"The Same Old Mud": Mark Twain's Transcendent Imagination and Jeff Nichols's Mud

This article examines the 2012 film Mud, written and directed by Jeff Nichols. It argues that the title character functions as a metaphor for Twain's transcendent creative imagination, so that by the film's conclusion Mud is best understood as Andrew Levy describes Twain late in his life: he is "an imagination floating freely across centuries … yet still moored to the events that provided pleasure and pain when that same imagination belonged to a child!'