Frazz by Jef Mallett for August 07, 2014

Heee!

Walked RIGHT INTO that one!!!

That used to be called “leading with your chin”.

too bad that tom sawyer and huck finn are still banned in some schools and libraries.

Actually, Tom did paint part of that fence. He started it, in order to prove how much fun it was to his friends.

Brilliant.

Super. Especially since just last night, I watched the Ken Burns show about Mark Twain.

Nuts!

If you hadn’t written …

I think that one might be Caulfield-worthy trickery.

“Madeth thou look”. Oldest trick in the book.

Every few years some naive/uncritical reader discovers that Twain used language that is now considered inappropriate and demands that his books be censored/banned. Some places have actually removed the books rather than trying to educate the ignorant and (possibly) ineducable. To a critical reader it is pretty obvious that Twain was a critic of racism but, to get that, you have to, not only read, but actually understand his work.

I love this one

I read both Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to my daughters when they were 8 or 9 or so; I warned them in advance about use of the “N” word throughout, and explained that the word was in common usage then and did not have the negative connotations it has acquired since. Also that it came in large part from the southern pronunciation of the word negro. With that understanding, they had no trouble with it. My biggest disappointment came when one of them didn’t like Tom Sawyer because in her view it didn’t have enough plot; to be fair, it is a lot more reminiscing about Twain’s boyhood than actual storytelling.