“A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”
Mark Twain’s quote ironically resembles the fate of his novels in modern times, said Jacqui Hoang, a member of Sigma Tau Delta, UCLA’s English Honor Society. The society is sponsoring a 13-hour marathon-reading of short stories by Mark Twain, the famous American author who died a hundred years ago today.
Hoang said that although Twain’s popular novels such as Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer are considered classics, people are introduced to them only in school.
“People are not able to fully enjoy his writing because academic courses overanalyze or criticize it instead of just reading it for what it is,” Hoang said.
UCLA’s Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions is seeking to restore focus on the works of great writers such as Mark Twain by reading their novels for the message they’re trying to express, rather than imposing contemporary categories on them, said Daniel Lowenstein, professor of law and director of the center.
Powell Library is showcasing modernized Huckleberry Finn material at the center of the second floor, near the rotunda.
The owner of the collection is former English department chair Tom Wortham, who has been collecting everything and anything Huckleberry Finn, including themed coke bottes, fishing poles and curtains, for years.
It’s not that Wortham is obsessed with Huckleberry Finn or Mark Twain, he said, it’s his distaste for the modern perception of Huckleberry Finn that leads him to continue collecting.
Wortham said he doesn’t know any other book that has been modified to this extent by popular culture.
“We feminize and infantize Huck, but Huck is not a happy child ““ he’s miserable and lonely,” Wortham said in a Youtube video about the exhibit. “If you have a negative Huck or a pessimistic Huck, it’s not going to sell. I’m trying to use this collection to make people go back and reread, and maybe read better, Huckleberry Finn.”
Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln revolutionized American prose, the type of writing seen in today’s American journalism that uses a very direct and straightforward way of writing to communicate to their audience, Lowenstein said.
“Twain and Lincoln and others of that time introduced something different that is characteristically American. These are great Americans that we should be honoring and seeking to understand,” Lowenstein said.
Salar Farahvar, a third-year psychobiology student, is one of many students who will be participating in the reading marathon.
“I’ve always been interested in Mark Twain, but I never read any of his novels. I think it’s special to read Mark Twain exactly a hundred years after his death,” Farahvar said.
With contributing reports from Alex Chen, Bruin contributor.