Books about Mark Twain
Good review of several books on Mark Twain:
The Mark Twain Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Works
by Shelley Fisher Fishkin
A review by Jonah Raskin
It is hard to believe — because he looms so large in our national letters — that Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens in 1835, died 100 years ago, on April 21. The anniversary of his death provides an occasion to reappraise his work and rethink his life. Fortunately, critics and biographers have been sifting through Twain’s published writings and rummaging through his archives. A half dozen new books delve deeply and from nearly every possible angle into perhaps our most profoundly divided writer.
The Mark Twain Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Works offers a diverse body of work about Twain, with a perky introduction by Stanford Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin. The word American comes up repeatedly, as in William Faulkner’s comment that Twain was "the first truly American writer."
While Asians, Latin Americans and Europeans have praised Twain, his most ardent admirers have been white American men: H.L. Mencken, William Dean Howells and Leslie Fiedler, who pointed out in an essay included here that American novels like Huckleberry Finn are often about the bonds of love and friendship between males of different races. Toni Morrison tries hard in a 1996 essay to like Twain’s classic about Huck, the poor, white teenager, and Jim, the escaped, black slave, but never resolves her ambivalence. Ralph Ellison wasn’t the least bit conflicted. Of Twain, he said, "He made it possible for many of us to find our own voices."Of course, it’s Huck’s inimitable voice that animates the novel. "I reckon I got to light out for the Territory," he declares as he flees all attempts to "sivilize" him.
In Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain, the historian Roy Morris Jr. describes Samuel Clemens’ adventures as a young man in Nevada and California, often with his older brother Orion. Morris focuses on the years 1861 to 1867; the story he tells is largely a prologue to the paramount drama of Twain’s life. Still, there are pleasures in these pages; Morris has done his homework, and he showcases Twain’s earliest literary gems.
Interestingly, before he fixed on Mark Twain, Clemens tried out more than a half dozen pen names, some very silly (Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass). Morris reprints the article in which the Mark Twain byline first appeared. "I feel very much as if I had just awakened out of a long sleep," he wrote. That awakening altered his own life, and changed the course of American literature…
