And Tom is the ordinary boy, though of quicker wits, and livelier imagination, than most. But the point of view of the narrator is that of an adult observing a boy. Petersburg is more Western than Southern) a hundred years ago. The River and theBoy make their appearance in it the narrative is good and there is also a very good picture of society in a small mid-Western river town (for St. Tom Sawyerseems to me to be a boys’ book, and a very good one.
Tom Sawyerdid not prepare me for what I was to find its sequel to be. Therefore it was only a few years ago that I read for the first time, and in that order, Tom Sawyerand Huckleberry Finn. The opinion of my parents that it was a book unsuitable for boys left me, for most of my life, under the impression that it was a book suitable only for boys. But Huckleberry Finndoes not fall into the category of juvenile fiction. I cannot speak from memory: I suspect that a fear on the part of my parents lest I should acquire a premature taste for tobacco, and perhaps other habits of the hero of the story, kept the book out of my way. Huckleberry Finnis, no doubt, a book which boys enjoy. In the writing of Huckleberry FinnMark Twain had two elements which, when treated with his sensibility and his experience, formed a great book: these two are the Boy and the River. But when we find one book by a prolific author which is very much superior to all the rest, we look for the peculiar accident or concourse of accidents which made that book possible. There are pages in Tom Sawyerand in Life on the Mississippiwhich are, within their limits, as good as anything with which one can compare them in Huckleberry Finn 2and in other books there are drolleries just as good of their kind. I do not suggest that it is his only book of permanent interest but it is the only one in which his genius is completely realized, and the only one which creates its own category. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnis the only one of Mark Twain’s various books which can be called a masterpiece.
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