Pudd'nhead Wilson

PuddnHead Wilson

First book on my Paul Theroux reading list is Pudd’nhead Wilson, by Mark Twain. I read it on the train. A real gem; sorry I’ve just now read it; glad I was pointed to it.

I won’t spoil things by telling you as much of the plot as the author of the Introduction did (once again I pledge never again to read an Introduction until I have to), but here’s the basics: Two baby boys are born into the same household at about the same time. They look very much alike, but one has 1/32 “Negro” blood and is therefore a slave; the other is (fully) white. They are both raised by the same woman – nanny for one, mother of the other – and she’s the only one that can tell them apart. You can see the possibilities.

Twain tells the story with humor and sarcasm, exposing some of mankind’s lowest and highest characteristics. There’s slapstick comedy and courtroom drama. Many twists and turns like a drawing-room comedy. All in 139 paperback pages.

Pudd’nhead gets his name as follows (if you don’t want to know, scroll down somewhere now): He comes to Dawson’s Landing, on the Mississippi below St. Louis, to establish a law practice. On his first day in town, while meeting with some residents, he hears a dog barking in a disagreeable way and says, “I wish I owned half of that dog.” Why? “Because I would kill my half.” This makes no sense to the townspeople and he is promptly labeled a fool, a perfect jackass, and dubbed Pudd’nhead.

Wilson is writing a calendar-based almanac of wise and witty sayings and Twain introduces each chapter with one or more. Here’s my favorite:

July 4. Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than on all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.

More seriously:

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Pudd’nhead was published in 1894, about a decade after Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were published. Like those books, Twain creatively writes “slave dialect” that is entertaining to read and I presume accurate. An example:

“De angels is gwine to’mire you jest as much as dey does yo mammy. Ain’t gwine to have ‘em puttin’ dey han’s up ‘fo dey eyes en sayin’ to David en Goliah en dem yuther prophets, ‘Dat chile is dress’ too delicate fo’ dis place.”

Anyhow, great book, fun read.

Cheers,

Rob