Phil linked to a story yesterday, about the impending release of the first volume of Mark Twain’s Memoirs, withheld from publication, at the author’s request, since his death in 1910. People speculate that the reason for the embargo was that Twain (Sam Clemens) didn’t feel the world was ready for his freethinking ideas.
I think they’re probably right. I suspect he figured mankind would be rid of this Christianity nonsense by 2010.
My own history with Mark Twain has been complicated. I read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in school, as pretty much all kids did in my day. And somewhere in my high school years, somebody gave me a copy of The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain for Christmas (I got the old hardcover Doubleday edition; you can get the current version in paperback here). At the beginning, my delight was great. Here were hilarious stories, crafted in masterful English (only P.G. Wodehouse has ever impressed me so with his ability to wring hilarity out of simple word choice), that made me laugh out loud, stories I had to read to my long-suffering brothers.
I still love “A Day at Niagara,” with its laconic description of an attack by a mob of Irishmen:
They tore half the clothes off me; they broke my arms and legs; they gave me a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee like a saucer; and, to crown their disgraceful proceedings and add insult to injury, they threw me over Niagara Falls, and I got wet.
I loved “Journalism in Tennessee,” in which he explains to a newspaper editor why he can’t continue as his assistant:
“A gentleman shoots at you through the window and cripples me; a bombshell comes down the stove-pipe for your gratification and sends the stove door down my throat; a friend drops in to swap compliments with you, and freckles me with bullet-holes till my skin won’t hold my principles; you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all my clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy freedom of an old acquaintance….”
I love “The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm:”
When we were finishing our house, we found we had a little cash left over, on account of the plumber not knowing it. I was for enlightening the heathen with it, for I was always unaccountably down on the heathen somehow; but Mrs. McWilliams said no, let’s have a burglar alarm. I agreed to this compromise. I will explain that whenever I want a thing, and Mrs. McWilliams wants another thing, and we decide upon the thing that Mrs. McWilliams wants—as we always do—she calls that a compromise.
My favorite, though, must be “Political Economy,” which I memorized at one point, and used to do for my friends in a sort of third-rate Hal Holbrook routine. I should note that “political economy” is what they used to call political science in the 19th Century, and the story has the author doggedly attempting to write an essay on that subject, while being constantly interrupted by a lightning rod salesman, who ends up selling him hundreds of the things. All this hardware actually has the effect of attracting all the lightning in that part of the state:
By actual count, the lightning struck at my establishment seven hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes, but tripped on one of those faithful rods every time, and slid down the spiral-twist and shot into the earth before it probably had time to be surprised at the way the thing was done. And through all that bombardment only one patch of slates was ripped up, and that was because, for a single instant, the rods in the vicinity were transporting all the lightning they could possibly accommodate.
But all those stories were in the first half of the book. The later stories were less and less funny, and more and more bitter and nihilistic. There was much concentration on the cruelties and wickedness of mankind, coupled with the complaint that if God had an ounce of decency in Him, He wouldn’t have made mankind that way.
The final story, “The Mysterious Stranger,” was the grimmest, most pessimistic thing I’d ever read. It left a bad taste with me that still lingers, lo these many years later.
I was certain then, and had been ever since, that the man who wrote those final stories was certainly an atheist.
Apparently that’s not true, according to Mark Twain’s Wikipedia page. His relationship with God was more complicated than that. He was officially a Presbyterian, but his actual beliefs seemed to waver between various forms of heterodoxy. I suppose he was too angry to reject God altogether, as atheism would have left him with Nobody to blame for the family tragedies that plagued his declining years.
I don’t think I’ll read the Memoirs. I have a suspicion they won’t be much fun.
Photo Credit: Getty Images.
I’m interested in reading reviews, but I probably won’t be able to read it myself. I have read “The Mysterious Stranger.” We discussed it in college. It’s a bit difficult and depressing, but the story seems to wrap around on itself with the idea that life could be merely the imagination of someone else. It’s convoluted.
I will probably purchase and read the three volumes.
I wish to discover when Twain became an activist for PETA.
I’d like to know when he first hated Teddy R.
When he first became an activist for the Philippines and an anti-American.
And when he first became aware that Teddy R. started the second World War.
He died before the first World War.
Ah, yes he did, but if you read some newer books about him and Teddy, you will see how Teddy is blamed for the second WW because of his hate of dark-skinned Filipinos and his dislike of Russians and his great admiration for the Japanese. He believed the Japanese were the only “white Asians” that were any good. One book that is “good” on this is, “Imperial Cruise”, by James Bradley. I was amazed at many of his statements and suppositions! There are many activist writers who pitch my first post on this.