The Best Short Works of Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  “Extracts from Adam’s Diary,” “Eve’s Diary,” and “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” are other examples of Twain’s religious satire. Captain Stormfield’s rich narrative is Twain at his comic best—the afterlife as adventure. Twain did not believe in heaven, but if he did, it would be inclusive, “trickling out thousands of Yanks and Mexicans and English and Arabs” (p. 752), and free from the bigotry he viewed Christian religion to be a source of here on earth.

  Eastern vs. Western Values. As a frontier journalist in Nevada and California, Twain’s accounts of his experiences in the mining camps and ghost towns of the West provided many easterners with their first glimpse of the new frontier. “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” the story that established Twain’s reputation as a humorist, is an intricate narrative that ultimately juxtaposes the prevailing stereotypes of the time—easterners as civilized, educated, refined, though easily duped; westerners as uncivilized, poorly educated tricksters and schemers. Central to the story is the clash of cultures as the narrator Twain, an easterner, becomes subject to the “monotonous narrative” of Simon Wheeler, a westerner. It is clear from the beginning of the story that the narrator has not the slightest desire to know or understand Wheeler, and though he listens to the whole of Wheeler’s account of Jim Smiley (a westerner who is ultimately duped by an easterner), he misses the point and the men part ways still strangers despite the time that has passed between them.

  Though not as layered as “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” a tall tale illustrates opposing eastern and western sensibilities in “Jim Baker’s Bluejay Yarn” as well. Twain relates the narrative of one Jim Baker, an isolated California miner so starved for conversation and companionship he begins to talk to animals, particularly blue jays. “There’s more to a bluejay than any other creature. He has got more moods, and more different kinds of feelings than any other creature; and, mind you, whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into language” (p. 193). Blue jays may have a way with words, like westerners, though that does not mean they will always be understood, we learn, by an owl from Nova Scotia. Twain’s ability to fuse both eastern and western sensibilities—to blend vernacular language with formal language—was the foundation of his unique humor.

  Appearance vs. Reality. The theme of appearance and reality figures prominently throughout Twain’s work. Mark Twain himself was, after all, a persona created by Samuel Langhorne Clemens. This device not only provided the writer with a narrative framework in which he was, in a sense, both author and audience, but also allowed him considerable control to create and upset a reader’s expectations. People lie in Twain’s stories. Hoaxes are perpetrated, identities are confused, and unrealistic expectations often end in disillusionment when met with the harsh realities of life.

  The irony in “A Day at Niagara” provides a commentary on the unrealistic romantic depictions of Native Americans popularized in the fiction of James Fenimore Cooper and is a prime example of the author’s use of his persona as a foil. Twain’s narrator is so enchanted with Cooper’s tales and legends of the “Red Man” that he cannot distinguish fantasy from reality—or, in this case, actual Native Americans from souvenir-hawking Irishmen in costume—and greets the “tribe” thusly: “Nobel Red Men, Braves, Grand Sachems, War Chiefs, Squaws, and High-Muck-a-Mucks, the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you!” (p. 27). Not surprisingly, the encounter takes a violent turn and Twain’s narrator is ultimately thrown into the falls, leaving him bewildered, disillusioned, and “lying in a very critical condition” at the end of the story.

  “Cannibalism in the Cars” is another “firsthand account” in which Twain relates a gruesome tale told to him by a “benevolent-looking gentleman” he met in a way-station while headed out west. On one level, the stranger’s tale is a commentary on the savagery of man and the depths to which he will sink when survival is at stake. Twain’s narrator’s revelation at the end of the story, however, suggests something quite different. Though Twain tells us early on of the man’s political nature and that he “was perfectly familiar with the ins and outs of political life at the Capital” (p. 12), at the end of the story we learn that the man’s tale is untrue, “the harmless vagaries of a madman” (p. 21), and that he was once a congressman. With these new details, Twain once again shifts our perception and reveals his ultimate purpose to be an inquiry into political motivation and ethics in government.

  Instances of mistaken identity appear in “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” and “The Invalid’s Story.” In the latter, misconceptions about a corpse prove fatal for the narrator when he succumbs to the fancies of his imagination over reason: “. . . imagination had done its work and my health was permanently shattered” (p. 237).

