Twain
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In reply to Fishkin:
The Irony of White Civilization and Black Vernacular
Twains concern for language and the human condition
as evidenced in his life and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Fishkin points out that the vocal model for Huck may have been an African-American youth that Twain met and wrote about in “Sociable Jimmy”. She provides interesting evidence to support her claim, but not nearly enough to substantiate it. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been a book steeped in controversy since its publication. A major factor in more recent attacks has been the racist nature of the narrative and its language. In order to more fully understand and appreciate the work, it is necessary to step away from the text and reflect upon the nature of the social contexts of its composition – namely Twains understanding of the vernacular and its literary uses and Twains views concerning race, racism, and African-American culture.
One can infer that the purpose of the text is a biting satire of “American civilization” and all the overt hypocrisy and satire that the phrase entails. More notably, I believe, is Twains couched concern for the plight of the post-Reconstruction African-American people. If it can be shown that Twain had a direct interest in the culture and language of the freed African-American population and that Twain distinctly exhibited unease about their treatment in America, the text of Huckleberry Finn can be seen with new eyes and clearer vision.
Fishkin has done extensive work in proving Twains interest in and concern for African-American culture as it existed in the late nineteenth century. It is from her work that I will build my own speculations.
Fishkin has pointed out that Twain admitted to basing the character of Huck Finn on a Hannibal youth named Tom Blankenship and his older brother Bence, who had helped a runaway slave. Fishkin points out that if these two are the models for Huck Finn, then the genealogy for the novel is “unequivocally white” (3). Yet, when Hucks vernacular is held in comparison to the Standard Codified English language, Fishkin believes that it becomes evident that Hucks idiolect or, as Schmitz calls it, “Huckspeech” (45), is composed of elements of both Standard Codified and African-American vernacular. Fishkin takes great pains to prove that the model for Hucks voice was that of an African-American child.
Twains interest in the dialects of African-American peoples is clear throughout his published work, most notably in A True Story, Puddnhead Wilson, “Sociable Jimmy”, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain had spent a portion of his youth interacting with the slaves on his Uncles farm, professing that his preferred playmates in child-hood were slave children (Fishkin, 4). This fact allows Fishkin to make the assertion that Twain was bidialectal (Fishkin, 4) and could “generate [African-American vernacular] on his own” (Fishkin, 15).
However, Twains affinity for Negro spirituals and his responsiveness to the structure, cadence, and tonality of African-American speech and voice are not substantial bases to assume that Twain had the power to conjure these voices from the fog. The care with which Twain crafted the vernacular of his characters has become available through alternate manuscripts that have been rediscovered and through his own confessions. The numerous revisions that Twain had made to the dialogue and dialects clearly display that he did not have the ability to generate an African-American voice, but rather carefully translate the Codified Standard into something resembling and echoing the qualities of the African-American vernacular and lexicon that he had studied and observed. He wrote what he heard, not necessarily what he knew.
Examples of this study include the persons of Uncle Danl, an unnamed boy that was Twains “Jimmy”, and Mary Ann Cord. Undoubtedly, Twains interaction with African-American peoples extended far beyond the circle of these three influences; however, Twain directly cites them as inspiration. Uncle Danl was a slave on Twains uncles farm in Florida, Missouri; in his childhood, Twain had marveled at Danls storytelling abilities. Twain had used Danls story of the “Golden Arm” in a myriad of lectures (Fishkin 151). The worth of Danl and the story are evidenced by Twains willingness to use an African-American tale on the predominantly white lecture circuit of nineteenth century America. Yet when Twain refers to him later in life, he still forces upon him a role of subservience – “He has served me well these many, many years” (Camfield, 21).
Twains “Sociable Jimmy” is written in a dialect of African-American that Twain noted in Paris, Illinois. An important aspect of “Sociable Jimmy” is that, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it is written in dialect and the dominant narrative voice is that of a child. Twain was so taken by the voice and speech of the child that he wrote down fragments of what the child said and sent the record home. Twain stated that he “wished to preserve the memory of the most artless, sociable, and exhaustless talker I ever came acrosshis talk got the upper hand of my interest too, and I listened as one who receives a revelation.” The revelation may in fact be, as Fishkin argues, the plausibility of a child as narrator and a model for Hucks voice (14,15). Twain states, “Experience has taught me long ago that if ever I tell a boys story…it is never worth printing…To be successful and worth printing, the imagined boy would have to tell the story himself” (Blair & Hill, 327). Without proper documentation it is impossible to prove that “Jimmy” was the fore-running voice to Hucks, but one may assume that the spark left in Twain through this encounter was one of the many that helped the fire of Huck Finn to burn.
Twains piece “A True Story” was based upon the narrative of Mary Ann Cord, a former slave and servant at Quarry Farm, the Clemens summer home in Elmira, New York. Twain once wrote that the story she told, the foundation for A True Story, was a “curiously strong piece of literary work to come unpremeditated from lips untrained in the literary art” (Fishkin, 9, 151). It is also pertinent to take into account the warm, but condescending tone of the inscription that Twain composed in the frontspiece of the volume that he gave to Cord: