In Coming to Grips with HUCKLEBERRY FINN, Tom Quirk traces the history of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from its inception in 1876 to its problematic presence in today's American culture. By approaching Twain's novel from several quite different perspectives, Quirk reveals how the author's imagination worked and why this novel has affected so many people for so long and in so many curious ways.

"Coming to Grips with HUCKLEBERRY FINN provides an illuminating vision of both the character and the book--a vision telling in its unpretentiousness, its clarity, and its grace. Readers who believe they know Huckleberry Finn well will be surprised at how much they learn."--James M. Cox

"I think that readers will find this a 'book' rather than a collection, a book that demonstrates prolonged, open-minded musing about Twain's novel rather than forcing some idea toward wordy originality. It is highly, highly intelligent, quietly urbane, thought-provoking, original, and totally independent of dogma and fashion."--Louis J. Budd

"Tom Quirk's richly speculative and lucid study confronts the reader with new lights and sidelights on those central artifacts of American culture: Huckleberry Finn, Huck, Jim, and the man who created them."--American Literature

"Quirk's essays are not of the ivory tower kind. That is, his provocative ideas are the kind meant to spark classroom discussion. I intend to use my well-marked copy of the text to do just that."--David Tomlinson, Mark Twain Forum

"Quirk is an accomplished critic, as the audience of this work will discover. However, he is also a reader who writes as a reader and for readers. In doing so he offers a nice swath of ground where critics, scholars, and readers can sit together as they contemplate once again the world of a novel that never seems settled."--The Twainian

About the Author

Tom Quirk is author or editor of several books, including Nothing Abstract: Investigations in the American Literary Imagination. He is Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Columbia.