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Audio Book: The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer
Written by Mark Twain; Read by Patrick Fraley
6 discs, approx. 8 hours (Audio Partners)
Reviewed by Erick Mertz
Although I hold a degree specializing in American literature from a major university lauded for its ability to teach the subject, I have never read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I don't fault them for, after all, there may be hundreds or even thousands of books I didn't read (a list available upon request). Years later, though, I still haven't picked up Mark Twain's quintessential tome. I've always thought of the book, foolhardy now I realize, to be a simple morality tale, expert at cautioning and wizening young children, but unbefitting a serious scholar.
I was wrong.
It is called the first real work of the American Literature movement, which in general spawned the Hemmingways and Faulkners I would later undertake. The book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the process of its writing dominated a large portion of Mark Twain's recent PBS biography. Filled with truisms about America's ascension out of slavery, rebellion and the lingering toll of racism; I ask myself: How did I ever consider my education complete?
The truth is, I can't. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a piece of literature bound in innumerable ways to contemporary story and character. Turn a few pages and watch, as any preconceived notion dissolves. Tom Sawyer's youthful restlessness predates Holden Caufield's by 100 years - Jim's struggle with racism mirrors that of Ellison's unnamed, but poignant Invisible Man. Twain's fable is so knitted into the American fabric and all that is good and ill in this country that it still sparkles famously with controversy today.
How many simple morality tales can say that?
As though offering anyone willing to listen an opportunity at redeeming their so called education or a re-embracing of this unique Americana, the Audio Partners Publishing Company has placed Twain's classic in the hands of Patrick Fraley. Directed by Ronald A. Feinberg, this rendition of Tom Sawyer is just under eight hours and full of so much country twang and frolicking tone it is easy to feel seamless transfer to that stretch along the mighty Mississippi that spawned the tale. Fraley, a renowned voice-over actor, has created 36 unique voices to depict the range of Twain's characters. In the longer passages the differentiation between voices grays and tends to muddy, but there is nothing the sheer power of these words can do but prevail. The best crafted of Fraley's voices is the one employed for the novel's narrative portions. Swamp smart and hickory smoked, this tone raises the humor and wisdom beginning with the author's note, right through to the end in epiphany. Using dialect that is simultaneously archaic and archetypal to tell the heroic tale of young Tom, Twain's brash and devious tale brings his readers, or in this case his listeners, closer to the American south of the 1840's than any other.
With re-inventions such as this one, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its relation will never be rendered out dated.
© 2003 - Erick Mertz