Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens
ISBN: 9780520945494
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of California Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Twain Mark 1835–1910; Authors American -- 19th century -- Biography; Humorists American -- 19th century -- Biography;

In the latest volume for the centennial of Twain's death, Loving (Walt Whitman: Song of Himself) serves up a balanced literary biography of a crowded life-"to renew our acquaintance with this familiar stranger in our literature and culture." Many of the best chapters include sensitive appraisals of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the anonymously published Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer put in a different context as possibly the most overrated work of American fiction when considered as adult literature. In fact, this Mark Twain flows with the easy familiarity of a scholar who has spent a lifetime tracking 19th-century American literature. Of certain interest is the discussion, at various points, of Twain's complex views on blacks and slavery, Native Americans, the Chinese, and-particularly from the standpoint of his home in fin-de-siecle Vienna-on Jews. If this biography of Clemens's many adventures fails to delve "psychologically" into the writer's family and other relationships, it is a solid contribution to literary interpretation of the man who infused American literature with what has been called "tragic laughter." 37 b&w photos. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Loving Jerome :

Jerome Loving , Distinguished Professor of English at Texas A&M University, is the author of Walt Whitman: Song of Himself and The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser , both from UC Press.


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