Critical Essay | Critical Review by Richard Eder

Critical Review by Richard Eder

SOURCE: Eder, Richard. “Into the Night Sky: The Tale of a Modern-Day Huck Finn.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (21 May 1995): 3, 7.

In the following review, Eder contrasts Rule of the Bone with Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, arguing that Banks's reimagining of Twain's novel is ultimately flawed.

Trying to tell the story of a modern Huckleberry Finn, with present-day counterparts for Jim, Tom Sawyer, the raft and other situations and characters as well, Russell Banks takes some awful risks [in Rule of the Bone]. Several he manages admirably, several he flunks, and the largest he ignores at his peril.

“Persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished,” Mark Twain wrote at the start of his masterpiece. It's not that Huck's and Jim's story lacks sharp observations upon the oddities and horrors of life in the South before the Civil War. Of course...
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