Wow, great premise for a book! Mark Twain was smart! It didn’t get 5 stars simply because it was hard to get into the archaic writing style and was therefore a little tedious…which might be unfair.

I read this as a teen, so probably 45 years ago. I thought I remembered fairly well. Nope! Oh, I remembered the main points, but it was almost like a new book & really worth reading. This is Twain's answer to nature versus nurture while satirizing race, religion, 'honor', & small town life. While the destination is wonderful, it's the trip that is best.

The story is so well known enough that there will be spoilers in this review.

Tom & Chambers are switched at birth by their nurse who had her baby the same day as her master's wife. She raises them both & doesn't want to see her son endure a life of slavery, so she swaps them since no one else can tell them apart. Tom is 'white' while Chambers is 1/32 black, thus is 'black' by the 'One Drop' rule & raised as a slave. (IIRC, this is about how much Indian blood Elizabeth Warren claimed.) The white child becomes a spoiled, cowardly, vicious despot while the black one becomes ignorant & servile, but good of heart & strong.

The other main character is David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson. He makes a joke when he first comes to town & it flies so high over the town folks' heads that they think he is serious, thus a pudd'nhead. It takes him 20 years (about 1830-50, the entire course of the novel) & one of his foibles (a hobby of collecting fingerprints) to reclaim his reputation despite the constant evidence of his character & intellect. He does so only through public spectacle.

The use of fingerprints as the crux of the story is long foreshadowed for us, but I'm not sure how obvious it was in 1893 when this was published. It wasn't until about 1860 that fingerprints were documented in our current civilization (Chinese used them in 300BC.) In 1892, an Argentinian cop first used them to nail a murder according to this quick history. I recommend reading it. Interesting.

One of the high points of the novel is each chapter beginning with an aphorism from Pudd'nhead Wilson's calendar, mimicking Poor Richard's. Many of Twain's best known come from this source.

The characters are well voiced by Norman Dietz. Highly recommended.

In this book Pudd'nhead Wilson tries to crack the case of a murder mystery. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in mystery books.

Pudd'nhead Wilson might be my favorite Mark Twain novel, and that's saying something. I'm a huge Twain fan, but I had never read this classic. It's an absolutely brilliant story with so many layers of social commentary infused into it that I might just need to read it again.

Pudd'nhead Wilson "earns" this nickname by using clever wit around town folk who are too witless to understand it. The name sticks, and he becomes the joke of the town, even though in reality he's very smart. He opens a law office but can't find clients because who wants a Pudd'nhead for an attorney.

But the story is only partly about poor Puud'nhead. It's also about an imposter--a man who was born a slave but, due to a situation beyond his control, is mistaken for and accepted as a white man his whole life. I don't want to say more so as not to give away all the twists and turns. Let's just say that the Pudd'nhead attorney and the imposter white man's paths cross many times on quite a fateful journey.

Not only is the plot clever, but the characters come alive. The reader can't help but to sympathize, pity, and revile some of the members of this witless town. It's a great writer who can make you loathe a character and still sigh relief when he or she is able to avoid reaping the consequences of their actions.

Additionally, in this novel, Twain once again proves that he was ahead of his time, using forensic evidence to solve a crime in a way that never occurred in real life until much later.

This novel is a great one for fans of Twain, fans of classics, and even readers who are trying to dive into the classics reading world. It's definitely a great jumping off point, no matter where you are in your reading journey.