Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Banks, Russell - Richard Eder (review date 21 May 1995)

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Richard Eder (review date 21 May 1995)

SOURCE: Eder, Richard. “Into the Night Sky: The Tale of a Modern-Day Huck Finn.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (21 May 1995): 3, 7.

[In the following review, Eder contrasts Rule of the Bone with Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, arguing that Banks's reimagining of Twain's novel is ultimately flawed.]

Trying to tell the story of a modern Huckleberry Finn, with present-day counterparts for Jim, Tom Sawyer, the raft and other situations and characters as well, Russell Banks takes some awful risks [in Rule of the Bone]. Several he manages admirably, several he flunks, and the largest he ignores at his peril.

“Persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished,” Mark Twain wrote at the start of his masterpiece. It's not that Huck's and Jim's story lacks sharp observations upon the oddities and horrors of life in the South before the Civil War. Of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Howard Frank Mosher (review date 8 September 1991)
   2. Jeff Danziger (review date 24 September 1991)
   3. Donna Rifkind (review date 17 April 1992)
   4. James Finn Cotter (review date 2 May 1992)
   5. Ross Leckie (essay date summer 1994)
   6. Richard Eder (review date 21 May 1995)
   7. Ann Hulbert (review date 29 May 1995)
   8. Penelope Mesic (review date 11 June 1995)
   9. Phil Baker (review date 30 June 1995)
   10. Brian Morton (review date 7 July 1995)
   11. Ed Peaco (review date fall 1995)
   12. Jerry Herron (essay date fall 1996)
   13. Robert Niemi (essay date 1997)
   14. Henry Mayer (review date 8 March 1998)
   15. Russell Banks and Christine Benvenuto (interview date March-April 1998)
   16. Alfred Kazin (review date 9 April 1998)
   17. Lawrence Hill (review date 13 April 1998)
   18. James M. McPherson (review date May 1998)
   19. Joyce Appleby (review date 22 May 1998)
   20. Russell Banks, Robert Faggen, and Barry Munger (interview date summer 1998)
   21. Millicent Bell (review date fall 1998)
   22. Paul Binding (review date 15 September 2000)
   23. Kathleen Snodgrass (review date spring 2001)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright