leasummer's review
4.0
Pudd'nhead Wilson: Interesting story of black and white babies switched just after birth, their growing up, the beginning of fingerprinting as a hobby, and race issue ever present in Twain's Day.
Those Extraordinary Twins: a second story, that was original part of the first story but muddled it too much for Twain, told about the Italian twins in "Pudd'nhead Wilson" as he originally wrote it.
Those Extraordinary Twins: a second story, that was original part of the first story but muddled it too much for Twain, told about the Italian twins in "Pudd'nhead Wilson" as he originally wrote it.
wwatts1734's review against another edition
5.0
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson is one of the more obscure works of Mark Twain, which is a shame. Twain wrote this novel toward the end of the 19th Century, but it was set in the Missouri of the 1830s to 1850s. This is the setting for many of Twain's most beloved novels, such as Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Like those two novels, Pudd'nhead Wilson is a humorous work full of social criticism, particularly attacking the evils of the antebellum South, slavery, race relations and the class system.
This novel is full of irony. Pudd'nhead Wilson is a young lawyer recently moved to the Missouri river town of Dawson's Landing in 1830. Although he is probably the most intelligent man in town, he is called "Pudd'nhead" because a remark that he made shortly after arriving in town was misunderstood by the town's elders. The name stuck for decades despite Wilson's proof of his own intelligence. But Wilson is a relatively minor character in this story. The main story revolves around a slave woman named Roxanne who is 15/16 white, but who is considered black and a slave because one of her great grandparents was a black slave. She had a son by a white town elder, and this son was the same age as the son of her patrician master's young son, so the intrigue follows. Twain deals with the absurdity of race relations, the slavery system and "selling down the river" of an unwanted slave, and the honor and dueling conventions of the day. By the end of the novel, it turns into a mystery as one of the town elders is killed, and Pudd'nhead Wilson as the attorney for the defendant uses some 19th Century forensic science to reveal the killer as well as some decades old town secrets. The end of the novel is quite riveting and entertaining.
If you liked "Tom Sawyer" or "Huck Finn" and are interested in the antebellum South, or if you like a good humorous novel, I highly recommend "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson."
This novel is full of irony. Pudd'nhead Wilson is a young lawyer recently moved to the Missouri river town of Dawson's Landing in 1830. Although he is probably the most intelligent man in town, he is called "Pudd'nhead" because a remark that he made shortly after arriving in town was misunderstood by the town's elders. The name stuck for decades despite Wilson's proof of his own intelligence. But Wilson is a relatively minor character in this story. The main story revolves around a slave woman named Roxanne who is 15/16 white, but who is considered black and a slave because one of her great grandparents was a black slave. She had a son by a white town elder, and this son was the same age as the son of her patrician master's young son, so the intrigue follows. Twain deals with the absurdity of race relations, the slavery system and "selling down the river" of an unwanted slave, and the honor and dueling conventions of the day. By the end of the novel, it turns into a mystery as one of the town elders is killed, and Pudd'nhead Wilson as the attorney for the defendant uses some 19th Century forensic science to reveal the killer as well as some decades old town secrets. The end of the novel is quite riveting and entertaining.
If you liked "Tom Sawyer" or "Huck Finn" and are interested in the antebellum South, or if you like a good humorous novel, I highly recommend "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson."
im_eebee's review against another edition
3.0
Read this for class and was pleasantly surprised. I'd give it 4 stars but there's something about it that screamed at me not to
pbanditp's review against another edition
4.0
Prince and the Pauper with a Southern America spin. Good historical story with some decent character development.
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Spoilers
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Maybe you shouldn't hand out your fingerprints to just anyone that asks.
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Spoilers
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Maybe you shouldn't hand out your fingerprints to just anyone that asks.
leilaniann's review against another edition
5.0
First time in forever that I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat waiting to se what happened next. I loved this book!
haleyashtonpowell's review against another edition
4.0
This is not Mark Twain at his "best," if that means perfect, completely organized, and entirely satirical. This is Twain at his most ambitious, and marks the beginning of the "darker" period of his life in which his writing is markedly more cynical. Puddn'head Wilson is more challenging than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because it is so much more complex, and areas are left in shades of gray. It is thought-provoking and, of course, laugh-out-loud funny at some points. It's important to note that while some of the plot is muddy-- and some characters and plot points could be taken further (what the heck happened to Rowena? Why don't we talk more about "Chambers"?)-- it is never so out-of-order that it is unpleasant. I just wish Twain had done a bit more with the story, as I know he was so capable.
strrygo's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
not as bad as the other twain i've read but it does really hammer in its themes, to the point where it felt like the first couple chapters already revealed everything that would follow. the last two~three chapters were the strongest for me and i do think i would've enjoyed this for its exploration of identity as a short story maybe..though that would take away from the catharsis of the buildup(and crash) so i can't say that's definitive
introvertedbear's review against another edition
4.0
The language is a bit hard to get into at fast, but then becomes easier once you get into the grove of reading it.
It contains tons of thought-provoking themes on society, especially nature vs. nurture.
For me, "Those Extraordinary Twins" is probably the most hilarious part of the Pudd'nhead Wilson' storyline. That farce is worth a read because it seems quite outrageous and unbelievable. Still, it's stories like those that make me fall in love with Twain's writing.
It contains tons of thought-provoking themes on society, especially nature vs. nurture.
For me, "Those Extraordinary Twins" is probably the most hilarious part of the Pudd'nhead Wilson' storyline. That farce is worth a read because it seems quite outrageous and unbelievable. Still, it's stories like those that make me fall in love with Twain's writing.
omnibozo22's review against another edition
3.0
Hadn't read this/these before. Odd, even for Twain. Even more odd was the introduction to that pair of stories, that detailed the plot, almost paragraph by paragraph. Can't say I enjoyed either story much. I thought it odd that none of the reviewers or commenters in this edition bothered to mention that Twin had, twenty-five years previously, published a satirical essay on the lives of Eng and Cheng Bunker, the "Siamese Twins." Both stories were just tiresome.
octavia_cade's review against another edition
3.0
This is one of those variants on the Prince and the Pauper type tales, in which a young slave woman in the American almost-South (does Missouri count as the South? I've honestly no idea) swaps her baby with that of the man she is enslaved by. The two boys grow up into each other's place, but the story really has no interest in the white-child-turned-slave, it's all about the slave-turned-white-child, and I'm not sure how I feel about him being thoroughly a bad person. On the one hand, he's cosseted and spoilt by his vacuous purported relatives to an extent which would ruin any child, but on the other it smacks a little too much of the (unfounded, in this case) argument that nature is overcoming nurture. Which is of course bollocks, but which would be absolutely of a piece with the attitudes of the time... attitudes which Twain is admittedly skewering. The final line - which I won't spoil - is so pointed, so vicious and ridiculous at once that it is both the only line Twain could have ended this story on, and worth reading the entire book for. Which seems to give the impression that it's a bad book, now that I think of it, but it isn't. I genuinely liked it, but the sting in the tail is what really makes it.