‘Finn’ dark tale of Twain’s Huckleberry

“Finn”

by Jon Clinch (Random House, 287 pages, $23.95)

There must be something in the literary air that’s causing authors to channel the classics.

Jane Smiley has just checked in with a Hotel California version of Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” in her new novel, “Ten Days in the Hills.”

Chris Bohjalian mixes contemporary Vermonters with characters from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” in his just-released “The Double Bind.”

And now Jon Clinch – making his debut with what some readers are calling admirable skill and others might see as astounding nerve – has lifted a character whole from Mark Twain’s immortal “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and made him the centerpiece of his disturbing and darkly compelling novel, “Finn.”

Clinch, who has taught American literature and published short stories, explains in an end note that he regards Twain’s book with “reverence,” adding: “To learn the facts about Huckleberry Finn, you’ll need to seek out an older and better novel than mine.”

Yes, you will. Clinch displays impressive imagination and description but is no threat to the genius who was Twain.

“Finn” explores the life of Huck’s brutal father, “Pap” Finn. It amply borrows scenes and details from Twain’s masterpiece but, says Clinch, “parts company … and travels down its own treacherous channels.”

And so the story opens with a gruesome vignette, gorgeously described. The body of a woman – attacked by flies and crows and, as it turns out, flayed of its skin – floats down the Mississippi.

Who she is, and how she came to such an appalling fate, is told in flashbacks and present-day vignettes, the present day and place being mid-19th century Illinois and Missouri, where laws about slavery differ as the mighty river meanders ever southward.

It was her bad luck to have become entangled with Finn, the cunning riverman and thief whose personal filthiness is exceeded only by his drunkenness – which is, in turn, trumped only by his bigotry, jealousy and hot-headed need for revenge.

Son of “the Judge,” who doles out cruel justice laced with bone-deep racism from his white house on a hill, and brother to Will, a lawyer who fears their father more than he loves his errant older sibling, Finn is the quintessential ne’er-do-well.

Bristling with hate for his arrogant father yet pathetic in his ongoing need for the old man’s approval; proud of his ability to live by his wits yet chafed by the realization that he has thrown away a better life, Finn pulses with the inflamed pride of the born loser.

And like any bully, he takes his anger out on anyone weaker.

Finn flouts his detested father twice: He embraces drink and he embraces the black woman, Mary.

Disinherited, although secretly supported by his conflicted brother, Finn does one more thing that drives the Judge nearly mad: He fathers a son of his own.

The baby is born with dusky skin reminiscent of the blush of a blueberry. This, of course, is Huck.

And here Clinch poses a most difficult task for Twain-lovers: Can they accept Huck as a mulatto who looks white, is raised as white, believes himself to be white? And if he knew his true heritage, would that spoil the heroism of his willingness to risk hell by freeing the slave Jim?

Complicated questions, but made moot, because the story ends long before Huck and Jim climb aboard that raft.

Finn, with a cruelty and kindness that even heartbroken Mary appreciates, tells Huck a story about his mother that will save the boy from slavery – and from his grandfather.

And in a frenzy of mistaken jealousy and the nagging need to please his icy father, Finn finds a stomach-turning way to rid himself of Mary, an unholy communion in which he both destroys and incorporates her.

This sacrifice, and another murder – which Finn, by now mad with torment, sketches out in charcoal on the whitewashed walls of his miserable shack – eventually lead to a kind of rough justice and freedom for Huck.

The story ends, but the questions remain. Has Clinch paid homage or dishonored Twain by appropriating his characters for his own purpose?

Readers will have their own answers, but anyone who encounters “Finn” will long be haunted by this dark and bloody tale.