University of New York in Buffalo. It will provide a gold mine for literary scholars, who have pored over the work since it was first published in 1884. "This is a key book in American literature, Twain's finest. The publication of unseen passages will start a flood of new criticism and studies." said Boyno. Twain's full tale came to light when an original manuscript - - worth about UKP1m -- turned up after lying hidden for more than 100 years. It was discovered in a trunk in a Hollywood attic, only to remain out of public gaze for a further five years during an ownership dispute. Soon after finishing the book, the author donated the manuscript to a library in Buffalo, New York, at the request of James Fraser Gluck, a local lawyer. However, only the second half arrived; the first 665 pages went missing and were presumed by Twain to have been mistakenly destroyed. These hand-written pages remained hidden until Gluck's granddaughter, a 62-year-old librarian, discovered them by chance in her attic. The Gluck family and the library fought over the ownership, a battle resolved with an agreement that the papers should stay in the library and all profits be shared. Now the start and finish of the pen-and-ink manuscript are back together for the first time since Twain sent them out. The full, unedited version of a book that has already sold 20m copies can finally be seen. The new episode in Huck Finn's life is a surreal extract involving a conversation about ghosts between him and his companion Jim, the runaway black slave. "Did you ever see a ghost, Jim?" "Has I ever seed a ghos'? Well I reckon I has." "O, tell me about it, Jim -- tell me about it." And so Huck prompts an eerie tale from Jim in Southern dialect about a night he spent in a dissecting room with Jim' s young master who was training to be a doctor. Jim was asked to prepare a naked, bearded corpse for dissection. During this macabre process, he lifted the corpse but was horrified to see its eyes open. The corpse collapsed on top of him and the terrified slave grappled his way free, believing it had come to life. The passage, presumed edited out of chapter nine by Twain, adds a colourful new episode to when Huck is hiding in a cave on Jackson's Island in the Mississippi after escaping from his drunken Pap by faking his own death. More than any other American novel, the book is viewed as the nation's finest. "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn," Ernest Hemingway once said. Speculation has already started over reasons behind the deletion of the episodes, although the novel was heavily revised during the eight years Twain worked on it. Some suspect that Twain's wife Olivia, a rather prim woman, thought the excised passage too vulgar in its description of Jim's encounter with the corpse. In a prior instance of censorship, Twain once came home delighted with a new short story called The Undertaker's Love Story and, as was his habit, read it aloud to his family. Olivia was said to have remarked "Youth, let's take a walk" and the result of their talk was that the story was not published in his lifetime. "There is a definite possibility it was all just too much for his wife, but we do not know for certain the reason Twain left passages out of his book," said Hal Espen, a senior editor at The New Yorker, who edited Twain's new work. There are already 13 corpses in Huckleberry Finn and 34 people die. The renewed interest would have delighted Twain, who was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens but always went by his nom de plume. His folksy tales, often set in the Mississippi delta where he was raised, delighted readers and made Twain a massive celebrity in his lifetime. But not everyone shared Hemingway's view. Huck Finn was ridiculed by the literary establishment when published for its rustic dialect. More recently, its use of the word "nigger" fell foul of the political correctness lobby, and the novel was banned from schools and libraries. The new passage from chapter nine is the only time in the book Twain mentioned the past life of Jim before he joined up with Huck. His undignified task of preparing a corpse for dissection is a funny episode, but it is also a stark reminder of blacks' low status at the time. ============================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Dec 1995 00:38:37 -0500 Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]> Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]> From: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: LETTERS FROM THE EARTH In a message dated 95-12-26 15:40:40 EST, you write: >I enjoy LETTERS FROM THE EARTH. However, I believe the darkest thing Twain >ever wrote was THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER, aka THE CHRONICLE OF YOUNG SATAN or >NO. 44. The last page, in particular, is extremely dark. Anyone familiar >with this one? I read the Mysterious Stranger once, and wuld probably never read it again. It was like he had just been really, really, depressed, and needed to place his thoughts on paper. As a writer, I can understand this. Hoever, this work was published after his death, and I wonder if he really wanted it published. I don't think of it as typical of Twain's writings. However, another "dark" work, "What is Man?", is one of my favorite Twain pieces. Coincidentally, it was published in his lifetime (I think). Makes you wonder, dosen't it? Rob McMonigal