Tongue-Tied

I think I may have mentioned in a previous post that Huck Finn was my favorite book for a while. Also Twain's essay on what specifically is wrong with The Deerslayer series by the much-loved James Fenimore Cooper put to words the incredible pain I experienced while trying to process The Last of the Mohicans for an American literature class.

Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in "Deerslayer," and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record. (Mark Twain's Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses)

The more I read, the more I love Twain. So of course since I began work on Joan of Arc for the Kindle, I feel as though I'm carrying around this secret: the best book ever; and I can't wait to get to some long-lost elementary school sense of hiding--as you would in a closet with a flashlight--to read this book in perfect solitude. Just me and Mark Twain and the best book ever.


But reader, I can't hide how good this book is. I have to shout about it. My epiphany struck me down as I read PRoJA last night on the Kindle:

For he told them how, at the funeral of our old King, the French King-at-Arms had broken his staff of office over the coffin of "Charles VI and his dynasty," at the same time saying, in a loud voice, "God grant long life to Henry, King of France and England, our sovereign lord!" and then he asked them to join him in a hearty Amen to that! The people were white with wrath, and it tied their tongues for the moment, and they could not speak.

I think it's incredible that Twain can ensure that the reader has the same sympathies as the royalists, and so subtly. The first sentence is an invitation for the reader to empathize; it rambles, gathering emotional intensity. The second sentence does not invite empathy--it demands unequivocally. The quadruple alliteration of 'were white with wrath' ties the tongue; the reader is forced to have the same physical response while reading aloud as the royalists left nonplussed. And if you try to read that phrase silently, it momentarily trips the brain--each 'w' in that phrase makes a slightly different sound. This 'form is function' snippet left me speechless.