Tweens are the hot demographic. In the United States, there are 30 million 8-14-year olds who, according to Children's Market Research in New York, "spend more than $50 billion per year and influence approximately $250 billion in family spending." The weekly newsmagazines have recently put tweens on their covers, and television is earnestly cultivating them with programs designed to appeal to them. Mark Twain died over 90 years ago, but this still might be an appropriate time to put the spotlight on the preeminent tween in American literature, namely Huck Finn.

Like many teenagers polled in one national survey after another, this boy of 13 or 14 smokes, swears, lies, ignores curfew, consorts with the disreputable, takes a casual approach to personal hygiene, and brushes up against gang warfare, mob stupidity, and intolerance. No wonder when The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appeared in 1884, the genteel protectors of what are now called family values did the equivalent of sticking a parental advisory label on the book.

Now, Mark Twain was ahead of his time, but I don't mean to hint that, were he still around, he would be composing parenting books; yet who wouldn't glance at the work of one who gave the following "Advice toYouth": "Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any." Mark Twain was prescient on growing up, and in Huck Finn he created a character who still retains the capacity to unnerve adults. (For instance, in a New York Times article last December, "Truants' Parents Face Crackdown Across the U.S.," we read that "Huck Finns are on the rise, test scores are down, and states are fed up.")

But is Huck a typical tween? Let's consider a few of his crucibles and see if they apply to today's teenagers.

Home-schooling. Huck is against it, though the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson do have their hands full teaching him about "Moses and the Bulrushers" and the curricular urgency of history ("I don't take no stock in dead people"). They won't allow smoking in class, and he is so "fidgety" and troubled by spelling that nowadays he would be, because of what we might term today his "acting out," a candidate for learning style assessment. What's more, he fails to respect pieties that would preoccupy the William Bennets of our day. When instructed about the "good place" and "the bad place," he concludes: "All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn't particular."

Fashion. Huck would have endorsed the current loose, baggy look. Widow Douglas "put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up." He wastes no time before shedding the stultifying garb (and self-satisfied assumptions) of "sivilization." In fact, there's no higher term of approbation for live-in-the-moment tween Huck Finn than "comfortable." As he says, "You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft."

Idiom. We don't know who coined "it's all good," "da bomb" or "stupid" (expressions that will soon be out of fashion if they aren't already), but Ernest Hemingway said American literature comes from Huck Finn and few have disagreed with him.

Censorship. To this day some still want Huck Finn banned because of its invocation of a racist term, and have demonstrated righteousness by not reading the book. (Then again, many feel entitled to have strong opinions on best-selling books without the inconvenience of turning pages.) Book-burners' irony-deficiency weakens them, rendering them unable to read the most devastating 19th-century critique of slavery. Like most teenagers Huck instantly sees through adult hypocrisy.

Parental influence. Judith Rich Harris, author of The Nurture Assumption, argued that "parents matter less than you think and peers matter more." Amazingly, she attempts to make her counter-intuitive case without mentioning Huck's dad, the fish-belly white, alcoholic, abusive Pap. Is Huck furiously compensating for his father's non-nurturance (no mom anywhere in sight, either), or has he learned bravery, generosity, and friendship from his peers?

But speaking of peers, there is Tom Sawyer, who has to be parents' worst nightmare. And literary critics', too. Some say it's Tom who hijacks the novel, ruining the last third by demeaning Jim with his mirthless, dangerous games. Does Huck submit to peer pressure, and hand over his book, or does he value Tom's friendship so much that he conceives no alternative to trusting him? If so, he seems one with tweens who place primacy on friendship.

So, is Huck a typical American tween? He does loathe respectability and love escapist entertainment ("It was a real bully circus. It was the splendidest sight that ever was...."). But his typicality is sometimes disturbingly contemporary, too. He looks into the heart of violence when he observes the murder of his friend ("It made me so sick I most fell out of the tree. I ain't going to tell all that happened--it would make me sick again if I was to do that."). And he is also moody and morbid and mournful ("I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead.").

At the same time, Huck is resilient in the face of brutal disappointment. And fortunately, he is also self-divided, willing to face his internal conflicts and contradictions, as in his (and American literature's) consummate moral crisis, when he concludes he will go to hell if that's what it takes to be loyal to Jim; or as Mark Twain would characterize Huck's dilemma: "In a crucial moral emergency...a sound heart & a deformed conscience come into collision & conscience suffers defeat." It took a literary genius to dramatize what parents and other adults learn over and over again about teenagers: they are often much better than they think they are.

Fittingly, Huck ends his book by pledging "to light out for the Territory." Adults make much of establishing boundaries, as they should, but Huck shows us what teenagers must ultimately do, which is to travel one day alone into the unknown. As for civilization--home, convention, stability--"I can't stand it," Huck says. "I been there before." That's a tween for you: old before his time.

Finally, when he signs off on his book, he does so with a tender "Yours truly Huck Finn." Perfect. It turns out he has been writing us a letter all along. And we had been erroneously presuming he was, the way we presume about most teenagers, just talking to himself. So let us give uneasy thanks to Huck Finn and to all other teenagers: they remind us where we are and how far we still have to go.

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