GLR January-February 2025

ESSAY Bottom-Shamed by Mark Twain W ILLIAM B ENEMANN

A DVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN holds the distinction of being the American novel that has been censured for the longest period of time, for the greatest number of reasons, by the widest range of political, religious, and literary factions. Before it was even available to the public, 3,000 advance sales copies were quickly withdrawn when it was dis covered that someone along the chain of production had altered one of the illustrations. For Chapter 32, artist E. W. Kemble had drawn Uncle Silas standing with his shoulders drawn back and his pelvis thrust forward, with young Huck Finn posed before him, apparently gazing at the man’s proffered crotch. Some wag had scratched into the inked plate something that appeared to have been missing from Kemble’s drawing: Uncle Silas now sported a very exposed and very erect penis. The offending books were recalled, and page 283 was sliced out and a re placement illustration tipped in. The few copies that escaped this surgery are now collector’s items. When the book was released to the public, it was met with savage reviews. One newspaper called it “a gross trifling with both for its empathetic portrayal of enslaved African Americans and for its liberal use of the N-word. The scene of Huck and Jim—a white boy and a black man—lying naked side-by-side on the raft as it floats lazily down the Mississippi has induced atrial fibrillation among racists and among pedophiles. But were it not for a last-minute editorial decision by Mark Twain him self, we might be criticizing the book for yet another reason: bottom-shaming. The event in question occurs in Chapter 23. Huck and Jim have met up with two traveling con men who introduce them selves as the Duke of Bridgewater and the Dauphin of France (later the King). In a small town in Arkansas, the tricksters an nounce a performance of scenes from Shakespeare, taking ad vantage of the crowd of locals who have gathered there to attend an evangelical tent revival. But as Huck explains it: “Well, that night we had our show, but there warn’t only about twelve peo William Benemann is the author of Men in Eden: William Drummond Stewart and Same-Sex Desire in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade and Un ruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail. every fine feeling.” It was banned by the Concord Free Public Library (Mass.) as “the veriest trash ... rough, coarse, and inelegant, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable peo ple.” Over the years, Huckleberry Finn has been criticized for its crude language, its ir reverent treatment of religion, and its casual depictions of child abuse, domestic violence, racism, and murder. It has been castigated

ple there; just enough to pay expenses.” The duke denounces the “Arkansaw lunkheads” who “couldn’t come up to Shakespeare: what they wanted was low comedy—and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned.” The next day, handbills appear all over town advertising the “Thrilling Tragedy of T HE K ING ’ S C AMELOPARD or T HE R OYAL N ONESUCH !!! Ad mission 50 cents. L ADIESAND C HILDREN N OT A DMITTED .” Twain’s contemporary readers would expect here a varia tion of the old Gyascutus Hoax, a bit of Western humor in which hucksters advertise the appearance of a rare ferocious beast known as the Gyascutus. As the gullible townspeople pay their admission and take their seats, they begin to hear fearful roars and stomping coming from behind the curtain. In some versions of the story, the curtain has been partially raised, just enough so that they can see the paws of the creature as it weaves back and forth across the stage (one of the actors has wrapped his wrists and ankles in fur, and stalks on all fours). When the hall is full, the audience suddenly hears crashes and bangs and blood-cur dling screams from behind the curtain. The Master of Cere monies rushes onto the stage and hollers: “The Gyascutus has ing up at the stage, eager for a low comedy—or something “ruther worse.” What the farmers and store clerks and furtive town elders are expecting is a live sex act of the type provided in some brothels of the period, something highly inappropriate for their wives and children to view. In Twain’s promised sex showthere will be nudity—but of a very different type. “When the place couldn’t hold no more, the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come onto the stage and stood up before the curtain, and made a little speech ... and at last when he’d got everybody’s expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing out on all fours, naked, and he was painted, all over, ring-streaked-and-striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rain-bow.” (This appearance of the Pride flag avant la let tre is a coincidence, of course, but it queers the story nicely.) As the narrator of the novel, Huck has for the last 22 chapters slowly rolled out a convoluted tale rich in detail and atmosphere, but for the first time he hesitates and abruptly pulls back: “And—but never mind the rest of his outfit, it was just wild, but it was awful funny.” The manuscript of the novel shows that Twain toned broken loose! Run for your lives!” Men, women, and children rush to the exits in a panic, and the players slip out through a rear door of the hall, with the box office receipts. But what Twain has his players offer to the townsfolk in Arkansas is not the ferocious Gyascutus. For one thing, the audience is specifically restricted to menonly . There will be no women and children to run screaming from the hall. Instead, each man will be leer

to a pitcher of beer that changed the course of American literature.

January–February 2025

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