The SFFaudio Podcast #729 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain


The SFFaudio Podcast #729 – The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain – read by John Greenman for Librivox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (6 hours 42 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Trish E. Matson.

Talked about on today’s show:
1876, conflating some with Huckleberry Finn, the whitewashing of the fence, the whole business with the caves, the pirate incident, pretending to be dead, the business with the graves, Injun Joe, why people thought they were dead, play pirate, engaged, bosom friend Joe, what’s with his cousin, Sid, half-brother, Aunt Polly, single parent families, Judge Thatcher’s wife, Huck’s dad, gone, because the civil war, pre-civil war, set in the 1840s, disease?, pirates?, re-written as a science fiction book, there’s no outside communication with big cities, time placement with technology, lucifer matches, middle ages tech, St. Petersburg, Missouri, newfangled, no slavery we can see, the absence of industry, so kid oriented, so kid focused, a traditional plotted book, a bildungsroman, a picaresque, Twain’s first novel, incidents, a memory of growing up in this place at that time, not plot driven, Hannibal, Missouri, a made up town, the Illinois shore, going downriver to Illinois, he’s not making a mistake, we are making some misunderstanding, I had eleven toes, the bottom right hand corner, a fictionalization of his geography, an island, a sandbar, detailed fantasy map, how the cave system works, karst topography, mid-19th century American stuff, Ballou’s Dollar Monthly, right after Poe and before Twain, Atlantic Monthly, contemporary fiction magazine, a bent towards the fun, An Adventure Under Ground by W.D. Harrington, blooming for the grave, a story about a treasure in a cave, afeared, no companion Huck Finn, a body that has been covered in limestone, almost Lovecraftian cosmicism, stalactite dripping, a robber completely covered in limestone, turned into a statue, externally fossilized, locked inside of a tomb of limestone, a waterfall, the treasure was the escape, The Beast In The Cave by H.P. Lovecraft, Becky Thatcher, turned into a troglodyte, a C.H.U.D.?, a ghoul, The “Minions Of The Moon” by George L. Aiken, highborn noblemen rapists, pirates vs. robbers, the red handed, why he has to keep going to church, foster mom, you have to be a nobleman to be a robber, ancient tropes from the penny dreadfuls, Robin Hood, a Saxon nobleman, a lowborn local hero, pirates raid the triangle trade, pirates of the Caribbean, ex-slaves, Our Flag Means Death, unrealistic fantasy elements, Stede Bonnet, the romanticism of piracy, be and do that, all the fantasies that Tom and Huck have, what we remember vs. the majority of the book, fantasies interrupted by real events, keeping the guns in the cave, haunted house, adult versions of Tom and Huck are evil, actual robbers, murderers, low class people, absolute pronouncements, he’s read the books, overhearing adults, getting engaged, what’s consistently proven, blood oaths, children always report on each other, Huck’s rich!, when the beans are spilled, when Sid rats him our several times, a tattletale, preying on his conscience, jailed unjustly, the trial scene, “stealthy” or “stealthily”, I stealthily left the river, an interpretation, hiding behind a log, making silent agreements, things that would upset stories, when the murder quarrel sprung up, graverobbing, hidden agendas, through Tom’s eyes, protecting their own, strange dynamics of adults, male adult role models, judges, a source of awe, the senator isn’t 25 feet tall, a prize for excellent trading, an excellent businessman, so Twain, we’ll draw a veil over the rest of this, the meta-materials, that blue covered bible, Gustave Dore, that book didn’t exist yet, pre-Civil War, Mart Twain was in the Civil War for a brief period, when you read Mark Twain, using these racist epithets, this is not a racist book, the low class people use the n word, nobody but an injun, everybody who listening to this, the lack of racism with regards to blacks, one half-breed in this book, he’s about to name Injun Joe as the murderer, escapes into the wilderness, revenge, free range, whatever, free ranging, greatly disappointed, she thought of him that way before, a hanging crime, testifying against a murderer, move towns and change your name, all sorts of crazy things we can’t imagine in our society today, missing kids, a known murderer escapes, casual and expected daily beatings of children, it is unbelievable, historical fact, if this were a fantasy novel, corporal punishment, distasteful as a reader, conflict, love, punishing for the good of his soul, spare the rod and spoil the child, Sid breaks the sugarbowl, refuses to apologize, her conscience reproached her, parallel with Becky, the noblest lie, George Washington and the cherry tree, how interesting Twain as a man is, Stephen King’s It, sympathizing with children, not a trauma book, the adventures of not the travails of, Tom has Agency, very 19th century thing, a politeness/impoliteness contest, if you cross this I’ll beat your head off, two soldiers confronting each other, two medieval knights, some random kid, equal contemporaries, is Huck Finn a little older?, how old are these boys?, a timeless age, not older than 12, his interest in Becky, a kiss, chivalrous love, no vestige of sexual attraction, a wife, girls are yucky, he’s too old for that, Tom gets it, Huck’s not there yet, what are girls good for, when you’re a high class robber, Huck Finn doesn’t hate that idea, when Becky and Tom are missing, they’ve run off to the cave to have sex, they’re dead, between 9 and 12, how much death is a part of life, orphans, drowned in the river, stabbed by a half-breed in the graveyard, he’s so funny, they trade everything, a rat on a string, you can swing it, weird superstitions, incantations, spells, step on crack you break your mother’s back, step on a line break your mother’s spine!, witches, pictures himself dead in great and loving detail, fantasize, when I’m dead people