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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The national archives, 22 April 2007
Mark Twain is the undisputed dominant voice of the 19th Century US. Of all his works, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" stands out as the most significant. So many elements of those times are portrayed that recounting them is impossible. Written from the boy's viewpoint, some aspects of adult life lack full definition. Jon Clinch, in a wonderfully conceived - if disturbing - work, has improved our perception of the people and their times.
Twain's "Pap" Finn enters Huck's story as a grasping, demanding man who views his son only as a means to an end. Clinch takes that image, enhancing and expanding it by providing the background elements underlying Pap's daily life. With a judge father and a mother transplanted from a comfortable life in Philadelphia to the Mississippi frontier, Finn's relations with his family are a maelstrom of tensions. Father-son relations go far beyond the commonly depicted stresses we're used to in today's fiction, however. Race, always a subject sparking high feeling, reaches intense levels in Pap Finn's relations with his father. Among the major factors of those emotions is the revelation that Huckleberry Finn is the son of a black mother. In the pre-Civil War US, a "mulatto" was often viewed with more disdain than a full-blooded African. Particularly when that "half-breed" is your grandson.
Clinch uses the technique of skipping about in time and place as he relates Pap's life. The book's opening is jarring - a corpse is being conveyed down the Mississippi. Common enough in that age; except that this one has been stripped of all its skin - "from scalp to sole". What would prompt somebody to flay a woman's body? The Mississippi Valley was a harsh place, but removing all external evidence of who an individual is seems an extreme step. There must be an underlying reason. Clinch teases that reason out through his portrayal of Huck's Pap and the people in his life. In offering the tidbits of Pap's background, Clinch is exposing the wider world of that time. The book is almost an archival collection of the historical span of US race relations. Not all the views depicted here have been cast away.
This is an exemplary fictional concept, but in developing his character, Clinch must have experienced some disquieting moments. It's easy to state that Pap Finn's capacity for violence would have him in an institution today. Yet, our daily news shows he remains in our midst and but imperfectly restrained. Describing Pap's ambivalent attitude toward Mary, the woman who becomes Huck's mother, and by his relations with others, Clinch demonstrates that we must be careful when deeming a person "evil". Pap may represent an exaggerated version of the pre-Civil War US, but it's not a false one. Clinch's prose style conveys his theme with particular elegance. This is more than a book for Twain fans - he still has many readers in the UK. It adds to the insights Twain provided of the 19th Century frontier in graphic detail. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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5.0 out of 5 stars
An audacious, provocative, masterfully written debut, 11 May 2007
As masterfully written as it is audacious in scope, Finn makes for a riveting piece of modern literature. I'm not generally a fan of modern authors returning to a world made famous by another author (I'll thank you not to ever mention the name Alexandra Ripley in my presence), but Jon Clinch's study of Huck Finn's dark and mysterious father is far from a sales gimmick; it is truly an enduring and endearing study of a man's twisted soul and the society that helped mold him. Clinch is not trying to go Mark Twain one better or copy him in any way. He simply takes the limited amount of information we know from Twain's depiction of "Pap Finn" and provides us with a back-story that not only fits, it delves deeply into the sociocultural origins of such a man and his relationship to American literature's most famous boy. The story includes a few revelations that some may find controversial, but Clinch's rendering of Finn flows into Twain's Pap Finn with the tranquil beauty and boisterous aplomb of the great Mississippi River itself. What emerges is an exceedingly human man, a tortured soul of amazing depth, and a figure I found myself sympathizing with despite all of the horrible things he does. Is Clinch's Finn the greedy, uncaring father we met in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Well, yes and no.
Jon Clinch's Finn (whose first name we never learn - the author knows, but he's not telling) grew up not in a shack in the woods but in the big white house on the hill, the son of an important judge. The Judge is a stern, hard, uncaring man, just the type to turn a naturally rebellious son passionately against him. Yet even as an adult, Finn still secretly longs for his father's approval - but the state of their relationship makes any kind of reconciliation an impossibility. Rather than subjecting himself to the Judge's commands as his brother Will did, Finn continually pushes his father's most dangerous buttons. The proverbial icing on the cake, as far as the Judge is concerned, comes in the form of Finn's natural predilection for black women. Knowing the hatred Pap Finn expresses toward the whole African-American race, this aspect of Finn's life comes as one of a number of surprises Cinch has in store for the reader. There is very much a dual nature to Finn in these pages, as he oftentimes hates the things he wants the most. While he shows little repentance for any of his many misdeeds, this tortured conflict going on within his soul makes him a man deserving of at least a degree of pity. He's trapped in a life he secretly despises - and he knows it.
Finn's biggest problem is his constant need for alcohol - the good stuff when he can get it, but more often than not a jug of home-brewed swill from an old, blind hermit living deep within the woods. Even when he has established a potentially decent life with a former slave named Mary and his young son Huck, it's almost as if Finn is determined to sabotage it all with his drinking. Call it what you will, but I think it's clear that the man does have feelings for Mary and Huck. He ends up serving a year in jail after standing up for his family (although whether he's defending the honor of Mary or of Huck is debatable). It's all very complicated, and I'm afraid I can't even address the most salient point in this regard without giving away a couple of crucial plot points.
Finn is a brutish, sometimes vicious man, but I would not go so far as to call him evil. Unlike the Judge, for example, Finn does have a conscience, and I would say that guilt eats away at his soul every single day. We see this in his contacts with another black woman whose life he helped destroy, but nothing illustrates the point better than the savage, anguished drawings and scrawled words that cover the walls of his bedroom.
I flat out loved this bold and brash debut novel from Jon Clinch - there's just no two ways about it. The author takes one of the most despicable, disliked characters in literature and brings him fully to life before our very eyes. Finn is one of those rare novels that qualifies as instant literature.
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