sea of mystery

Yesterday I went and looked up The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, online -- the version that I used, to read the beginning of the book, was from the University of Virginia.  Thanks, Univ. of Va.

Reason why I looked up Twain's H. Finn:  an obscure feeling I had in back of head after watching the film Coal Miner's Daughter last weekend -- the way the main characters talk in that film sounds simultaneously foreign and familiar, to my ear -- the accent and the phrasing and the overall approach -- a mixture of diffidence and pessimism and optimism and guarded suspicion -- sometimes they seem to become challenging and even combative, in conversation, and you're like, "Where did this come from?" as you're listening to it, but it's just how they process stuff and protect themselves in a world that's not set up to offer them anything.

Subconsciously, maybe, I felt it was going to sound like Huckleberry Finn --

in the movie, when Doolittle gets exasperated with Loretta, his 13-year-old wife (?...!?), he growls, and Loretta (played by Sissy Spacek) tells him strongly and loudly in a tone of protest, "Stop makin' that noise!  Ya sound like a ol' bear, a-growlin'!" 

("a-grellin'...", the way she says it...)

Like -- the Widow Douglas, who, according to H. Finn, was "a-bothering about Moses"...

And in the movie when Doolittle Lynn brings home a guitar for his wife, as an anniversary present, and she's exasperated -- "Ah can't play that thing!"
Doolittle replies -- swift and punchy, in the usual pugnacious verbal style, "Well most people can't without they learn how first!"

(I listened to that and reviewed the idea of it -- "without they learn how first" -- "without they"...Not the way we would say it, but we understand his meaning...)

And Huck Finn starts out, using "without" the same damn way - !

"You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer..."

--  you don't know about me without you have read a book...

--  most people can't without they learn how first...

--  a-growlin'...

--  a-bothering

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How did I know these unusual and unique speech styles of Coal Miner's Daughter were going to surface, just the same, in Huckleberry Finn?

I didn't.

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