will appreciate me, part of the fantasy, I’ll show them!, coming back in the middle of the funeral, too strong a coincidence, bury a dead cat as a cure for warts, special spell, works great!, a kitten with one eye, my cat with one eye, a knife that doesn’t cut things, a doorknob, a piece of blue glass, I’ll trade you my tooth, if you were an alien, a little kid on the playground, getting clout, telling lies that could be true because they’re so authentic, complete lies all the time, not exactly hypocrisies, taking sweetmeats and apples is hooking vs. stealing a whole ham, piracy vs. stealing, what is going to keep Tom and Joe from becoming Injun Joe and the other guy, found dead, the whole town wanted him hung, they want to pardon him, eating bats and candles and dying of thirst, The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, black racism, the plot intrigue, figure out the throughline, the plot, the resolution, the description of how he’s died, the unspoken thing, the natives: where are they?, its sad but they were savages, a most horrible thing in this book, they don’t exist anymore, he’s not a specific kind of indian, what was the reason Nigger Jim left with Tom, he’s a runaway slave, Huck’s conscience torments him, that’s stealing from the owner, friendship or basic respect, a love story, a fellow human being, Hook vs. Huck, another pirate story with children, living in barrels, he’s Diogenes, living in a hog’s head, somebody adopts him, he’s a homeless kid who loves the lifestyle of being homeless, all the other kids admire and respect and wish they were him, he can swear and smoke, he doesn’t have to go to school or church, no chores!, grotesquely and lovingly described clothing, the seat of his pants is empty, ultimately respected, good at tricking people into doing things, the famous fence scene, completely free, he had to do this he had to do this, I’m way more free than he is, I have to have a job, he gets money from his parents, childhood psychology, fantasy reality, beautifully and classically, three or four sequels, Tom Sawyer, Detective, League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, timelessness, anywhere and anywhen, he understands kids, one of the best books ever?, a very good book, so American, easy to fall into, completely immersive, Paul was a kid again, the world through Tom’s eyes, adult insights, “work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do”, a classic for sure, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a more “important” book, Huckleberry Finn has a greater standing, a mighty theme, Moby-Dick, autobiographical, To Kill A Mockingbird, white knighting, look at it in its time, rewrite the book, maybe it is wonderful, it’s not one groups job to not write a book so another group can, who is To Kill A Mockingbird for?, who was it written by?, written by a white lady for a white audience, it’s a movie for a white audience, a book (and a movie) with a message, the message is don’t be asshole, help people when you can, that weird metaphor, killing of a bird vs. killing a rabid dog, a symbol, we don’t have anything like that in this book, an axe to grind, it has a huge axe to grind, more adventurey, much more memory, there’s no growing up, how do you end a book about children: they grow up and get married, Tom Sawyer, Abroad, bringing his experiences to this book, fun and funny, appreciating it as an adult after reading it as a kid, too young for Paul?, quite to the contrary, go back and listen to it, four different comic adaptations, caught up in the fence painting scene, in the trailer, a very personal memory, health problems, a stroke, visiting the hospital, reading the whitewashing scene chapter, she was crying, feeling nostalgic?, it moved her, a generational book, shared thoughts and feelings, thematically less important, a cliche, a trope, reverse psychology, why it is so iconic, it’s the trope maker, a lot of classic literature is dreck that got carried over, considered every now and again, “careful, Jesse”, she hid these signs with a forced gaiety, what her sex call a “good cry”, some things humans have that other animals don’t: language, thoughts that can’t be formulated into words, infer she wants water, yes and no, we are not just talking communicating narrative characters, we are also animals, moved to tears in a positive way, a funny scene, hanging out with Mark Twain is just delightful, Mark Twain’s relationship with Dorothy Quick, old men and young girls, a special empathy, a young person who thought he was amazing, he is his own character, a transatlantic crossing, a correspondence for the rest of his life, what makes this book so special, he’s mighty good at what he’s doing here, a pretty good narration, Nick Offerman, Mark Nelson, Becky Thatcher is barely in the book, quasi-fantasy, a Jules Verne spoof, across Africa, a long great writing career, delightful to read, The Curious Republic of Gondour, Robert A. Heinlein, Missouri boys, Heinlein’s cute not funny, wrote a lot of juveniles, Heinlein’s juveniles are 13 to 20ish, an octagonal writing shed, a podcasting shed, soundproof it from the dogs cows and chickens, John Greenman is pretty good, first novel thought to be written on a typewriter, a printer’s apprentice, super-interested in technology, inventions, running out of money so he wrote books, Tom Sawyer Abroad by Huck Finn by Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer is three people I know, he’s Becky Thatcher as well, Mark Twain is not his real name, a pretty good job getting in Becky Thatcher’s head, the very sympathetic Aunt Polly, how she feels, punishing for the wrong reason, that logic holds, Mark Twain thinking as an adult, an empathetic guy, he would have been a great dad, a troublesome husband, two daughters, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, Innocents Abroad, chunky, 25 hours!, how is this longer?, Grover Gardner, The Mysterious Stranger, what is existence really?, an unfinished collection, a supernatural character, No. 44, translated from the jug, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, get Maissa or Evan.

