Born to Trouble: One Hundred Years of Huckleberry Finn by Justin KaplanReview by: Mary BiggsThe Library Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Jan., 1986), p. 97Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4307960 .

Accessed: 18/06/2014 23:11

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheLibrary Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.174 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 23:11:02 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SHORTER NOTICES 97

Born to Trouble: One Hundred Years of Huckleberry Finn. By JUSTIN KAPLAN. Center for the Book Viewpoint Series, no. 13. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1985. Pp. 23. (Paper). ISBN 0-8444-0494-2.

This attractive booklet, adorned with illustrations from the first American edition of Huckleberry Finn (New York: Charles L. Webster & Co., 1885), contains the text of a lecture sponsored by the Florida Center for the Book in cooperation with the Center for the Book of the Library of Congress and presented at the Broward (ounty Library (Fort Lauderdale) in 1984. Scheduled appropriately for Banned Books Week, it was the first public program of the Florida Center, and if it was a harbinger of things to come, the center's programs must be remarkably enlightening and entertaining.

In elegant prose, Justin Kaplan, who is the biographer of Mark Twain and other American authors, sketches Huckleberry Finn's hundred-year history of captivating literary critics and pleasure readers, while at the same time an- tagonizing real and would-be censors by its hero's rejection of behavioral norms, injustice, and hypocrisy. Most recently, and astonishingly, Twain's great novel has been attacked by ostensible liberals as itself unjust for its depiction of blacks and slavery-era attitudes. In fact, as Kaplan demonstrates with, one hopes, final persuasiveness in his sensitive essay, based solidly on the evidence of Twain's text, "Huckleberry Finn is a matchless satire on racism, bigotry, and property rights in human beings" (p. 19). Only by the "deliberately dense"-those readers in whom the book draws forth not "the barest minimum of intelligent response to its underlying spirit and intention"-could it be characterized as racist (pp. 18-19). That it has been attacked on this ground by, among many others, the NAACP in 1957 and Waukegan, Illinois, school officials in 1984 (reacting to an alderman's complaint), is an irony that Twain would surely appreciate though not enjoy. It is doubly ironic because, as Kaplan shows, many of the early censors were correct: Huckleberry Finn does threaten the quiet of established society and government because it insists upon the supremacy of the individual's moral judgments, regardless of how these square with custom or law. As Lionel Tril- ling once pointed out approvingly, it is "subversive."

This is a beautiful essay, beautifully produced, on an important subject. It is a credit to both Centers.-Mary Biggs, University of Chicago

Part-Time Faculty: Higher Education at a Crossroads. By JUDITH M. GAPPA. ASHE- ERIC Higher Education Report, no. 3. Washington, D.C.: Association for the Study of Higher Education, 1984. Pp. xv+ 112. $7.50. ISBN 0-913317-12-8.

Employment of part-time faculty in institutions of higher education is a double-edged sword recognized by both administrators and faculty. They are both a benefit and a threat. While on the one hand they bring flexibility at low cost, and specializations and skills not covered by regular full-time faculty, on the other hand they may lack the loyalty, research inclination, and commitment to counseling students-thereby putting a greater load on full-time faculty. "Nearly one in every three f:aculty is employed part-time" (p. 1), and this proportion is likely to grow as a result of the increasing numbers of individuals with advanced degrees who have little chance for traditional academic careers and seek opportunities to teach part-time. They are a growing corpus that could well have a major influence on higher education in the coming years.

This volume attempts to provide a profile of part-time faculty: their demo-

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.174 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 23:11:02 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions