As a narrator, Huck Finn is a schoolmarm’s worst nightmare. Not only does he slaughter proper English, but he questions pieties (in hilarious ways) and generally puts all conventional wisdom to the test of reasonable self-interest. His insights and honesty, however, make him the invaluable commentator on the dfference between precepts taken from books (even the Bible) and the evidence of his own experience. Yet even young readers can see that his journey down the Mississippi with Jim repeats the great literary and Biblical themes, staring with “Moses and the Bulrushes.”
Glenn Arbery
Senior Editor, People Newspapers and Adjunct Professor at University of Dallas
After finishing his degree at the University of Dallas, Glenn Arbery taught literature at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and Thomas More College in New Hampshire. In 1997, he returned to Dallas to become director of the Teachers Academy at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. For seven years there, he taught graduate courses and directed the Summer Institute for Teachers, an intensive graduate course in classic texts of the Western tradition. His Book "Why Literature Matters" appeared in 2001 from ISI Books. For the Dallas Institute Press, he edited "The Tragic Abyss," the third volume in the series on literary genre under the general editorship of Louise Cowan. In 2003, he became a senior editor with People Newspapers and a contributing editor of D Magazine, where he has won state, regional, and national awards for his writing. He is currently editing a collection of essays by the Southern critics John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Donald Davidson.