单选题 "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ' Huckleberry Finn'. " So wrote Ernest Hemingway, no slouch himself in the field of modern American literature. Published in 1885, when American letters were dominated by the starchy, pious and insipid group known as the Schoolroom poets, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was everything they were not:vital, irreverent, meandering and funny. Introducing Huck Finn, Twain did not agree. He gave warning:" Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; person attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. " Of course, the book has its morals, just not encouraging ones. Twain's were more basic and homespun; Huck risks jail and death to free his friend, Jim, a runaway slave; not until J. D. Salinger invented a pre-school dropout would American literature see as powerful a deflator of phoniness. As for plot, it is an American picaresque. Twain knew instinctively how well the form suits a restless, dynamic country. He knew it because his life was also restless and dynamic. Samuel Clemens left Hannibal, Missouri, at 18, working for newspapers in St Louis, New York, Cincinnati, Keokuk and Virginia City, Nevada. He also mined for silver and learned to pilot riverboat, from which he took his pseudonym— the cry "mark twain" was used to warn pilots they were veering into dangerously shallow water. Like many writers, he gradually discovered he didn't really have a knack for much else. He was a great storyteller—indeed, much of his income came from barnstorming lecture tours—but a terrible businessman, an unsuccessful miner and an erratic riverboat pilot. He would travel anywhere for a story. When he was already in demand as travel writer at 32, he sailed to Europe and the Middle East, with the mother continent he was unimpressed. Van Wyck Brooks, a 20th-century critic, called Twain an artist who hated art. This is not quite fair, even though after visiting Rome he wrote: " I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled with a blessed peace as I did yesterday when I learned that Michelangelo was dead. " It would be more accurate to say that he never let art—or anything else—stand in the way of a good joke. He often complained that he was dismissed by the literati as merely a "phunny phellow" , but like all good humorists his work was fundamentally serious, poking fun as it did at a universe which he did not fit in. At a literary supper in Boston to celebrate John Greenleaf Whittier's 70th birthday, Twain mocked Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Ralph Waldo Emerson, all of whom were in attendance. William Dean Howells accused him of having "trifled" with the reputations of distinguished men. But as objects of Twain's humor, these men were in good company—the company of the world.

问答题 What can be inferred from Hemingway's remarks on "Huckleberry Finn"?

问答题 When the novel was published, how was it generally considered?

问答题 What can be inferred as the morals of "Huckleberry Finn" from the examples cited in the essay?

问答题 Why did Mark Twain believe that this novel would be popular in America?

问答题 What can be determined about Mark Twain from his remarks about Michelangelo's death and his mockery of distinguished men?