Naomi Weisman is a Canadian-Australian and mother of three, who loves to Ramble with her dog, cook for family and friends, and laugh whenever possible.
I'm currently reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and when I finish, I'll be moving straight on to James by Percival Everett. It's an interesting pairing. Two novels connected by the same characters and events, but written almost 140 years apart, by authors living in very different Americas.
It's got me thinking about something I've always loved about reading literary classics, and that's the opportunity to experience a kind of time travel.
I've always enjoyed historical fiction. There's something wonderful about being transported to another time and place, discovering how people lived, what they believed, and how their lives were shaped by the politics and social conventions of the day. But reading a literary classic offers something quite different.
When we read historical fiction written today, we're looking back at the past through the eyes of a contemporary author. No matter how thoroughly they've researched the period, they inevitably bring their own experiences, values, and perspectives to the narrative. Their understanding of race, gender, class, relationships, and social justice has been shaped by the world we live in today.
That's not a criticism. It's simply the reality of being human. None of us can completely separate ourselves from the times in which we live. But when we pick up a novel written a hundred or two hundred years ago, we're hearing from someone who actually inhabited that world, and I find that fascinating.
Reading Mark Twain Through Two Centuries
Take The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for example.
Mark Twain wasn't researching nineteenth-century American society from the comfort of the twenty-first century. Born in Missouri in 1835, he grew up in a slaveholding society along the Mississippi River. He witnessed the divisions and contradictions of American life, lived through the Civil War era, and watched the country struggle with the consequences of slavery and emancipation.
When he wrote Huckleberry Finn, he was looking back at the world of his childhood, setting the novel in the years before the Civil War. He was writing about race, slavery, morality, religion, and social hypocrisy from within the nineteenth century itself. His observations and criticisms were shaped by the world he had experienced firsthand, and he was writing for readers who were living in that world too.
He wasn't looking at these issues with the benefit of another 140 years of history. He was commenting on a society whose attitudes, prejudices, and contradictions were part of his own lived experience.
Now, here I am in 2026, reading his words through an entirely different lens. I bring my own understanding of history, race, equality, and social justice to the story. I react to language and attitudes differently than many of Twain's original readers might have. I find myself questioning things that may have seemed ordinary to some readers of his time, while recognizing that Twain himself was questioning many of those same conventions.
It's almost as though I'm looking over his shoulder, watching him observe his world, while simultaneously examining it through my own. And isn't that an extraordinary thing for a book to allow us to do?
Two Authors, Two Americas
What makes this particular reading experience even more interesting is knowing that James is waiting for me.
Percival Everett has taken Twain's story and reimagined it from the perspective of Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck on his journey. Everett is writing in the twenty-first century, with the benefit of generations of historical scholarship, changing social attitudes, and a very different understanding of whose stories deserve to be told.
Twain gave us Huck's perspective, filtered through the experiences and assumptions of a white boy growing up in the antebellum South. Everett gives us the opportunity to revisit that world through the eyes of a character whose voice was constrained by Twain's original narrative.
I haven't read James yet, so I don't know how I'll feel about Everett's interpretation. But I'm already intrigued by the prospect of reading these two books back-to-back. What will Everett challenge? What will he preserve? How will my understanding of Twain's novel change after hearing the story from another perspective? And what will the differences between these two books tell me about the societies in which their authors lived?
I'm looking forward to finding out.
Reading with Twenty-First-Century Eyes
Of course, reading classics can also be uncomfortable. We encounter racism, sexism, antisemitism, colonial attitudes, and rigid class distinctions that can be difficult to reconcile with our values today.
But I don't think we need to excuse those attitudes simply because they were common at the time. Nor do I think we should automatically dismiss a book because it reflects beliefs we now find objectionable. Instead, I think we should be curious about what the author was trying to say, whether they were challenging the conventions of their society or reinforcing them, and how their original readers might have interpreted the story.
And perhaps most importantly, what does our reaction to the book tell us about ourselves?
I often wonder what readers a hundred years from now will think about the books we're writing today. What will they find shocking? What will they consider terribly outdated? Which of our current beliefs and assumptions will seem incomprehensible to them? It's a humbling thought.
Perhaps We Haven't Changed That Much
For all the differences between the world of a literary classic and our own, I'm continually struck by how familiar the people can feel. They fall in love, worry about money, resent their families, question authority, struggle with their consciences, and desperately want to belong. They experience jealousy, ambition, grief, friendship, betrayal, and hope.
The clothes have changed. The technology has changed. Many of our social expectations have changed. But human nature? Perhaps not nearly as much as we'd like to think, and maybe that's one of the reasons these books have endured.
We can recognize ourselves in people who lived centuries before us, even when we struggle to understand the societies that shaped them.
A Different Kind of Time Travel
I suppose that's what I'm enjoying so much about reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I'm not simply following Huck and Jim down the Mississippi River. I'm also spending time inside the mind of a man who lived through an era of extraordinary social and political upheaval.
I'm reading his observations, his humour, his criticisms, and inevitably, some of the assumptions of his time. And I'm bringing my own perspective to every page.
Of course, no single author can represent an entire era. Twain's experiences were shaped by his own background, just as Austen's, Dickens's, and the Brontës' were shaped by theirs. But each offers us a window into a world that no longer exists in quite the same way.
When we read historical fiction, we're visiting the past through the imagination of someone living today. When we read a literary classic, we're allowing someone from the past to speak directly to us. And perhaps the most interesting part is discovering what happens when their world meets ours.
I'll be curious to see how I feel about all of this once I've finished Huckleberry Finn and James. I suspect reading them together will give me even more to think about. For now, though, I'm thoroughly enjoying my little journey through time.
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