Pynchons Problem

[Michael Bailey]

the law of the land and the temper of the times, that's changed...

part of that change was the introduction of Twain's ideas and
verbiage, even though
between Fiedler's humorous but oblivious take (I mean - Becky Thatcher
on the raft would be kidnapping, Aunt Polly would burn the raft and
sell Jim, Twain was brave but he couldn't put a "wanton woman" on
there and expect even the printer to work with him, they are men
without women...another group of casualties of patriarchy by gosh! ---
a-and, even if they are as gay as gay can be, still - nobody
completely ignores Socrates's philosophical arguments to focus on his
NAMBLA leanings...do they?) and political correctness rendering most
of Jim's locutions (not to mention references to him by others) highly
unacceptable,  the brilliance of the book in its context has suffered
numerous abrasions and so forth

and like _Vineland_ I think _Tom Sawyer_ is underrated too (the
language in there isn't all that kidly, for one thing)...Tom Sawyer
reifies, sets off, hones, mixes and pre-amplifies Huck Finn...

and fu'thermo' --- too bad Twain wasted so much of his money trying to
be an investment capitalist!  He had it made and could've written some
really great sequels.  Like when Conan Doyle brought back old Sherlock
Holmes and so forth.

I mean, let's say he started with Tom Sawyer as his alter ego, or
fictional self -- then he brung in his memories of the poorest kid in
town and worked through that character so that many people find Huck
more compelling than Tom...

Could he not have married Huck off eventually and found his attention
fascinated by the wife, and in his writing developed the great female
character all of us want to read about?