Hilariously picaresque, epic in scope, alive with the poetry and vigor
of the American people, Mark Twain's story about a young boy and his
journey down the Mississippi was the first great novel to speak in a
truly American voice. Influencing subsequent generations of writers --
from Sherwood Anderson to Twain's fellow Missourian, T.S. Eliot, from
Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner to J.D. Salinger -- "Huckleberry
Finn," like the river which flows through its pages, is one of the great
sources which nourished and still nourishes the literature of America.