Pulp Poem of the Week

If you pick up a starving dog

and make him prosperous,

he will not bite you.

This is the principle difference

between a dog and a man.

Mark Twain

Pudd’nhead Wilson

1894

Pulp Poem of the Week

Why is it that we

rejoice at birth and

grieve at a funeral?

It is because

we are not

the person involved.

Mark Twain

Pudd’head Wilson

1894

Book Review: Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the wellspring of the American vernacular novel; as a result, Twain is sometimes cited as the father of the hardboiled novel—never mind the fact that there’s nothing much hardboiled about Huck Finn, especially by the time that you reach its famously weak ending. Much darker, though less vernacular, is a later Twain work, Pudd’nhead Wilson, whose laughs counterbalance the book’s ultimately noir impulse. Grade: A-