It’s been a while since I read Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” but I recall a few major details: the runaway slave Jim, the widow, Huck’s hero status among the other boys. But above all, yes indeedy, I remember Huck’s father Pap, who steals him from the widow’s in an attempt to get at Huck’s found money. When a boy cuts a pig’s throat in order to fake his own death scene, it sticks in the gears, you see.

Obviously, the character of Pap stuck in Jon Clinch’s mental turbines, as well, so much so that he created this carefully crafted, earnest and deep novel to tell Finn’s story, the story that came before the story of his offspring that we all know and love. We don’t know Finn — he’s an unknowable man, even to himself — and we certainly don’t love him, or even like him in portions of the tale. Just as he is the roguish boy’s dangerous father, Finn’s story is starkly adult where Huck’s a whimsical, dark where Huck is light, heavy as the river water that Huck floats upon so light-heartedly.

This place has been here from the beginning and it will be here in the end: Adams County, hacked from the wilderness by naming’s brutal baptism long before Illinois was a state or a territory or even so much as a dream.

A primitive landscape and a primitive man, Finn’s life consists of exchanging fish for whiskey, of committing acts he thinks are sinful and berating himself for his actions afterward. He’s a drunk and a slob and a bully and maniac, yet we also get to see the man as a spurned son, a struggling father, a man trying to keep his head above water and his demons in the closet.

Bit by bit he descends to the level of drunkenness that he had attained previous to arriving home and then he proceeds beyond it, venturing into territory that the boy has seen before only on occasions when the fish have been especially plentiful and the harvest of whiskey has thus been particularly bounteous. For a man who enjoys his drink he permits it to make him miserable. He rages against the blacks and the government and the law, all of which he insists have conspired to bring him to ruin. Something about his drunkenness gives him the idea that he must stand up in order to orate properly, and every time he attempts to do so he loses his balance and falls, spilling his drink and catching himself with his sore left arm. This only fuels his wrath and his urgent sense that remaining successfully upon his feet is essential to his thwarted purpose and so he rages against the table and against the chair and against the tub of salt pork over which he takes a tumble for they too just like the blacks and the government and the law have been laying for him since the day he was born.

“Finn” is not a prequel to “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and it’s not an addendum. Certain revelations, however, made in the novel make you rethink the character and perspective of Huck in the original book, including the true identity of Huck’s mother: a black woman and a former slave who Finn treats as a common-law wife and his property, both in turn.

Whu? Huck Finn is a … yes, that’s right. At least in this fictional universe, that is.

Is there a certain point in human history where we run out of stories to tell? I once wondered if, because there are only a finite number of musical notes, there were a finite number of original songs. Lord knows that Hollywood wants to simply remake or re-imagine a previously successful story or set of characters every three years or so, or is able to churn out sequels like they’re going out of style. (Please, why can’t they go out of style?)

In terms of novels, I’ve read a few — “The Hours” comes to mind — that make me think the remaking and re-imagining are entering the world of literature. And considering how much I liked both “The Hours” and “Finn,” I’m thinking that such revisitation might not be so bad. With the talent, calculation and passion Clinch brings to Finn, he added depth and mystery and humanity to my memory of Twain without changing the classic tale. He made the literary world that much more of a complex and downright interesting place to be.

(Sorry to the book club I skipped because I hadn’t finished the book yet. It was a solid choice, and I’ll be sure to get on the ball quicker next time.)

Rating: 4.5 stars – Hardcover book club selection