New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | January 10, 2006

Nick Gillespie explores the myriad contradictions of the artist formerly known as Samuel Clemens.

Comments

|1.10.06 @ 5:06PM|#

Deconstruct this!
Sorry Nick, but Mark didn't tack that lame ending onto Huck Finn because he wanted to deconstruct Tom Sawyer. It was because he didn't have the balls to write the real ending: Huck's confrontation with Pap, his own self. This is gold, absolute gold, and if you think I'm going to post the details on the web for free, you're crazy. You'll have to wait for my 2,000-page deconstructionist tome, "What MLA Assholes Don't Know About Huckleberry Finn (which is everything)." In the mean time, stick to Janet's tits.

|1.10.06 @ 5:20PM|#

So I'm not the only was who thought there just a wee bit too much of the old deus ex machina in the book's denouement. What the hell, it's still a hell of a read, and what liberty lover among us can not embrace this final line, a line that captures in one breath what many "libertarian" writers have spent careers trying to articulate: "Reckon I've gotta light out for the territory...Aunt Polly's gonna civilise me, and I can't stand that..."

|1.10.06 @ 5:26PM|#

I'd love to read Twain's take on the current smoking ban mania.

Chris Buors|1.10.06 @ 5:40PM|#

http://www.davehitt.com/facts/marktwain.html

is what Mr. Twain had to say on smoking.


My take on it is that Twain was a capitalist.


I read somewhere that Twain took a few years off between Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to recharge the creative batteries.


I would bet that Twain reunites Huck and Tom to end the book with a cliffhanger. The posibility that we just might here more from these rascals in the future. The meaning in that is more money!

Some people read too much into what just ain't there.

The Wine Commonsewer|1.10.06 @ 6:08PM|#

First, I enjoyed the write up but with all due respect this isn't really an indictment of Twain but an attempt to look at another era using the standards of our culture as it exists today. The frame of reference will skew the perspective.

wrote in favor of rights for African Americans but was fond of telling racist jokes

And actually, I know people right here and now who'll tell you a racist joke in a heartbeat who hold zero ill will against blacks or any other race. I get them in my email inbox weekly.

It is a sensitivity issue in our own culture, it was ordinary behavior in Twain's.

Two Cents Waiting For Change Regards, TWC

The Wine Commonsewer|1.10.06 @ 6:12PM|#

BTW, Twain's letters from Hawaii are without equal for their entertainment and enlightenment value.

My favorite Twain quote:

I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I had a jolly time. I would not have fooled away any of it writing letters under any consideration whatever.

|1.10.06 @ 6:15PM|#

Congrats Nick. A very profound and literary critique, full of the right jargon.

Trouble is, I didn't understand one word of it... I guess it warn't no great loss.

Mark Twain is a great writer, maybe the greatest.

|1.10.06 @ 6:20PM|#

I would bet that Twain reunites Huck and Tom

I thought he did in some rather lame book involving a mad balloonist. I seem to recall scenes involving Jim's utter disbelief in the concepts of the time zone and the existence of the French language.

|1.10.06 @ 6:23PM|#

Twain Quotes

I've found the above site useful on more than one occassion.

|1.10.06 @ 6:31PM|#

Didn't somebody famous say something like, "In every one of Mark Twain's books there's a good novel struggling to get out"?

Franklin Harris|1.10.06 @ 9:30PM|#

"I thought he did in some rather lame book involving a mad balloonist. I seem to recall scenes involving Jim's utter disbelief in the concepts of the time zone and the existence of the French language."

That would be Tom Sawyer Abroad, which was itself followed by Tom Sawyer, Detective.

|1.10.06 @ 10:19PM|#

Twain was a great writer. I recently read a few of his travel books and loved them (Innocents Abroad is a good one).

|1.10.06 @ 11:31PM|#

Didn't somebody famous say something like, "In every one of Mark Twain's books there's a good novel struggling to get out"?

In reading Russian novels, thing struggling to get out is you.

|1.11.06 @ 1:11AM|#

I must be the only American who hasn't read a lick of Mark Twain. But damn, that essay on smoking was sure fine; especially this line: "I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices." - a thought I've often had myself. I want to read his stuff now. [Actually, I've wanted to read his stuff ever since that two-part episode of Star Trek Voyager that he was "in".]

|1.11.06 @ 3:57AM|#

"I must be the only American who hasn't read a lick of Mark Twain. But damn, that essay on smoking was sure fine; especially this line: "I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices." - a thought I've often had myself. I want to read his stuff now."


Did you attend school in America? If you did, I don't know how you could have avoided reading Twain. In any event you are in for a delectable treat and I greatly envy you.
Regardless of which well-known works of Twain that you may happen to read, be certain not to miss his LETTERS FROM THE EARTH. This and some other never-before-seen work was published posthumously in a collection by that title nearly fifty years after his death.
It has been said that some of his heirs did not wish to see it in print, because of (or what they considered to be) the vitriolic and more negative viewpoints it expressed concerning religion (as an institution), civilization and mankind, and life in general. Much of it was written later in his life after having suffered a number of personal tragedies. It expresses a certain bitterness that many of Mark Twain's admirers find a troubling counterpoint to their own subjective interpretation of the man as some sort of kindly, affectionately regarded, old literary grandpaw.
One can read the man's novels and stories and enjoy the hell out of those alone and for their own sake, but if your curiosity is piqued by some of his comments, then read some of his essays and lectures. And if you want to know what he REALLY thought, read the stuff that he directed to be published long after his death.
Twain had an acute, finely-honed wit. If most of his stuff can be taken as a man using a safty razor, then LETTERS FROM THE EARTH could be said to be Mark Twain with a cutthroat in hand.
One of the most American things about this most American of all authors is the fact that he was such a "wise-ass". What could be more American than that?

|1.11.06 @ 5:33AM|#

"I must be the only American who hasn't read a lick of Mark Twain. But damn, that essay on smoking was sure fine; especially this line: "I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices." - a thought I've often had myself. I want to read his stuff now."

here you go.

|1.11.06 @ 6:43AM|#

I too love "Letters from Earth". Twain's dark ventings of his spleen are certainly my favorites too. Pretty funny along the way too (Satan writing something along the lines of "I can't believe these people think God cares about them!').

Mysterious Stranger is probably the best known one where Satan is again the hero (the 'you are nothing but dust' monologue at the end is well done).

And 'My life among the microbes' where he posits what life would be like as a bacterium mirrors the intense grief of his later life (broke, family deaths, etc.).

There was another strange short story with two girls going on stage, the older sister reads a little poem about how God answers all prayers and how he loves all people (while her younger sister looks up with pride at her). Then the audience just beings to laugh so hard they cry at the ridiculousness of the girls beliefs.

Love the Twain. :-)

|1.11.06 @ 8:52AM|#

Did you attend school in America?

Yep. I don't know how I missed it either. I kind of remember "Huck Finn" from like 4th grade, but I either didn't read it or don't remember it (I was a *really* poor English student until about 10th grade; I only read sci-fi and horror--kind of like now...).

here you go.

Public domain?

|1.11.06 @ 10:33AM|#

No literary discussion of Twain should fail to note Twain's own great contribution to literary criticism, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses."

http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/cooper.html

Oh, if only critics today wrote nearly so entertainingly! Indeed, after we've thoroughly analysed Twain's various failings, I think we must conclude, as he did of Cooper's, um, writing,

"Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that."

|1.12.06 @ 3:20AM|#

Actually, I've wanted to read his stuff ever since that two-part episode of Star Trek Voyager that he was "in".

I thought that was in "Star Trek: The Next Generation?"