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The Battalion
STATE & LOCAL 3
Tuesday, April 11,1989 The Battalion
Professor uses Mark Twain as ‘meal ticket
A&M English professor Hamlin Hill shows off a
print he received from his daughter. She said
Photo by Dean Saito
she titled it “Malice in Wonderland” because of
his different kind of sense of humor.
By Melissa Naumann
REPORTER
He’d rather talk about someone
else than himself. In fact, Dr. Ham
lin Hill, head of the English depart
ment, would rather talk about Mark
Twain than do anything else.
Hill, who has been at Texas A&M
since 1986, was the only A&M fac
ulty member promoted to distin
guished professor by the Board of
Regents March 28. The promotion is
effective September 1.
Hill said he knew since high
school that he wanted to study En
glish. At graduate school at the Uni
versity of Chicago, he planned on
writing his dissertation on poet e.e.
cummings, but changed his mind af
ter becoming acquainted with Mark
Twain’s work.
Hill was hooked on Twain and his
humor.
“Mark Twain is such a good meal-
ticket that I wound up lecturing
about him all over the world, writing
a bunch of hooks about him and
playing the scam for all it’s worth,
just like the Duke and the Dauphin
in Huckleberry Finn,’ ” Hill said.
Hill has indeed covered the globe
talking about Twain. In addition to
the United States and Europe, he
has found surprisingly Ityrge audi
ences in Pakistan, China and Syria.
Although students in many non-
Western countries find Huckleberry
Finn’s dialect difficult, they can still
relate to his story, Hill said.
In a trade school in Pakistan, Hill,
the first American to lecture there,
wasn’t sure the students would be in
terested in “Huckleberry Finn.”
“The room was filled and here
was this sea of Pakistanian faces and
I was convinced that they couldn’t
know anything about ‘Huckleberry
Finn,’ ” he said. “There was a big
map of Pakistan on the wall and
whatever the river is that flows all
the way through Pakistan, I pointed
to it and said, ‘Let’s turn your coun
try sideways and imagine this river
going straight north and south and
one of you, when you were 13 years
old, getting on a raft and floating
1,200 miles.’
“It was spooky. I sensed that I
wasn’t getting across to them and
then suddenly there was a realiza
tion that, yes, they could understand
that and we could take off on some
common ground.”
If a foreign student can under
stand “Huckleberry Finn” and F.
Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great
Gatsby,” he can understand the
American culture, Hill said.
“Then I point out to them that it’s
not likely that they’ll ever under
stand ‘Huckleberry Finn’ if I don’t
understand it,” he said.
Hill said that Chinese students co
incide with American students on in
terpreting “Huckleberry Finn,” even
though this isn’t the interpretation
most scholars believe.
“I taught ‘Huckleberry Finn’ in
China and the Chinese students see
the river as the symbol of freedom
and escape, and probably high
school students in the United States
do the same thing,” Hill said. “But
the current interpretation of ‘Huck
leberry Finn,’ or the favorite one, is
that Huck doesn’t achieve freedom
and doesn’t escape society.”
The more optimistic version is too
superficial, Hill said, but both are
necessary to fully understand the
book.
Although Hill is one of the biggest
fans of “Huckleberry Finn,” he can
understand the people who want to
ban the book.
“I think an argument can be made
that ‘Huckleberry Finn’ is such a
complex and such an ironic book
that it’s better not to read it than to
misread it and do violent injustice to
it,” he said.
The charge that it is a racist book
is true on one level, but the racism is
only one aspect of the book, he said.
“Huck and Pap, the major charac
ters in the novel, are all racists, but
that doesn’t mean the book is a racist
book,” Hill said. “What it means is
that you’ve got to appreciate, with
some amount of subtlety and sophis
tication, what Mark Twain is doing
with ‘Huckleberry Finn.’”
Since a ninth-grade student might
not have this sophistication, the book
shouldn’t be taught until later, he
said.
“We’ll get him in twelfth grade or
we’ll get him in an American Litera
ture sophomore survey,” Hill said.
“He hasn’t escaped. He’s just been
delayed.”
Hill manages to find something
new in Mark Twain’s work every
time he reads or teaches it, and he
can show his students a Twain
See Huck/Page 5
Clements says
liability laws
cost Texans jobs
AUSTIN (AP) — Besides over
hauling the state’s workers’ compen
sation system, the 1989 Legislature
needs to change product liability
laws that are costing Texans jobs,
Gov. Bill Clements said Monday.
Clements, in a speech to the Texas
Association of Business, also said the
current Deceptive Trade Practices
Act has generated too many frivo
lous lawsuits.
“In a recent survey, economist
Ray Perryman of Baylor University
found that the costs associated with
Texas’ liability laws have had a neg
ative impact on job creation and may
already be undermining those eco-
See related story/Page 4
nomic gains I just talked about,”
Clements said.
The governor said the need to
create jobs and expand the Texas
economy is as important today as it
was when he took office in the
depths of the recession in 1987.
“Today our mandate for eco
nomic improvement is just as great,
if not more so,” he said. “Yes, the re
cession is over, but the desire to cre
ate new jobs, to encourage new in
vestments, remains.”
The governor said the workers’
compensation system and flawed
product liability laws are top priori
ties for change.
He said he remains optimistic that
the 1989 Legislature will reform
workers’ compensation insurance, a
system he said has the attention of
business leaders across the country.
“As I travel across our nation as
your governor, working to attract
new business and industry to our
state, I am invariably asked what
Texas intends to do about this faulty
system,” he said.
Correction
A story in Monday’s Battalion
said the Reveille mascot tradition
began 31 years ago. The tradition
began in 1931. The Battalion re
grets the error.
Faculty Senate proposes revisions to regulations
By Kelly S. Brown
STAFF WRITER
The Faculty Senate on Monday passed rec
ommendations from the Rules and Regula
tions Committee that would require a student
who isn’t following his chosen program of
study to obtain approval from his academic
dean, department head or college dean — or
suffer consequences.
Reprimands would include being blocked
from registration, removed from the inap
propriate course and/or being required to
register for a prescribed schedule of courses
by the department head or dean.
As with all Faculty Senate legislation, it will
not become effective unless approved by
President William Mobley.
William Kebler, chairman of the Rules and
Regulations Committee, introduced the list of
recommendations, which were revisions and
additions made to the 51-page Student’s
Rights and Responsibilities Handbook.
Among other revisions, changes may be
made in the way students go about enrolling
concurrently at another institution for degree
credit.
Under the revised regulations, undergrad
uate students would have to receive only
prior approval of the dean of the college in
which they are enrolled. Currently students
have to receive the approval of not only their
dean, but the dean of the college in which the
course is offered. For example, a theater arts
student wanting to enroll in a business course
at another institution is required to receive
approval from A&M’s liberal arts dean and
the dean of A&M’s college of business.
Other action included creating general
rules for pursuing credit by examination for
undergraduate courses. The rules were rede
fined and would allow admitted and/or offi
cially enrolled students eligibility to pursue
credit by examination.
The Faculty Senate passed a resolution to
develop a “comprehensive, state-of-the-art
wellness program for (the University’s) em
ployees, which includes: health awareness,
See Senate/Page 5
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