Hilariously picaresque, epic in scope, alive with  the poetry and vigor of the American people, Mark  Twain's story about a young boy and his journey  down the Mississippi was the first great novel to  speak in a truly American voice. Influencing  subsequent generations of writers -- from Sherwood  Anderson to Twain's fellow Missourian,  T.S. Eliot, from Ernest Hemingway and William  Faulkner to J.D. Salinger --  Huckleberry Finn, like the river  which flows through its pages, is one of the great  sources which nourished and still nourishes the  literature of America.