Alrighty: Seeing as though Thursday Next has made a habit of jumping into, out of and around a fair amount of classic novels, I was hoping if I could ask Mr Fforde for a ffavour. I've got no idea how to get hold of him personally, so I thought this would be as good a place to ask as any.

Background to my request:

Tom Sawyer is an idiot. Honust injun. He's a jackass. He's got all the fundamental knowledge of a smart person, but has about as much ability to apply it to real-life situations as a stale shortcake. Around page 232 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer is telling Huck that they can't use shovels and picks to dig Jim out (heck, they don't even *have* to dig him out) because that's not how they do it in the book etc etc etc... Now, I realise that Twain's putting this all in for humour, but sweet heavens, as a real person Tom Sawyer is just being stupid, not to mention playing games with Jim's life.

So my request is this:

Can Next, or anybody else able to, please enter The Adeventures of Huckleberry Finn on or around page 232, and punch Tom Sawyer right in the face. And then leave. For me. Please?

Regards to whoever's reading.
K. Hoole

P.S. Othello's the only other character I've ever wanted to deck...

Seems to me you need the services of a mercenary rather than Thursday. She has morals you know! Trouble is, I can't think of any fictional mercenaries.

Oh would it not be wonderful to be able to bring a little wisdom to fiction. The only problem is that just about every movie or idiot box series claiming to be 'drama' would be finished before the first commercial.

If they did and just showed the test pattern (remember them) the average intellectual level of the community would rise.

Welcome Kevin! Here's my two cents on the Sawyer thing -- (SPOILER ALERT)


Remember, at the end Tom reveals that he has known all along Jim has been freed by Widow Douglas. So the entire crazy plan was always just play acting. He was having such a good time doing it 'by the book' that he forgot there was real danger involved (and Tom was the one to get shot, so he got his punishment).

Nah, the bullet wasn't punishment. He just romanticised that too. "Oooh! Look! Street cred!" No, he needs a thick lip and a black eye - preferably by Jim: "Mars Tom, yeh's in fer a right m*****f****ng up NAW, sah!"

That's a good point. I forgot, he loved it that he got shot, didn't he?

Well, you could always do what RUSH did-
just make sure your song sounds nothing like theirs (& doesn't also get done to death)...

Just saying, don't let your drummer friends borrow your RUSH records...

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Glad you got here Kevin.

You can contact JFf via his e-mail address - jasper [at] jasperfforde [dot] com - although don't forget to remove the spaces and change the odd characters. (In the address, not your e-mail)

Don't forget that Tom Sawyer is only enacting what Twain has written. The real Tom spends so much time idling away down at the river bank that many readings possibly involve only a generic standing in for him anyway.

Entering Huck Finn and punching Tom in the face (presumably at some time when he is out of the main action) would more than likely see him peremptorily re-enter, at a crucial moment, with a huge concoction about being assaulted by a band of red-injuns, and attempt to subvert the story into an out-and-out boys' own adventure with himself at the centre.

I'd be careful about giving Tom any more excuses to be a fool than those which he already has.

I did like the Prince and the Pauper, preferred it mightily to Tom Sawyer- never really got into Mark Twain much.

I hear what you're saying, Robert, and I guess subtlety is called for...

So why not, towards the end, when Tom Sawyer is climbing up the lightning rod, and Huck is walking up the stairs, make it that Tom 'accidentally' falls and nuts himself unconscious. A generic could be put in his place and told to be asleep in the house during the main action, and no one need find out that the real Tom has been kidnapped until Aunt Polly comes down to check on her boy "Sid", has let everyone know that Jim is already free etc, and Tom "wakes up" (and by that I mean is reinserted into the story and the generic removed) with these wild stories about being kidnapped by Injun-death-ninjas and Arabs on elephants and held against his will in a pit of fire and sulphur (hey, he doesn't need to make ALL of it up) etc etc etc ... The beautiful part? He will swear that all of this happened to him, but no one will believe him, because "he" (the generic) was asleep in the house the whole time. So there we have Tom Sawyer, going on the most adventurest adventure of his young, irritating little life, and no one to believe him.
Ha! Sucks to you, Tom-o!

Now that my evil plan has been ferpected, off I go to pay an account of R4.50 at the chemist down the road (really sucks when you don't have R5 in your wallet, forcing you to by a small box of pills on *account* - sheesh...)

Do you think Mark Twain intended Huckleberry Finn to be the star of the show when he wrote the books?

Well, considering the book is titled "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", I think it was a pretty clear possibility from the start...

You're missing the plural there, Kevin.

I intended to. Cos I haven't read the first one. It was a stealth-jibe - you know, those ones you let loose, hoping to goodness that the jibe-ee doesn't see through your loosely-weaved mesh of sentence construction to the gaping fallacy beneath?

Twain most definitely used Tom as a "guest appearance" in Huck Finn. His motive may well have been for no other reason that he knew that doing so would ensure a best seller.

Tom was an already established (and hugely popular) character and Twain simply has him arrive on the scene and start doing "Tom Sawyerish" things which need no justification - everyone accepts that this is simply the way he is. The effect would be quite jarring and puzzling if one had never heard of Tom Sawyer.

Some commentators have seen this as a weakness in Huck Finn (the book), as Tom - in one sense - is simply grafted into the plot, completely changing its tone at that point. The main benefit is, of course, that his shallowness (as both a character and a "person") throws the carefully crafted development of Huck into high relief. The contrast allows Huck's development (of his sense of humanity among other things) to be seen as something way beyond what Tom (as a character or a "person") would ever be capable.

I think there is a book in there somewhere for someone who wants to write a story set 30 years later with Huck back from "the territories" and meeting up with Tom - a wealthy businessman and running for governor by then, I'm sure. Perhaps that's where the punch on the nose might come into things!

That's actually a bloody good idea.

I can't even remember Tom Sawyer's guest spot in the book. I do vividly remember reading the 'tooth pulling' episode, which is one of the funniest passages in English Literature...I think that may be in Tom Sawyer though, not TAOHF.

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I actually saw this when it was on TV because my little sister loved Megan Follows (Becky), who played Anne in the Green Gables miniseries.

It was horrible.

Oh dear!
Huck is a reporter? Tom is a lawyer? What a travesty.

I suddenly get an image of Tom defending someone for littering and having them convicted of treason, and Huck's subsequent newspaper article veering off on the topic of the breeds of the dogs he noticed outside the courthouse.