Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)

I admit I enjoyed this short novel by Mark Twain for the usual reasons, including that it has a lot of fun with European culture, but I believe it may be the fourth novel or story I've read by Twain that uses the plot device of babies switched at birth. So, to start, I'm not sure how much Twain has to say about European literary cliches. It's set in a Missouri town on the Mississippi River. It also has a pair of Italian twins who claim to be disinherited noblemen, which doesn't seem entirely improbable. The problem with the babies switched at birth story is it involves a lot of uncomfortable detail about race, with the story set in 1850 reminding us that Twain was raised in a slaveholding society and never quite transcended it all the way. One of the babies is white, of old First Families of Virginia (FFV) stock, and the other is Black. Or "so you say," as we go down the hatch of "passing" and mulattos and octoroons. Twain uses none of these words, but does tell us the Black baby's mother is 1/16 Black, which makes the baby 1/32 Black, and aiyiyi, I don't want to know anymore. It's all about explaining how such a switch could happen credibly but it's fatally flawed at conception except as a measure of racism. Everyone who reads this should know it's incredible and ridiculous to assign someone a social identity based on a solitary great-great-great-great-grandparent But here we are, "if you ain't white you Black." All this was in the air Twain breathed. He mocks it, gently, but he is obviously steeped in it. He rejects slavery but in the tepid way many of us reject capitalism nowadays, if we do. At any rate, as charming as Twain's tale here is generally—and it's not bad for Twain fans—it didn't really seem good enough to me to transcend its nagging problems. It was serialized, but a note by Twain at the end (not in all editions) talks about the way he came to write it. He originally had the Italian twins physically conjoined and it was mainly about them. But evidently David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson and his fingerprinting ways, along with Roxanne the slave and her baby-switching ways, just demanded the attention, and thus Puddn'head Wilson. That probably accounts for some of the lack of focus here, and certainly for the fleeting sensation I had that the Italian twins were conjoined. Twain has obviously had practice at this as the story is put together really well. If you like baby switching stories, don't miss this one.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over (Library of America).