The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Classics Illustrated - The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

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The SFFaudio Podcast #527 – READALONG: Herbert West: Reanimator by H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #527 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa Vu, Mr Jim Moon, and Evan Lampe talk about Herbert West: Reanimator by H.P. Lovecraft

Talked about on today’s show:
Gruesome Tales, Home Brew Magazine, The Lurking Fear, Clark Ashton Smith, the Weird Tales serial, Damon Knight illustrated, Reanimator, assembly, twenty years later, serialized, reading it as a serial, internal summaries, “previously on Re-Animator”, Jeffrey Coombs, Mr Jim Moon’s tin-foil hat theory, the unwilling hero, he hates everybody, Hypnos, no trace of Herbert West, was there ever really a Herbert West?, unlike the movie, sociopathic in his regard for other people, no descent into corruption, the charnel horror, The Hound, aren’t we terrible?, it’s awful, awful really, he never ages, interaction between West and the rest of the world, in an asylum, it makes things fit, he liked the idea so much he wanted to save it for a good story, not junk, only options, changes in Astounding and Amazing, cheap storytelling, pretty amazing, S.T. Joshi, secretly enjoyed writing it, it is fun, progress gone off the rails, its all his fault, the animals, worse and worse, larger transgressions, killing someone, a lizard from New Zealand, indescribable reptile, scientific progression, Frankenstein’s mom died, Star Wars prequels, Darth Vader wants to conquer death, the soul is a myth, no other motivation, a better story about science,

Age has more charity for these incomplete yet high-souled characters, whose worst real vice is timidity, and who are ultimately punished by general ridicule for their intellectual sins—sins like Ptolemaism, Calvinism, anti-Darwinism, anti-Nietzscheism, and every sort of Sabbatarianism and sumptuary legislation.

