Having read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I've moved on predictably to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and am so happily sunk in it that I catch myself saying, in my internal dialogue, things like, "It warn't no matter, anyhow" instead of "Fuck it, who cares?"--an instance, arguably, of the improving effect of reading Great Books.
Huckleberry Finn is these days famously barred from a lot of school curricula for its own objectionable vocabulary, specifically the liberal use of the n-word. Here's a sample, from the end of Chapter XV, wherein Huck and Jim are separated in a river fog and then, when reunited, have a falling out over a failed practical joke:
". . . . Dat truck dah is trash, en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de hed er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed."
Then he got up slow, and walked to the wigwam, and went in there, without saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back.
It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger--but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way.
Speaking of internal dialogues, Huck's fifteen minute one is glided over pretty easily here, but on the one side is everything he's been taught by all the best people and, on the other, the opinion of his creator, "Mr Mark Twain." The boy is old enough to know what's "right" but young enough still to do the opposite, at least in a pinch. His habitual vocabulary is part of what's "right," an aspect of the bitter satire being directed against all the best people. It seems stupid to have to point these things out, but again, Twain was ahead of the times, and when established among the "cultural elite" of his day began making amusing pronouncements, including:
In the beginning, God created idiots. That was for practice. Then He made school boards.
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