AMERICAN AUTHORS CHALLENGE -- JANUARY 2024--MARK TWAIN

Our January author is Mark Twain, known to his friends and family as Samuel Clemens. He was born in 1835 in Missouri (or, as he probably said it, "MaZURah"), and died in 1910 in Connecticut. He has been lauded as America's greatest humorist, but he was also often devastatingly serious, particularly in his later years. In addition to the familiar works of literature he is known for over 100 years after his death --The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Prince and the Pauper; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and others--he was a a riverboat pilot, journalist, entrepreneur, popular lecturer, publisher and inventor (he patented an elastic garment strap, a self-pasting scrapbook, and a memory game; he financed other people's inventions as well). He was not a very successful businessman, and often found himself in financial straits. But he made one extremely shrewd business decision, which was to encourage the ailing Ulysses S. Grant to write his memoirs, and to give the former President and Civil War hero a contract which not only proved profitable for Twain's publishing business, but ensured the financial well-being of Grant's wife and family following his death.

There are a number of excellent links on Twain's author page here on LT. If you are interested in reading a biography of the man, you will be spoiled for choice. From contemporaries to 21st century scholars, the list of his biographers includes Albert Bigelow Paine, Justin Kaplan, his daughter Susy Clemens, his friend William Dean Howells, Fred Kaplan, Ron Powers, Geoffrey Ward, Mark Perry and Twain himself (The Autobiography of Mark Twain).

@Flamingrabbit and I studied Twain's life and work fairly extensively in our college days, but there are still things I haven't read, so I am eager to steam into his world once more.

Thank you for your effort here!

I'm currently immersed in the Science of Steamboat River Piloting with Life on The Mississippi.

I have the unabridged Mark Twain in two volumes. I will read some works but probably not the entire volume.

I'll be reading selections from Selected Shorter Writings of Mark Twain, edited by Walter Blair. It includes selections from his entire life-time, including: early stories, magazine pieces, essays and excerpts from longer works. I probably won't read the whole thing, but read here & there.

I will be reading The Innocents Abroad which I am pretty sure that I have never read.

>1 laytonwoman3rd: Love that sculpture.

I'm going with The Mysterious Stranger and other stories.

This from Life on the Mississippi -

The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book....

If I can fit it in, I'd like to do a re-read of Huck Finn...

I might have A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court on my shelf, need to go check. You know, Linda, that Ken Burns did a terrific documentary on Twain. If you haven't seen it, try to find it. I learned a lot and wasn't disappointed. Pretty much everything Burns does is outstanding.

>9 jessibud2: I had forgotten that Burns documentary, Shelley. We did see it, back when it first aired, and that's been 20 years ago, hasn't it? It is available to stream with a membership in any PBS station, through the Passport app. As I recall we found the background music a bit inappropriate, but the observations of several living authors (or at least they were still living then) were very keen, and I think I'd like to look at it again. Thanks so much for mentioning it!

>3 elorin: Good to have you join us, Robyn!
>4 kac522:, >6 Caroline_McElwee: The shorter works are well worth reading...sometimes they get overlooked in favor of the accepted "masterpieces", but you cannot do better than "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg", or "A Private History of a Campaign That Failed". The Mysterious Stranger isn't all that short, though, as I recall.

>5 alcottacre: That may be the one I choose, too, Stasia. If I read any of it, it was when I was in high school, and my mental files regarding it have been overwritten!

>7 m.belljackson: I love Life on the Mississippi, having spent some time living near that river.

>8 katiekrug: Go for it, Katie! Parts of that novel are indelibly etched in my brain...I've lost track of how many times I've read it.

>10 laytonwoman3rd: It seems appropriate for me to be reading The Innocents Abroad this month, Linda, since Kerry and I will be cruising. . .

Gonna dip into Life on the Mississippi this month, which I have somehow never read.

I've located an ILL copy of two Twain books--Roughing It and Innocents Abroad. I'll read the first, maybe the second!

Karen O

>10 laytonwoman3rd: Where near The Mississippi did you live? I'll see if Mark Twain mentions it in the 2nd half of Life on the Mississippi.

>14 m.belljackson: We lived in Gretna, one of the West Bank neighborhoods, across the river from New Orleans.

I just started re-reading The Prince and the Pauper. My last time reading it was in middle school (a required book for a class). It reads like a completely different book now (over 20 years later)!

Mark Twain wrote letters on political issues and essays about hot topics when he was alive. I have a couple of his essay and short story books, and this is great inspiration to pick them up and read some as well. I'm looking forward to this challenge.

>15 laytonwoman3rd: Didn't see Gretna, but Life on the Mississippi includes many descriptions toward the end of New Orleans,
concluding with this one:

The finest thing we saw on our whole Mississippi trip,
we saw as we approached New Orleans in the steam-tug.

This was the curving frontage of the crescent city lit up with the white glare
of five miles of electric lights. It was a wonderful sight and very beautiful.

