Twain Meet

"The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.
- Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, Ch. 9

Here's an interesting paper on Twain's Huckleberry Finn and its relation to Finnegans Wake and The Egyptian Book of the Dead:
Death on the Missisliffi: Huckleberry Finn in Finnegans Wake

by Kelly Anspaugh