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Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
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Session:         Page of 763

that to tell his story, he had to use the idiom of the time, the language of the characters themselves, or it would not be a valid story?

Clark:

Well, why not? That makes a lot of sense to me in terms of an author. He could not certainly have a black boy talking in Harvard English. Unless he was going to be satirical.

Q:

Would you agree that also the proponents-- that is, as far as the comparative status is of the two principals-- that that had to be delineated as Mark Twain did it or that also would not have been unrealistic? That, of course, this was a young black fellow trying to out of it, but he still had slave status at the time.

Clark:

Of course.

Q:

And the white boy knew it.

Clark:

And certainly Mark Twain was not in favor of slavery. He was not in favor of injustice.

Q:

I do not have that quote here. I believe it was in his-- it may have been in his Foreword or his Introduction, where he talked about the punishment of people that made certain interpretations, one of which he would be shot on order of the author. Here again the proponents of Mark Twain have suggested that this was actually an antiracist





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