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The Boy in His Winter: An American Novel by Norman Lock
the tweet: Norman Lock reimagines Huck Finn and Jim as witnesses to decades of American History, from the Civil War to Hurricane Katrina and into the future. the character:
Bellevue Literary Press blpress.org
30
APRIL/MAY 2014
I look back in my old age on that long-ago day when I came off the river and began my grownup life—and much earlier still, when, no more than a boy, I set out from Hannibal on a raft with Jim. Of course, I reckon time differently now than we did then, sweeping down the Mississippi toward Mexico as though in a dream. Those days did seem like a dream, though not mine, or Jim’s either, but one belonging to somebody whose hand I almost felt, prodding me onward in spite of my reluctance. Or maybe it was just the river I sensed, shaping a kind of destiny for me and also for Jim, whose end came before mine and was, sadly, neither glorious nor kind. We were, each of us in his own way, looking
for something that did not exist. That other story, Jim’s and mine, about a trip downriver, was true enough. But this, the one I am about to tell, is just as true and even more amazing. You want to know what I mean by “true enough”? I mean that—regardless of how things might have been exaggerated in the telling, how far the truth got stretched—you could always find in the world the same sort of perversity that was set down in his book, only the reality is not so entertaining or picturesque. From The Boy in His Winter by Norman Lock, Bellevue Literary Press 2014, blpress.org. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.