JIM by Shelley Fisher Fishkin

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University of California, Berkeley, CA.

Any Twainian who hesitates to read this book because they have doubts that much can be said about Jim that has not been said before should think again. Much more can be said, and much of it is said in these pages. Jim is not, as some critics assert, a caricature conjured up for laughs by a racist humorist using popular minstrel show dialect. Jim is a shrewd, smart, compassionate, paternal, enterprising, and heroic human being. Fishkin methodically lays out her arguments in seven chapters, which are followed by a brief three-page must-read Afterword and a three-part Notes for Teachers--a must-read for teachers, but all readers will benefit by reading it. Finally, the 694 endnotes are worth perusing for the nuggets of fascinating information they contain beyond their value as mere citations.

The first chapter provides a biography of Jim based on what we know (and do not know) about him from Twain's novel. The second chapter reviews the racist myths about Black Americans that have led many readers astray in how they have viewed Jim from 1885 until now, and the third chapter enters into the debates that have persisted for decades over Jim's character, to discover whether Jim embodies racial stereotypes or subverts them. With the stage set by the first three chapters, the fourth chapter is a delightful shortened version of Huckleberry Finn told from Jim's point of view using his own voice in authentic dialect. Chapters five, six, and seven present Jim's "afterlife." Chapter five explores how Jim's character and role in the story have been portrayed (i.e. mostly distorted) on stage and in film. Chapter six identifies the obstacles that have complicated translations of the novel from Twain's era to the present. The final chapter focuses on how two educators have been successfully teaching Huckleberry Finn in the classroom.

To provide a rich context for the discussions to come, Fishkin begins with a biography of Jim, blending the few facts about him to be found in the story itself with some solid conjecture. The world Jim inhabits in St. Petersburg (Hannibal) is vividly described, enumerating the abuses and punishments endured by enslaved people, and the lax enforcement of laws on their enslavers. Missouri slave families could be rent asunder at any time. The Clemenses owned or leased slaves at various times. A young enslaved girl named Jenny was sold, and a young enslaved boy named Sandy was leased to the Clemenses by his owner, but John Marshall Clemens did not sell an enslaved man named Charley, as Paine and every Twain biographer, including Ron Chernow, have assumed ever since. Even Sam Clemens himself thought Charley was a slave (but could not remember him), so Fishkin can be forgiven for repeating this small mistake (the only factual error found in the book by this reviewer). Nay, said the editors of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians (1989), pp. 277-8, and "neigh" Charley might say himself: Charley was a horse. But had Jim been a horse, he would have been treated better than any Missouri slave, and Fishkin even details the miserable stigmatization he would have faced had he returned home at the end of the novel after gaining his freedom.

In the second chapter, various myths, pseudo-scientific theories, and stereotypes are all debunked. Black people were unable to reason, had no imaginations, could not feel pain, and did not experience grief--or so it was believed for generations--so what better thing to do but enslave them? The Bible and the law agreed. From that environment emerged Sam Clemens, who met a talented and successful Jew, Alfred Sutro, in San Francisco, witnessed the racist mistreatment of the Chinese in the city, and two years later encountered a highly intelligent Black guide in Venice during his Quaker City excursion. As a boy he had admired the story-telling skills of an older enslaved man on his Uncle John Quarles's farm, Daniel Quarles. As an adult he spent seventeen years with his Black butler, George Griffin, close by, was awed by the heroism of tenant-farmer John T. Lewis at Quarry Farm, and listened attentively when Quarry Farm cook Mary Ann Cord rose to speak of her sufferings. Twain was not a model of twenty-first century post-racial perfection at the end of his life, but the arc of his racial beliefs were propelled by these encounters which put the lie to all the myths and stereotypes he had learned as a child in Hannibal (St. Petersburg).

Fishkin next dives into some of the key debates that have centered on Twain's depiction of Jim. She quickly dispels the misnomer "Nigger Jim" and traces its possible origin to a newspaper review of a reading Twain gave during the Twain-Cable tour in November 1884. She next traces critics' persistent misunderstanding of how Twain used minstrel tropes in his novel--all the way back to Leo Marx in 1953. While Twain famously enjoyed minstrel shows, as Fishkin acknowledges, he also knew they misrepresented genuine Black culture and dialect, and she presents a convincing argument that Jim's dialect is not the demeaning comic dialect used by other nineteenth century writers, but is as authentic a dialect as the others that Twain warns the reader about in his oft-quoted "Explanatory." Abundant evidence is presented to show that if the reader accepts Jim as a mere minstrel cartoon, the reader must simultaneously ignore Jim's intelligence, empathy, paternal instincts, and agency. The ability to accept one and ignore the other perhaps reveals more about the reader than Mark Twain. All readers, to some degree, tend to project themselves onto characters, but we must let Jim be Jim.

