Tag: Huckleberry Finn

Brutal Things Must Be Said: James Baldwin on Huckleberry Finn

Posted on by Matt Seybold

James Baldwin said surprisingly little about Mark Twain. I say “surprising” because Baldwin was a renowned analyst of U.S. literary history. Many of the contemporaneous writers with whom he associated, both personally and professionally, published commentaries on Twain’s works, especially Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In many cases, these commentaries were subsumed into persistent public debates about the “N-word” and the appropriateness of Twain’s most famous novel in public school classrooms, […]

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Not Just for English Majors

Posted on by Matt Seybold

Annotated editions of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have been relatively rare, especially considering how frequently the novel is taught in courses at both the secondary and collegiate level. The ever-popular Norton Critical Edition of the novel has not been revised since 1998. The most recent edition of the outstanding Bedford Case Study in Critical Controversy, edited by Gerald Graff and James Phelan, is more than a decade old. Both editions […]

“Adieu, Dear Friend”: A Tribute To Victor Doyno, the First Quarry Farm Fellow

Posted on by Gretchen Sharlow

Gretchen Sharlow is the Director Emerita of the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies.  Two downloadable lectures from Victor Doyno are available at the end of Director Sharlow’s rememberance.  By showcasing Professor Doyno’s contributions to Mark Twain Studies and his support to CMTS, we hope to honor this seminal Twain scholar.   Victor Doyno died on November 16, 2016, at the age of 79. Dr. Doyno contributed significantly to […]

Mark Twain & Controversial Art

Posted on by Jan Kather

Last year American artist Charles Ray created a stir with his commissioned figurative sculpture Huck and Jim. Originally meant to be permanently installed along New York City’s High Line in the public plaza outside the new Whitney Museum, art critic Jerry Saltz informs us that Ray’s proposal was declined because the work would “offend non-museumgoing visitors.” Saltz goes on to explain that Huck and Jim is “a 21st-century sculptural masterpiece…. a classically traditional Western figurative […]

Jon Clinch, Keynote Speaker at Mark Twain & Youth Symposium, Challenges Twain Scholars

Posted on by Matt Seybold

Jon Clinch, pictured above with symposium co-organizer Kent Rasmussen, challenged the audience for his keynote address on Friday, October 7th to seek the unspoken questions in Mark Twain’s works. Clinch specifically described one such question, the one that inspired his acclaimed 2007 novel, Finn. That question, which he described as “so obvious it is easily forgotten,” is, “Who is Huckleberry Finn’s mother?” From this question, and from the mysterious circumstances in […]

Fall Issue of Mark Twain Journal Honors Kevin Mac Donnell

Posted on by Matt Seybold

The Fall 2016 issue of the Mark Twain Journal honors scholar, collector, and longtime Friend of the Center, Kevin Mac Donnell. Mac Donnell has spent the past thirty years building the largest private collection of Twain-related books, manuscripts, and artifacts. Mac Donnell’s personal archive provides the foundation for dozens of his own publications, including Mark Twain & Youth, co-edited with R. Kent Rasmussen, a collection of essays which provides the theme for the […]

Mark Twain & Youth: A Weekend Symposium

Posted on by Joe Lemak

Please join the staff of the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies for an intimate gathering of Twain scholars in the picturesque setting of Quarry Farm. In a letter to William Dean Howells in the fall of 1876, Samuel Clemens wrote, “The Farm is perfectly delightful this season. It is quiet and peaceful as a South Sea Island. Some of the sunsets which we have witnessed from this commanding […]

A Tour of Huck Finn’s America

Posted on by Matt Seybold

On Monday, November 30th, as part of our celebration of Mark Twain’s 180th birthday, Elmira College will host Andrew Levy. Earlier this year, Dr. Levy’s book, Huck Finn’s America, became something of a lightning rod in perpetual debates about the purpose and prescience of Twain’s most famous novel. Discussion of Dr. Levy’s argument spilled out of the pages of academic journals and into popular publications like The New York Times, […]