rub his face in it, thinking of Lovecraft as all the characters, childhood illustrations by Lovecraft, “anglo puritanism”, a war within his own mind, writing as getting out your demons, the solution (vs. the reagent),

It had at first been his hope to find a reagent which would restore vitality before the actual advent of death, and only repeated failures on animals had shewn him…

the Harlem Smoke has forelegs instead of arms, the reagent isnt racist, the character is racist, reality isn’t racist, objects and things, the more you look into it, things to play with, Lovecraft’s racism, pathologizing his writing, secret autobiography, trying to explain away creativity, what if it was this, really interesting, the war in his own mind, going to a play with black actors, C.M. Eddy Jr. Dead Dumb And Blind,

A little after noon on the twenty-eighth day of June, 1924, Dr. Morehouse stopped his machine before the Tanner place and four men alighted.

June 28th 1924, the Democrats not denouncing the KKK, Richard Wagner, race is central to Lovecraft, if you read his letters, to understand lovecraft we have to understand his racism and his racial, black characters in Edgar Allan Poe, The Gold Bug, he’s not interested in race, race is central to everything except for his dream stories, Re-Animator and Bride Of Re-Animator, adding the love element, all the bodies are male, the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre adaption, Dr Gordon Stuart, showing how racist both of the characters are, they lean into it, the factory town part, we’re not supposed to sympathize with these guys, Dan (the narrator character), student loans, Bryan Alexander, they revoke his student loans, the wild monster, straight up murdering a dude, so as I could be witness, ‘you towheaded freak don’t inject me with that needle’, for perverse reasons, a Peruvian civil war, looking at the two films together, quite faithful to the original serial, the women, the love interest, the plagiarist professor, in the Canadian army, what’s in the box?, isn’t he directing the army of the dead?, why would he deliver his own head, the man on the inside

As I have told the police, there was no wagon in the street; but only a group of strange-looking figures bearing a large square box which they deposited in the hallway after one of them had grunted in a highly unnatural voice, “Express—prepaid.” They filed out of the house with a jerky tread, and as I watched them go I had an odd idea that they were turning toward the ancient cemetery on which the back of the house abutted.

Arthur Jermyn, they are always living together, a touch of homo-eroticism, the same streak in Hypnos, the dissociated self, I don’t like the way he’s looking at me, part six is so preposterous,

When I slammed the door after them West came downstairs and looked at the box. It was about two feet square, and bore West’s correct name and present address. It also bore the inscription, “From Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, St. Eloi, Flanders”.