>17 m.belljackson: I don't think Gretna was actually called that until it was officially incorporated in 1913. So if Twain knew anything of it, he might have referred to it as McDonogh, or McDonoghville.

My collection of books (unread) by Mark Twain:

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by the Sieur Louis de Conte (Her Page and Secretary)
Roughing It
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
The Innocents Abroad

I've ruled out the Joan of Arc book. I'm inclined to read The Gilded Age, but I shan't rule out the other two until I commence to begin the actual reading.

Well, I called a halt to reading Roughing It: just wasn’t suiting me at this time. Tiny print, onion-skin paper, no thanks.

So, I’m going in the opposite direction, and starting off with Eve’s Diary and then maybe some other shorter works from a collection that’s waiting at the library.

Karen O

>20 klobrien2: A few years ago a local theater group did a production of a play David Birney adapted from Eve's Diary and Extracts from Adam's Diary ... some very funny stuff.

I read 7 short selections from Selected Shorter Writings of Mark Twain:

Three early humor selections from newspapers:
"The Dandy Frightening the Squatter", 1852
"Letter to Annie Taylor", 1856
"Letter from Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass", 1857

"Encounter with an Interviewer", 1875, in which the interviewer gets tricked into being the interviewee

and three literary essays:
"The Art of Authorship", 1890, from The Art of Authorship, ed. George Bainton
"How to Tell a Story", from Youth's Companion, 1895
"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses", from the North American Review, 1895

This last piece was brilliant. Just one quote to give you a taste:

"Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.
There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction--some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated eighteen of them."

...and he proceeds to expound on all eighteen offenses in great detail, starting with:
"1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air."

and it goes on from there. A lot of fun.

I finished A Connecticut Yankee in Arthur’s Court. I hadn’t read it before. My impression is that it is more social commentary than fantasy though Twain uses time travel to set up the vehicle for his commentary. Humor is there but some of the commentary might be a bit heavy to some.

>22 kac522: When we were in college, my husband (now, boyfriend then) took an American literature course together, and our professor tried to read parts of "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" out loud to class after we had read, but hadn't yet talked about, Deerslayer. He couldn't get through the list, he had the most infectious laugh, and the whole class was in stitches. Never forgot that.

>23 Kristelh: That remains one of Twain's works that I have not experienced yet.

January has turned out to be a difficult month in RL, and I simply have not had the brainwaves to turn to any of my unread Twain. I am glad to see others giving him a go.

>24 laytonwoman3rd: January has turned out to be a difficult month in RL, and I simply have not had the brainwaves to turn to any of my unread Twain. I am glad to see others giving him a go.

I am sorry to hear that January has been a difficult month for you, Linda. I would have liked to tackle more Twain this month as well, but it just did not happen, so I am glad that other people are picking up the slack :)

>24 laytonwoman3rd: What a great school story, Linda. I've never read The Deerslayer and now feel absolutely no need to pick it up; I'd just be counting the offenses as they mounted up.

My readings this month were short, but I feel I got some good Twain in last year when I read Tom Sawyer for the first time, and it was so much better (and funnier) than I expected.

>26 kac522: I think it may have been the first time I encountered any disdain at that level for the authors I'd been taught to revere in high school. It kind of opened my eyes to the world of literary criticism of any kind.

Also read/finished A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain for the January challenge. Glad I did, because although I'd read it 40-ish years ago, my memory was very, very incomplete as to what the story was about! Maybe I'd read a younger reader's version?! No idea - but regardless, I enjoyed this reading very much.

I appreciated hearing Twain's 'voice' throughout, and as Nick Offerman was the reader in the Audible version, that added a bit of hilarity to expression as well. Twain's narrator celebrates the working man, offers accolades to the problem solvers of the industrial age (early engineers), and lauds the hard work of farmers and laborers. Twain makes it clear he's unimpressed with the trappings of Society, whether that be the finery of the wealthiest or the Somewhat Better than You Attitude (Capital "A") he describes throughout the kingdom of Camelot. He is simultaneously merciless on all the economic classes equally about their ignorance ... and definitely prejudiced in favor of young lads eager to learn and work hard to improve their lot. The book ends up being a sliver of American attitude and not about time travel or Camelot at all. Keep in mind when it was published: 1889.

My impression of CT Yanks doesn't quite line up with his, but that is undoubtedly my fault, not his - afterall he lived in CT for more than a decade (I think, I'm not up on all his whereabouts) and this is one of the many books he wrote while living there. Maybe I've just met too many from Camelot ... (I'm tweaking the nose of a good number of my own friends here, not intending my comment as an insult).

I read and thoroughly enjoyed Life on the Mississippi. As a bonus, it includes a scene from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which Twain was working on at the time, plus another sketch that reminds me an awful lot of the duke and dauphin from Huck Finn.

In the end I only read the first story in >6 Caroline_McElwee:, but I'll return to it down the line. Wrong mood.