Clemens/Twain put the novel aside for, as I recall, three years and then finished it. When he came back to it, he didn't so much edit what he had written, he tacked on the remainder. The earlier manuscript ends at a precise point and you can tell, you can tell. The writing style is different, it does not flow from the earlier manuscript.
You get into a "mood" in writing that is reflected in what you write. If you start out all broke out with outrage as I often do and don't finish, when you come back to it, say the next day, you're not in the same mood, you're rested, mellow, maybe you're hung over instead of drunk--I said maybe--you're thinking about something else, and your new mood is reflected in your writing and jars with the previous mood and writing. Clemens/Twain went 1,000 days before he came back to Huckleberry Finn.
You get into a "mood" in writing that is reflected in what you write. If you start out all broke out with outrage as I often do and don't finish, when you come back to it, say the next day, you're not in the same mood, you're rested, mellow, maybe you're hung over instead of drunk--I said maybe--you're thinking about something else, and your new mood is reflected in your writing and jars with the previous mood and writing. Clemens/Twain went 1,000 days before he came back to Huckleberry Finn.
Huckleberry Finn is a deep book. There are more morality plays than in a Woody Allen movie. I thought the character young Huck Finn could be a stand-in for young America, how he and hence America sorted out the moral choices that had to be made to make before the Civil War. It was tremendous! But when Clemens/Twain came back to it he changed the substance. First he added on that Hatfield and McCoy scene; that didn't flow at all. It was different stylistically and substantively. Just when you've gotten over What! on the Hatfields and McCoys he brings back Tom Sawyer. So Huck Finn was no stand-in for America. Now we had, if we still had at all, those morality plays played out by two American boys with two completely different personalities. No. That is not good. It is not good writing, it is not good story-telling. A novel is going to require the reader to excuse some liberties, overlook some details, ignore some exaggerations, in the interest of the story and its flow. The earlier Huckleberry Finn requires the reader to do that, it is a great yarn and has a Pilgrim's Progress feel and flow to it; it is well-told, that is, well-written.
Mark Twain wrote a transcendent book, one with real meaning, deep depth. And then he made a burlesque out of it.
But I haven't finished it...
Mark Twain wrote a transcendent book, one with real meaning, deep depth. And then he made a burlesque out of it.
But I haven't finished it...
