Marking the Twain with Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain in general)

Member Name: shroud

Product:	Mark Twain in general
Date:	10/08/08 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: witty tales, full of detail ad a great relaism for the people and locations

Disadvantages: the PC brigade opposes the novel Huck Finn for its use of a a certain word

Having been educated in the US, it is perhaps not surprising that Mark Twain was required reading at school. Likewise, his standing as one of America's most beloved writers means that his stories are not only popular in print form, but have seen successful adaptations onto the stage and screen . Mark Twain's books have a vivid, folksy feel, bringing to stunning life the reality of life along the Mississippi River and the people who lived there. This is unsurprising, given his background.

Mark Twain was actually one Samuel. L. Clemens, and was born in the town of Florida, Missouri, USA, on November 30, 1835.He was the sixth of seven children and his father was a Tennessee country merchant. When he was four, the family moved to Hannibal, Missouri. Hannibal was later to serve as his inspiration for the fictional town of St Petersburg in which his two seminal novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are set. Hannibal is a port town on the Mississippi, and during this period of time, was plied back and forth by river boats hauling cargo, human and otherwise, and passengers.

When he was 11, Samuel's father died, and the young man went out to earn his way.As luck would have it, he landed an apprenticeship to a printer. Within three years he was a typesetter and contributing his own stories and articles to a newspaper his elder brother owned. Tasting success, at 18 he took advantage of his freedom and left to travel to New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and St Louis. He worked as a typesetter to support himself on these jaunts, and visited the public libraries on a very frequent basis, educating himself with a voracious appetite. At 22, he returned to Hannibal, and felt the call of the river. It was an event that was to change his life.

He became a steamboat pilot after becoming enamoured with the life while taking a jaunt down to New Orleans from Hannibal, and as the wages were quite high, he convinced his beloved younger brother Henry to do the same. It was dangerous work as the boats were made of wood, so no lamps were allowed to light the darkness. The river men would use a pole to check the river depth at regular intervals, and the river boat pilots had to memorise every rock, every bend, and every wreck to steer by. The call of the river men gauging the depth gave rise to his pen name, Mark Twain. Sadly, this part of his life was to mark him in yet another manner. Having had a dream about a fire onboard a river boat resulting in Henry's death, he was horrified when it came true the very next week. It gave him a life long feeling of guilt at having cajoled his brother to the life of a river man, and sparked a life long interest in parapsychology.


His experience on the river both working and as a passenger, and the people he met on travels all proved to be as much fuel for his fervent imagination as did his childhood in Hannibal. Thus it was, that via Twain, the world got to know compulsive gambler Jim Smiley ("The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"), the rascally Tom Sawyer , Huck Finn, and even Twin and people he travelled with (The Innocents abroad or The New Pilgrim's progress). Hollywood is no doubt indebted to him as well for the original incarnation of The Prince and the Pauper, as well as a Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court. While iconic, the books are far from politically correct, which has raised the ire of more than one person repeatedly, especially the use of a certain word beginning with n when referring to blacks that is used in Huckleberry Finn. Never is that or any other derogatory term used gratuitously. Politically correct they may not be, but historically they are, and when viewed in context, adds texture to the way of life as it actually was. It wasn't always polite, it wasn't always fair, and it certainly was not equal for either blacks or women. That was just the way things were, and the books serve as a vignette into that time, while at the same time being wildly entertaining.

It's just as well they are entertaining, for the man himself could be as irascible as he was funny. He is famous for writing scathing reviews on other popular authors of the day, such as James Fenimore Cooper, who today stand alongside him in places of honour as an American literary great. One cannot help but ponder if it was professional jealousy, but whatever it was, it was not not nice. He was scathing and brutal. He was, as my mother would put it, quite the character. Not altogether too surprising that when you discover that Tom Sawyer was based upon his actual childhood self and upbringing, and that Huck was heavily modelled on his own childhood best friend. Regardless of whether one approves of his various changing political stances (the man moved like a weather vane as he educated himself on different topics, travelled, and experienced life) or his personal opinions of the mundane, it remains that the man is a literary giant who had not only lifetime fame and made friends with the wealthy and crowned heads of Europe, but who stands tall in the ranks of America's greatest writers. It perhaps fitting then, that he was not only born shortly after Halley's Comet blazed across the sky, but as he himself predicted, followed it out on its next pass.

Summary: One of America's literary giants