Ruth Franklin in NYT on Mark Twain and ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’: ‘“It shows how a body can see and don’t see, at the same time,” Huck says at one point when he’s failed to notice something — a line that could be the novel’s motto.’

And: ‘The Twain scholar and Stanford professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin compares “Huck Finn” to fugu, a Japanese delicacy so poisonous that a chef must be specially licensed to serve it. (…) What might it mean for the book to be “prepared right”?’

Also: ‘No teacher I’ve met speaks the slur aloud in the classroom or allows students to do so. Instead, they substitute “N-word” or a nonverbal sound like “mm.”’

As well: ‘Twain’s most important novel may eventually fulfill his own ironic definition of a classic: “a book which people praise but don’t read.”’

The fear of contamination is the enemy of life and literature.

(a sf 2221)