The minstrel qualities critics have so often decried have curious origins: Shakespeare, African spiritual traditions, and even Twain's fellow Nevada journalist, Dan de Quille (William Wright). The most memorable minstrel performance in the novel is performed by the Duke and the King, not by Jim, and all but one of the various folklores invoked by Jim have European origins. The only one with an African origin is the fortune-telling hairball--and Jim, like any wise and caring adult, uses that moment to tell Huck what any child needs to hear--that things would be alright. With all of this in mind, rereadings are in order for the incident when Jim pretends to be asleep when Tom and Huck pull their silly prank with his hat, when Jim wins arguments with Huck, when Huck and Jim are separated in the fog, and all of the Evasion Episodes.

The highlight of the book arrives midway, in chapter four, with a rendering of the story from Jim's point of view, entirely in his voice. The dialect is authentic and surprisingly easy to understand when read continuously instead of in snatches, as it appears in the novel in the dialogues between Huck and Jim. Huck, the naïve narrator of the story, really has no idea what Jim is thinking; this version of the story convincingly attempts to reflect Jim's thoughts. At roughly 27,000 words (versus 112,000 words for the original novel) it can be read in one pleasant sitting. Jim is paternal toward Huck because he cannot be a father to his own children, Johnny and 'Lizabeth, who are separated from him. He is always the adult in the room, but must mask and double-voice, even in the presence of children. He is uneducated, but not unintelligent. He sees through the Duke and the King. He is compassionate, but shrewd. What he most assuredly is not is a buffoonish minstrel character.

With Jim's biography clarified, various racist myths and stereotypes discredited, the function of the minstrel elements explained in proper context, and Jim's true character and intelligence established, Fishkin then dives into an examination of Jim's portrayal on stage and in film. She looks at thirteen actors who have played the part of Jim, beginning with George Reed in 1920 (stereotypical) and Clarence Muse in 1931 (dignified and intelligent, but miscast). Later on, Archie Moore and Rex Ingram brought courage and strength to the role, but according to Fishkin, Big River, with Ron Richardson playing the part of Jim, is the best of all of the stage and film productions of Huckleberry Finn. In most stage versions and movies, entire episodes are deleted, new episodes are added, and the plot is twisted, with the result that few, if any, do justice to the original novel.

Huckleberry Finn fares no better in translation. Twain had some fun with a French translation of his jumping frog story, but he would not be amused by very many of the translations of his masterpiece (representing sixty-seven languages). Translating the dialect and colloquial speech of the various characters presents obvious challenges, but so do culture and politics. The problem began in the nineteenth century with some French and German translations. As with stage and film versions, episodes are deleted or distorted when translators feared they might be offensive for religious, political, or cultural reasons. As a result, Jim's intelligence and humanity are often diminished. More recently, however, some Mexican and Portuguese editions show genuine respect for Jim, as well as recent translations into French and Chinese, and the novel is currently being carefully translated into Arabic. Assalamu alaikum, Jim.

The final chapter brings Huck and Jim into the classroom, where the teaching styles of two teachers are showcased in some detail: Ann Lew at the Philip and Sala Burton High School in San Francisco, and John Pascal at the Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange, New Jersey. Both have successfully taught the novel to their students for years, and Fishkin measures that success by sharing responses from their students. When Twain is poorly taught, the result can be toxic, but when thoughtfully taught, the results are uplifting, as in these two classrooms. Perhaps no other topic has brought Mark Twain into the public spotlight as often as the teaching of Huckleberry Finn in high school, sparking debates over the N-word, race in general, censorship, and perennial demands for outright bans of the novel. This reviewer and some readers may not fully agree with every conclusion drawn, but the discussion is thoughtful, and all Twainians and thinking people will agree that this great American novel belongs in American classrooms in the hands of skilled teachers, now more than ever before, and anything that accomplishes this goal is for the better. This final chapter is followed by an Afterword that is only three pages long, but a must-read that ends with a question that all readers must answer for themselves.

Fishkin concludes with an appendix, Notes for Teachers, which is not presented as a comprehensive guide, but is an extremely useful tool for anyone who teaches the novel in any classroom. It consists of a good discussion of the challenges of dealing with the N-word, provides two well-chosen scenes for staging in the classroom, and ends with an expertly chosen list of further reading material.

Readers who do not teach the novel may wrongly conclude that this volume is more for educators than the general reader. Those who do teach it might be tempted to skip directly to the final chapters without digesting the earlier ones. Both would be mistaken. Jim had a lot to say to Huck. Twain has a lot to say to readers today. This book is an essential prelude to those conversations.

BOOK REVIEW

Jim: The Lives and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn's Comrade. By Shelley Fisher Fishkin. Yale University Press, 2025. Pp. 447. $28.00. ISBN 978-0-300-26832-4 (hardback).