In a message dated 12/20/99 8:35:49 PM Eastern Standard Time, kennedyp@toronto.cbc.ca writes: > > I think you did just FINE! > > Far be it from a Canadian to venture onto the muddy waters of the mighty > Mississippi, but there's something almost transcendentally American (if > Emerson, and Thoreau, and Hawthorne and Alcott will allow me to borrow the > term...) about the image of a white boy and a black man floating as > fugitives down the river that runs through the heart of the country.... > Beautiful Innocence... Ugly Experience.... Metaphorically meaningful > geography. > > (Aside from which, HUCKLEBERRY FINN--not unlike The CATCHER in the RYE--is > very frequently the target of fundamentalist book burners-and-banners up > here north of the 49th, which is reason enough to read it, as far as I'm > concerned.) > > Cheers, > > Paul Dittos, Paul, to what you had to say about Tim's posts :) They've been wonderful. I think Gatsby is better written and better told, but both Twain and Gatsby present different Americas, both equally true. Huck Finn is less self-consciously a novel than Gatsby, and for its purposes it's almost perfect in that regard... Jim