‘Church ain’t shucks to a circus’: Tom Sawyer and the literature of subversion

Originally published by Wordsworth Editions... Tom Sawyer is one of those transcendent literary characters who go beyond the simply iconic and enter the realm of myth. His statue stands alongside his best friend, Huckleberry Finn, in Mark Twain’s childhood home, Hannibal, Missouri (erected in 1926, it’s one of the first, if not the first, statues…