By Connie Nardini
Jon Clinch/Finn: A Novel
Why do we love a story? Why do we need fiction at all? Above all, why do we need a sequel (prequel?) to an American classic like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Because we need to escape the restrictions of our own rules of engagement with our civilized world much as Huck did; and then we must reconstruct this world, remake the rules, even break them completely, and, finally, dance among the ruins.
Jon Clinch does this in Finn through his recreation of Huck’s father “Pap” – we never know his real name. On the cover of the paperback version of his book there is a picture of a large hook with the word “Finn” floating just beneath it. Pap Finn is hooked by many things in this novel, but so are we as we become entrapped by the dark and powerful Mississippi that is at the center of his life. This river has many things within it, such as the fish he catches on his many trotlines that provide him his livelihood, such as it is. There are also strange things:
Under the low sun, pursued by fish and mounted by crows and veiled in a loud languid swarm of bluebottle flies, the body comes down the river like a deadfall stripped clean.
This is the opening sentence of the book.
Clinch soon lets us know that this is a woman’s body that has been skinned. Later, in the dead of night, we see Pap looking for his backwoods bootlegger, Bliss, for his daily dose of drink. He barters with Bliss and treats him to a campfire dinner of fresh “bacon.” Bliss is blind and lives in the deepest of dark woods, so he does not suspect where that food came from. Clinch lets us guess. Now we know we are dealing with some kind of monster. The question is, do we want to keep reading?
This world is beautiful in spite of some of the creatures that inhabit it. As Finn lurches through one drunken day after another, nature seems to re-ravel all his unraveling: One winter-like day he finally throws his last bottle “over the edge into the quarry where it lands with a distant suggestion of breakage and the snowflakes turn to spiders lowering themselves on threads of moonlight while he sleeps.”
The spider’s web is a symbol of the very fragile things that keeps Finn going. We follow him through almost superhuman struggles for his goal of his own salvation. At first, he sees it as the recovery of some of the money that Twain’s Tom and Huck had found in Huckleberry Finn. But eventually, Clinch draws us deeper into Finn’s other search: his own redemption.
Many of Twain’s characters live and breathe in this world. Huck himself, of course; Judge Thatcher; and various widows who are trying to make everyone happy and “civilized.” The truly loathsome con man, King, is simply a preacher whose motives and actions even Finn can’t stomach. But there are new ones also, such as Finn’s father The Judge, who is the iconic Bad Father. Huck’s mother is created as a totally new mystery for the reader to ponder.
The most interesting reference to Twain comes in the frontispiece before the book even begins. In Adventures, Finn and Huck lived in a ramshackle cabin on the river that was always threatening to slide into the water, and in Finn it finally does with the help of The Judge, who wreaks his revenge on Pap by pulling it down. When Twain’s Huck and Jim find Pap’s body in the remains in the original novel, Twain describes the scene:
(Jim) went and bent down and looked, and says:
“It’s a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He’s been shot in the back. I reck’n he’s ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan’ look at his face – it’s too gashly.”
I didn’t look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he needn’t done it; I didn’t want to see him. There were heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whiskey-bottles and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal. There was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun bonnet and some woman’s underclothes, hanging against the wall, and some men’s clothing too . . . There was a boy’s old speckled straw hat on the floor; I took that too. And there was a bottle that had milk in it; and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck . . . There was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke.
Every item in the only room left of that cabin played a part in the dark and entangling story of Finn. You read on at your own risk – in the end you have to leave the story and leave the fate of Finn’s redemption to Huck, who takes what he needs from his father’s legacy and lights out.
What you take from it depends on how well you can dance.
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Previously in Connie’s Corner:
* “Heavier Than Air.” Nona Caspers creates a tapestry of small towns and chronicles the lives of people living there who have a hard time coming down to earth.
* “Pale Fire.” Nabokov creates a novel that doesn’t seem to have coherent plot but a story that contains a do-it-yourself kit.
* “Out Stealing Horses.” A coming-of-age story that reveals a father’s secret life during wartime.
* “An American In Iceland.” Answering the riddle: how many Icelanders does it take to change a light bulb?
* “The Physics of the Dalai Lama.” How Buddhism squares with quantum mechanics.
Posted on August 28, 2008