a Thing On The Doorstep moment, a ghoulish wind of ice, the charnel bowels of a putrescent earth, a horde of silent toiling things, The Black Cat, a set of fingers and an eye, the shout-out to The Rats In The Walls, like an army, a beautiful head made of wax, a mad eyed monstrosity, fabulous abominations, they have servants?, unidentifiable ashes, the Sefton Tragedy, those accursed tomb-legions had not been so silent, the framing story, testimony in exchange for immunity, The Tell-Tale Heart, talking to his own defense attorney, a psychotic break, Guy de Maupassant, Philip K. Dick, Herbert West will hold him, controlled by West, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, a reluctant fascination, if these were case notes, it would be so clear, suicide, at the end of the PDF, BUY WAR BONDS, an unconscious joke by the publisher, who watched the 2017 Italian film?, Jesse’s review: “It has a lot of Italian cafes, some yellow liquid, Italian ladies and men, violins, chain, lots of darkness, a shoutout to Frankenstein, dripping liquids, blood. Waiting for improv class to end and the script to begin.”, 100% accurate, they never read the original story and only ever saw the trailer for Stuart Gordon’s movie, what the fuck is going on, you have never seen three more confused people, what is beyond death, was it a chamber?, was it a non-continuous experience, screaming in rebirth, birth is always painful, Lovecraft is a materialist, they just keep shooting and stabbing each other, death is horrific, limbo, stop motion and black and white, the makeup was good, the film was terrible, death is just the beginning, blame Jesse, Beyond Reanimator, having a female in the story, the Tyler Durden Fight Club story, a love story to the original Re-Animator and Frankenstein and Bride Of Frankenstein, the parts, lobotomies to make the dead controllable, the original film is very interested in Lovecraft’s story, a horror comedy and so is the original, The Loved Dead, he wants to make it with them, Lovecraft had a sense of humour, a very pathologized view of the man, if you read his letters, surprisingly funny, self-deprecating, naughty risque humour, hysterically funny, Barry Norman, this is hilarious, once you start seeing the humour, M.R. James’ jokes, very uptight and very straight-laced, reading Lovecraft, so engaged, engaged with other fiction, One Summer Night by Ambrose Bierce, McCall’s, The Body Snatchers by Robert Louis Stevenson, very very ill, no philosopher was he, pathological indifference, a gigantic negro named Jess, not so populace as its register had shown it to be, pallid and haggard, all eyes and teeth, a missing adventure, working class bodies, Monsters Of The Market: Zombies, Vampires And Global Capitalism by David McNally, capital punishment, Burke and Hare, a Burke-skin book, experimentation on working class people The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, Curwen’s dungeon, they haven’t eaten in hundreds of years, once you’re a reanimated zombie, another Frankenstein reference, James Whale’s Frankenstein, the first of a new race, man becomes god, man should not meddle, remaking James Whale’s Frankenstein, working class victims, a sound animal, more asleep than dead, class anxieties, the silent working class, the first illustration, we laid the specimen on the improvised dissecting table, alien autopsy, the cloaked figure may be the narrator, up is down and black is white, an unreliable narrator in his own testimony, the last sentence, their silent because its an hallucination, for the years that followed, literally the narrator, the patient whose banging his head against the wall, age 12 H.P. Lovecraft illustration [I may have been conflating the source, not even sure it is by Lovecraft or even age 12, here’s the source], sword of puritan ethics, the narrator is not as sure about the afterlife as Herbert West, its in his head, being a gentleman, Randolph Carter, The Hound, not as equally as bad as the other, a bust, Who Knows? by Guy de Maupassant, The Horla, all his furniture is leaving his house, it all mysteriously reappeared, the furniture of his mind, if there’s any pattern to H.P. Lovecraft its ending up in an insane asylum, poor H.P. Lovecraft, mom and dad, a common trope, the last confession, “there are demons, honest”, losing your reason, losing who you are, the quality of mental health care, gone to the asylum, not a big fan of doctors, their ethics are somewhat questionable,trust and paranoia, second opinions, the hierarchies in asylums and hospitals, The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar, bad science, parallels, gruesomeness, is the M. in M. Valdemar a missing word?, a hoax, a japer, The Man Who Japed, a comedy magazine, Grewsome is a pun on Home Brew, getting intoxicated, a magazine of entertainment, a low brow version of The Smart Set, anarchist cookbook territory, charging 25 cents, the slickest fanzine Jesse’s ever seen (if it is a fanzine), a prozine, their version of the internet, homepages vs. letters, a parallel to a slow version of the internet, fan forums, a lot of it is preserved, Stuart Gordon, Robert E. Howard, in the late 60s and early 70s, when Lovecraft hit paperback, beatnik and hippies, fandom/cult, the trailer for the musical theater version of Re-Animator, just as horrific, the sets, the security guard, Boudoir magazine, so distracted with his pornography, in keeping with the serialization, its good comedy.

From The Dark (typescript)

Home Brew, February 1922

Home Brew, June 1922

ReAnimator art by Francesco Francavilla565

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Posted by Jesse Willis

Tales To Terrify: The Hound by H.P. Lovecraft

SFFaudio Online Audio

One of H.P. Lovecraft’s shorter horror tales – short and ghoulishly sweet as read by the great Lawrence Santoro, host of Tales To Terrify.

Tales To TerrifyTales To Terrify No. 37 – The Hound
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Lawrence Santoro
1 |MP3| – Approx. [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Tales To Terrify
Podcast: September 21, 2012
Two cacodaemoniacal grave-robbers, who delight in collecting gruesome trophies for their black museum, uncover a strange and deadly amulet from a five hundred year old corpse in a Dutch graveyard. First published in Weird Tales, February 1924.

Here’s a |PDF| version.

The Hound - illustration by Menton3 for the IDW adaptation

Posted by Jesse Willis