Reading Update

[jaggedwolf]

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

You know, I thought I read it as a teenager, but I see no record of it in my books log and I sure as hell did not remember most of the novel, so I might’ve made up a memory of that. I did as a kid definitely read a children’s illustrated version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and from that I only remember a faked funeral and that I liked the bit where Tom tricks other kids into painting his fence for him.

I presume that's the most I’ve ever liked Tom Sawyer, because I just found him very tiresome in this novel.

On the flip side, I got fond of Huck quickly. He’s a fourteen-year-old tired of his assigned guardian making him all civilized. Then he has to deal with his nightmare of a drunken father bursting back into his life to kidnap him and Huck’s like, welp, I’ve gotta get out of this mess myself. Despite my prior osmosis of the moment, that “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” bit still hit in context.

More uncertain on what to make of Jim — once they miss the Cairo turning point and are stuck going south, he’s relaxed about it even as they end up going pretty far south by the end of it all. But I guess he doesn’t have many other options? There’s the whole evasion sequence which uh, yeah, I found grotesque in both the joke Tom makes of Jim’s escape and in the joke’s assault on Jim’s dignity, that in the end results in Jim getting captured again anyway.

Did learn something interesting about the evasion sequence. The edition I read had a footnote mentioning how the narrator of one of Hemingway’s books says you should stop reading when Jim “is stolen from the boys. This is the real end. The rest is just cheating.” It sticks that footnote shortly after Huck has his yeah I’m going to hell moment and has decided to help Jim escape, implying that what Hemingway’s narrator calls cheating is Huck (and Tom’s) rescue effort.

This link argues that the “cheating” should actually be read as referring to the aftermath of the evasion sequence, when Jim is re-captured and then conveniently discovered to be a free man after all with no negative consequences to him. I find the argument persuasive (especially the “boys” bit — there’s only one boy when the Duke and the King sell Jim to the Phelps, Huck).

I had a good time reading the novel till we meet the Duke and King. The adventures down the river, like boarding that boat or the rival plantation families (that made me think of an Red Dead Redemption 2 chapter even though it’s a common trope), were a fun time.

Unfortunately I found almost any segment starring the Duke and King a miserable slog. I didn’t enjoy their particular brand of conning and charlatanry at all, and kept wishing they’d disappear in the next chapter. ...okay, I found mildly funny the part where they deliberately put on the same terrible show for a town two nights in a row because the crux scheme is that that no attendee wants to admit that they got scammed.

Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser

A book on the dynamics and functioning of modern cities, one that often deconstructs myths about the way cities work (Aren’t the urban poor we see worse off than the rural poor we don’t? No. Doesn’t keeping buildings short keep housing cheap? No.)

The book came out in 2011, so admittedly a lot of its arguments and facts I had already absorbed elsewhere via my other readings in urbanism and YIMBYism, but I still found it a nice package in which to read said familiar arguments. What I didn’t have much context for were the sections on India, specifically Mumbai. Folks, I cannot exaggerate the horror I felt at learning that many cities in India copied the restrictiveness of the worst Anglo zoning codes, and got to learn the unfun lesson that many high-demand areas learn: when you restrict housing construction because you are trying to restrict population, all you really do is increase overcrowding and extralegal living situations.

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Read most of it before I watched this year’s Shakespeare in the Park production, finished the rest after.

Definitely one of those comedies where reading it was super gripping. I found the most real moments Viola and Sebastian’s reunion*, and Malvolio’s despair. Both were very good to watch in the production too, of course, but all the romantic shenanigans were incredibly elevated for me by watching people act it out. Even if Viola has worse taste than her brother.

Not having a strong reaction while reading but having a fun time while watching might be my default experience with Shakespeare comedies. My exceptions are Much Ado About Nothing (which I adored the first time I read it), The Taming of The Shrew (which I certainly had a strong reaction to), and The Comedy Of Errors (boring af both ways).

* On the topic of said reunion, I flipped to the introduction of my library copy after I finished reading the play and got to be thrown by it how into the incest vibes theory of Viola and Sebastian it was? KINKTOMATO and all that, dear introduction writer, but I think they emphasized their siblinghood when reuniting because they are having a heartwarming moment, not to remind us that they can’t get married to each other. A touch too litbrain for me there.