Mini-Review: Puddn'head Wilson

Mark Twain’s “Puddn’head Wilson” should be familiar to anyone who’s ever played Quiz Bowl. It’s prime QB fodder: people know the name of the book, but they’ve never bothered to read it. It’s like “Washington Square,” or “Tender Is the Night,” or “Sons and Lovers.” The names are familiar. The plots we wouldn’t recognize if they came up and slapped us across our culturally illiterate faces.

No more! I’ve joined the ranks of the literary elite. It wasn’t by choice, though; I had to be dragged into it kicking and screaming. The book was assigned for my “Pop Culture in American History Course,” which, despite its name, is actually a serious course. Just because it says Pop Culture doesn’t mean we sit around all day and watch movies! Not yet, at least. The only movie we’ve watched is a minute-long clip from a silent version of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which isn’t exactly “The Matrix” in terms of excitement.

Sorry, I’m rambling already. I really am an old man. So: “Puddn’head Wilson.” The first thing you should know is that yes, the main character is actually called “Puddn’head.” The second thing you should know is that there’s a reason this book hasn’t passed into the general high school curriculum.

You know how people got all hot and bothered over the “racism” in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” because the n-word got tossed around a few times? Well, let’s just say that in terms of racial sensitivity, “Puddn’head Wilson” makes “Huckleberry Finn” look like a meeting of the Harvard ethnic studies department. Allow me to give you a sample quote:

Then he laid himself heavily down again, with a groan and the muttered words, “A [CENSORED!]!—I am a [CENSORED!]!—oh, I wish I were dead!”

Or how about this one?

“I’ve knelt to a [CENSORED!] wench!” he muttered. “I thought I had struck the deepest deeps of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to this……Well, there is one consolation, such as it is—I’ve struck bottom this time, there’s nothing lower.”

If you’re wondering what the censored word is, it rhymes with “bigger,” and it ain’t “chigger.”

“Huckleberry Finn” dealt with race only obliquely, as one of many obstacles Huck runs into while rafting down the Mighty Mississip. “Puddn’head Wilson” tackles race head-on and body-slams it into the ground a few times. The plot is reminiscent of another, more well-known Twain work, “The Prince and the Pauper.”

Twain, you see, had a thing for twins. Stop snickering! That’s not what I meant. “The Prince and the Pauper” was about a pair of look-alikes who swap roles, with amusing consequences for all involved. “Puddn’head Wilson” is about a pair of look-alikes who are swapped against their will, with painful consequences for all involved.

The look-alikes in question are the comically named Thomas a Becket Driscoll, scion of one of the town’s leading families, and a slave boy with the equally amusing name of Valet de Chambres. Slave and master look alike because poor little Valet—or “Chambers,” as he’s called—is only 1/32 black. But that’s enough to land him on the fast track for the auction block.

So Chambers becomes Tom, and Tom becomes Chambers, but there’s not much hilarity involved, both because 1) Twain’s jokes are a bit dry and 2) This sort of racial-based humor was probably a lot funnier in the 1890s than it is today. Sure, it’s funny in the abstract. Looking back, I can just imagine a portly 1890s plutocrat roaring with laughter as he reads about the poor, groveling Chambers and sneaky, shifty Tom.

Unfortunately, I can’t quite get in that mindset. “Puddn’head Wilson” hasn’t aged as well as other Twain novels because it’s much more topical. The themes of “Tom Sawyer” and “Huck Finn”—the pleasures and problems of childhood, growing up and the search for identity—are timeless. The issue of Jim Crow? A bit less relevant today than it was during the Cleveland administration, I would say.

Yes, yes, I recognize the fact that Twain wasn’t a raving racist. I acknowledge that the racial jokes in the novel are meant to tweak the racists, and not the nation’s darker-skinned peoples. That doesn’t help me much. Just because somebody winks at you telling a dirty joke doesn’t make it not dirty. Just because they preface a racist joke by muttering, “Hey, it’s only ironic!” doesn’t completely absolve them. Unless it’s a very good joke, I guess.

“Puddn’head Wilson” is quite readable, though, because Twain does know a thing or two about writing. The villain is vile, the hero is—there’s no hero, actually, so scratch that. I was about to write, “Once you get over the issue of race,” but then I realized that to “get over” race would be to miss Twain’s point completely. So let me rephrase. Once you understand where Twain’s coming from, you’ll find “Puddn’head Wilson” to be a perfectly decently little story about the strange goings-on in a Missouri dirtburg. And what’s not to love about that?