Editions ask: Which is the real 'Huckleberry Finn'?

Jul 6 18:00 UTC 2001

July 5, 2001 Posted: 12:08 PM EDT (1608 GMT)
 
NEW YORK (AP) -- This summer, a new book continues the adventures 
of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." 

An edition of the classic novel has just been released by the Mark 
Twain Project at the University of California Press at Berkeley. Based 
on Twain's long-lost original manuscript, the book contains numerous 
minor alterations and a ghost story told by the runaway slave Jim. 

"We're trying to get the book as close as possible to how Twain would 
have wanted it," says the project's general editor, Robert H. Hirst. 

The Berkeley editors aren't the first to say this, and probably won't 
be the last. Like rival explorers in search of a promised land, 
publishers keep on issuing new editions of Twain's novel, with each 
supposedly nearing the elusive, but irresistible claim to 
the "definitive" text. 

It's enough to confuse the average bookstore browser. The current 
Berkeley book is advertised as "The Only Authoritative Text," but it 
must compete with a Random House version billed as "The Only 
Comprehensive Edition" and endorsed by Twain's literary estate. 
Meanwhile, an earlier Berkeley publication is also called "The Only 
Authoritative Text." 

"When we say authoritative, we mean as authoritative as you can be at 
the time," Hirst explains. "In the previous edition, we only had half 
of the original manuscript. This time, we had the whole text." 

Same material, different interpretations
The Random House version, published in 1996, and the current Berkeley 
edition use the same rediscovered material, but in different ways. 
Random House, for example, places Jim's ghost story in the actual 
narrative. Berkeley sets it aside in the appendix. 

"If we thought he had been forced to remove it, we would have kept it 
in the body of the text," Hirst says. "But from what we can tell, he 
decided the story didn't work." 

"We thought it was interesting to put the story where it would have 
gone in the text," says Daniel Menaker, senior literary editor at 
Random House. "I have no problem with the decision made by the Berkeley 
press, but our feeling was to not to make our readers wait for the 
small print in the back to see the new material." 

Re-editing old literature is a long, difficult tradition. As with "The 
Canterbury Tales," "Ulysses" and many other works, no definitive 
version of "Huckleberry Finn" exists. No one knows exactly what Twain 
wanted, what his editor wanted and what was changed by accident. 

There are two major reasons. One is Twain's slangy narrative, which 
challenged typesetters to decide whether the author had made a mistake 
in grammar or spelling, or whether that was simply Huck Finn's way of 
expressing himself. 

"They don't make a very great many mistakes," Twain complained of the 
typesetters, "but those that do occur are of a nature to make a man 
curse his teeth loose." 

Hirst cites as an example the word "ax." Twain spelled it "axe" in his 
manuscript, but the "e" was later dropped. Convinced that a typesetter 
had erred, Hirst says the original spelling is used in the current 
Berkeley text. 

Original manuscript lost
The second problem concerns the actual manuscript, which was separated 
in two and then lost. 

Twain, who had lived briefly in Buffalo, New York, donated the second 
half of the manuscript to the local library, now called the Buffalo and 
Erie County Public Library. The manuscript was sent in 1885, shortly 
after the novel was published, in response to a request from library 
curator James Fraser Gluck. 

The first half, believed destroyed at the printer's, turned up a couple 
of years later, and Twain sent it on to Gluck, who apparently kept it 
at his home. 

When Gluck died suddenly at age 45, the first half of the manuscript 
disappeared among his papers and was believed lost. 

In 1990, it turned up in an attic trunk at the California home of one 
of Gluck's two granddaughters, who put it up for sale through Sotheby's 
auction house. The library sued to retrieve it, claiming ownership 
because Twain had intended to donate the manuscript to the library, not 
Gluck himself. The lawsuit was settled in 1992, with the Gluck family 
agreeing to turn over the manuscript in return for a portion of the 
income earned from its publication. 

Only in 1995 were the halves officially reunited, as the centerpiece of 
the library's Mark Twain Room. And the manuscript is technically just 
an early draft. The whereabouts of the actual proofs sent to the 
typesetter remain unknown. 

"I don't think we'll ever have a definitive version unless someone 
finds that typescript," Hirst says. 

Several editions
Meanwhile, with thousands of students assigned the novel each year, 
editions have proliferated. The copyright of the version first released 
has long expired and a number of major publishers, along with a lot of 
minor ones, have issued "Huckleberry Finn." 

It's questionable whether nonacademic publishers will use the new 
material, which the Twain estate has copyrighted. Not only would they 
need permission, but the commercial appeal seems limited. Menaker, who 
declined to give exact figures, says the Random House text could 
have "sold better" and that teachers apparently didn't want to switch. 

Others in publishing indicated they would also stick with the old text. 

"You have to consider the author's intention, but you also have to 
consider the impact of the book people have actually read," says Max 
Rudin, publisher of the Library of America, which in a single volume 
combines "Huckleberry Finn" with three other Twain books. 

"I'm interested in the original manuscript, but I frankly think the 
material Twain left out he left out wisely," says John Seelye, editor 
of the Penguin Classics edition. 

"Besides, I don't see anything wrong with having different versions 
out. This is a democracy, isn't it?" 

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