Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain by Thomas Ruys Smith

2022; Southern Historical Association; Volume: 88; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/soh.2022.0077

2325-6893

Sandra M. Frink,

Latin American and Latino Studies

Reviewed by: Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain by Thomas Ruys Smith Sandra Frink Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain. By Thomas Ruys Smith. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv, 330. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-7109-7.) Mark Twain famously stated that he was the "'only one who wrote about old times on the Mississippi,'" a consequence, he mused, of his unique experience as a steamboat pilot combined with his literary inclinations (p. 2). Without [End Page 387] dismissing Twain's distinctive voice, Thomas Ruys Smith, in Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain, decenters Twain's claim to ownership of the river, placing him in conversation with other writers, artists, and travelers to illustrate how "competing visions of the river" created a "polyphonic place" (p. 3). The chapters trace Twain's engagement with the river chronologically, from his experience as a steamboat pilot through his major writings about the river: his nostalgic Old Times on the Mississippi (1876); his boyhood adventure tale The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876); his dark, abstract memoir Life on the Mississippi (1883); his iconic novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884); and his final, "bleak" engagement with the river, Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) (p. 8). By interweaving an analysis of Twain's relationship with the river with those of others who challenged and agreed with his interpretations, Smith creates a fascinating narrative of the river's changing meaning and significance from the Reconstruction era to the early twentieth century. Smith's contextualization of Twain's work reveals the remarkable literary culture created by an expansive, international group of white men whose lives and works intersected. In the early chapters, Smith describes how Twain became introduced to these writers, many of whom became close friends, confidants, and even touring partners. Their river was a "space of white male power" that fostered a "rugged and capable masculinity" (p. 41). For example, Smith situates The Adventures of Tom Sawyer alongside other popular adventure tales of the era that featured boyhood exploits situated on rivers, oceans, ships, and islands. As Smith notes, "Water … sat at the heart of these new, cross-pollinating, international narratives of boyish adventure, real and imagined—a heady brew of proto-imperialism, self-definition, shifting gender norms, and changing fashions in the production of books for children" (p. 84). In other chapters, Smith compares the works of Twain and New Orleans writer George Washington Cable, providing a revealing contrast of their engagement with the river and its relationship to the South's racial past. Cable increasingly focused on the river's significance as a space of refuge, resistance, and danger for southern slaves, as in his novel The Grandissimes (1880), which Smith describes as a "strange counterpoint to the image of Huck and Jim on the river that Twain was incubating" (p. 138). In Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the white male perspective and privilege is manifest in Huck's quest for freedom on the river, mirroring Twain's own positionality, as well as that of the white middle-class men who had recently taken up canoeing as a means to escape, albeit temporarily, the burdens of civilization. For Jim, the river brought danger, violence, and, in the end, "only an ambiguous and partial freedom" (p. 197). Smith's work allows readers to trace the Mississippi River's significance as a source of freedom, resistance, and escape, as well as a space of danger, violence, and cruelty. While the book primarily focuses on the coterie of white male literary figures who could collectively "tame" the river in their work, Smith makes a fascinating foray into the writing of William Wells Brown and Josiah Henson, both fugitive slaves and abolitionists who wrote about the river and its meaning to Black Americans (p. 2). Smith also discusses those, such as Lafcadio Hearn and the illustrator Joseph Pennell, who attempted to capture [End Page 388] the life and culture of the Black roustabouts on the river's levees and ships. While more work needs to be done to capture fully the voices of the roustabouts themselves, and to...