I’m reading all the gushingly laudatory reviews of the novel “Finn” by Jon Clinch and wondering

· Review by Wes Clark: Finn, by Jon Clinch

· (Hardcover, 304 pages, Random House, February 20 2007)

I’m reading all the gushingly laudatory reviews of the novel “Finn” by Jon Clinch (“riveting,” “gripping,” “compelling,” “inspired,” “astonishing,” etc.) and wondering... hey, did we all read the same book? In my opinion this is a deeply flawed work.

I confess that when I saw it on the library shelf I was immediately intrigued; Mark Twain’s immortal source work, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” is my all-time favorite novel. I therefore started reading “Finn” with great enthusiasm.

A real problem with it, for me, was the non-linear narrative timeline. I can see using the literary device where it serves the story, but here it doesn’t. It only creates confusion. For instance, in the film “Memento,” it serves to put the audience in the position of the protagonist’s jangled world, where new memories are impossible to create. Or in the Stanley Kubrick film “the Killing,” it highlights the planning and logistics involved in a major heist. It enhances the narrative, in other words. In this book it serves no purpose at all and therefore seems gimmicky. (One reviewer mentioned this.)

Another problem I had with “Finn” was the needless and perplexing departure from Twain in at least one instance. In Mark Twain’s source work, Huck’s ruse to get out of his Pap’s cabin – his apparent abduction/murder – is accepted by Pap. Here it isn’t. Why not? There seems to be no story-related reason for it. So why depart from Twain?

I got very tired of encountering the dialogue line “I know it,” seemingly uttered by all of the lower-class characters. I suppose this is Clinch using it as a device to substitute for having to write dialect (as Twain did), or to suggest that the speaker is a poorly-educated dolt. But after the 100^th time reading it I felt like banging my head against a wall when I continued to encountered it.

And did the King, who Twain clearly intended to be a comic character, need to be rendered as a murderous, baby-buggering racist/pederast? There is just too, too much distance between the characters!

…which leads to my main complaint with this book: it is unauthentic to its time and setting. Reading Twain’s source work, one gets a definite impression of 1830’s/1840’s Missouri. There is a strong sense of time and place. Reading “Finn,” I got the distinct impression that this was really a gritty and violent noir set in some decaying urban locale, but wearing a thin literary façade to place it on Twain’s Mississippi River shores. The plot seems too universal and too modern. It just doesn’t fit, in my opinion.

There are other problems… for instance, the idea of Huck Finn being half-black, half-white. Did Twain ever intend to suggest this, as Clinch indicates in his (unnecessary) author’s note? Well, no, I don’t think so. Twain told us that he derived his character Huck Finn from an acquaintance of his youth, Tom Blankenship. (“In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had.”) Tom Blankenship wasn’t black; the 1850 census record indicates that he was a white boy. And I would like to think that when Twain wrote “exactly,” he meant exactly. The sole reason I can see for introducing a mulatto Huck Finn is to provoke comment, which is a rather shabby excuse, in my opinion. It might make for a provocative session between the author and an interviewer on a “Today” Show spot, but doesn’t serve Twain or Huck Finn at all. (This is what I mean by this novel not fitting the source work.)

One reviewer claims that this work is an examination of the nature of evil; I totally disagree. In order for it to be that we would have to know far more about Pap Finn’s thoughts and motivations than we are given in Clinch’s minimalist account. The reason why, for instance, Shakespeare’s Richard III is such a complete villain is that the writer gave us reasons for his doing what he did. We had an insight into the villain’s mind and therefore a better understanding of the nature of evil. In “Finn” we have very little of that – almost none, in fact. A well-drawn out villain is like looking into a gloss black surface: there seems to be layers, and we even see a little of ourselves there. Pap Finn’s evil in this book is simply matte black. No reflections, no insights into anything else. Just brutality.

To conclude, I think “Finn” is a shabby, misbegotten work. It neither serves nor enhances Twain nor any of his characters. I suppose the author might respond, “It shouldn’t. It’s a departure there from,” in which case I would wonder why he just didn’t create new characters and settings rather than borrow Twain’s. (As another reviewer pointed out, this seems to be fashionable these days – citing the play “Wicked.”) Anyway, as yet another reviewer wrote, I will now have to work at wiping the stain of this book away from my appreciation and love of the source material.