PETERSHAW
449
"A truth he was reluctant to admit." With this formulation Johnson is
saying that the last part of
Huckleberry Finn
supplies an action that yields a
valuable meaning, and that the author created it; yet it cannot be said that
the author fully and explicitly intended the meaning.
Whether or not this formulation proves to stand as a final answer to
the conundrums of the book, Johnson has supplied an account that is at
once literarily sophisticated and morally sound. The same cannot be said
for the stolid emphasis on slavery and race maintained by most critics
since the 1960s. Their critical orthodoxy may testify to a generous social
impulse. But the spirit of genteel self-approval with which they have im–
posed that orthodoxy has rendered
Huckleberry Finn
a humorless, charm–
less work: one lacking both literary force and the moral power to per–
suade.
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