Where ARE my books when I need them?!?!?!? Further stream-of-consciousness drivel on the brilliance of HUCK FINN: Emerson's eulogy on Thoreau contained a sentence that was obviously intended as a bit of a put-down. It went something like: "He would rather have been the leader of a huckleberry expedition than a captain of American literature...." (Henry, I'm certain, would have taken it as a GREAT compliment. He was always SO MUCH older and wiser than RWE--Which may be why his writing seems so much younger and fresher than Emerson's, now. The almost cliche exchange in the Concord jail house says it all: RWE: Henry, what are you doing in there? HDT: Ralph, what are you doing out there?) Is it possible that Twain was paying tribute to Thoreau by naming his most memorable character after him? Cheers, Paul OSR--Tim's point about Huck being a 19th century pre-cursor to Holden seems almost self-evident to me, but that's maybe because up here in the Great White North the two books are inevitably paired in high school English courses...