  Human Greed and Hypocrisy. “The $30,000 Bequest” and “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” perhaps best illustrate Twain’s view on the corruptive force of money. Twain was not against making money, but he wrote fervently about its destructive power and man’s willingness to trade away his integrity for the almighty dollar. In “The $30,000 Bequest” Aleck and Sally spend years plotting and planning how they will spend (what we surmise) is an imaginary fortune. Consumed by dreams of their wealthy future, they become passive in the present. Their morals decay. Their family unravels. So upon the discovery that there is no inheritance, both future and present are literally lost and the couple goes insane. Sally’s realization in the final chapter of “The $30,000 Bequest” makes Twain’s opinion clear: “Vast wealth, acquired by sudden and unwholesome means, is a snare. It did us no good, transient were its feverish pleasures; yet for its sake we threw away our sweet and simple and happy life—let others take warning by us” (p. 685).

  In “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” Mr. and Mrs. Richards undergo a similar fate when they succumb to the temptations of wealth by “unwholesome means.” One sin always leads to another, Twain cautions, and with it the weight of guilt. “But they were to learn, now, that a sin takes on new and real terrors when there seems a chance that it is going to be found out” (p. 506).

  Sentimentality. In an 1876 letter to J. H. Burrough, Twain wrote, “There is one thing which I can’t stand, and won’t stand from many people. That is sham sentimentality—the kind a school-girl puts into her graduating composition; the sort that makes up the Original Poetry column of a country newspaper; the rot that deals in ‘the happy days of yore,’ the ‘sweet yet melancholy past,’ with its ‘blighted hopes’ and its ‘vanished dreams’—and all that sort of drivel.” Twain’s attacks on sentimentality lasted throughout his career. Stories such as “The Esquimau Maiden’s Romance,” “The Story of the Good Little Boy,” and “The Story of the Bad Little Boy” provide excellent examples in which Twain uses parody to mock sentimental conventions of popular fiction.

  CRITICAL EXCERPTS

  Biographical Studies

  Paine, Albert Bigelow. Mark Twain, A Biography. 3 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1912.

  Paine was Twain’s authorized biographer. He even lived for a time with Twain and his family. This mammoth biographical work is the foundation for most later biographies of Twain.

  He [Twain] had been brought up in a town that turned out pilots; he had heard the talk of their trade. One at least of the Bowen boys was already on the river while Sam Clemens was still a boy in Hannibal, and had often been home to air his grandeur and dilate on the marvel of his work. That learning the river was no light task Sam Clemens very well knew. Nevertheless, as the little boat made its drowsy way down the river into lands that grew ever pleasanter with advancing spring, the old “permanent ambition” of boyhood stirred again, and the call of the far-away Amazon, with its coca and its variegated zoology, grew faint.

  De Voto, Bernard. Mark Twain’s America. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1932.

  De Voto explores the roots of Twain’s “tragic laughter” by examining how the social and physical landscape of nineteenth-century America shaped his man
y narratives.

  Criticism has said that he was incapable of ideas and all but anaesthetized against the intellectual ferment of the age: yet an idea is no less an idea because it is utilized for comedy, and whether you explore the descent of man, the rejection of progress or the advances of feminism or the development of the insanity plea or the coalescence of labor you will find it in that wide expanse.

  Kaplan, Justin. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography. New York: Touchstone, 1966.

  Kaplan’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biography examines the strain between Twain’s public and private lives. The book begins when Twain is in his thirties and working as a journalist in San Francisco.

  Diffidently and erratically, already past the age when others have chosen their vocation, he was beginning to choose his. For over forty years he had been a journalist in Nevada and California, with a brief assignment in the Sandwich Islands, and the pseudonym “Mark Twain” on its way to becoming an identity in itself, was already famous in the West. In 1865, on the advice of Artemus Ward, he had sent to New York a flawless story about the Calaveras mining camps.

  Early Reviews and Interpretations

  Turner, Matthew Freke. “Artemus Ward and the Humourists of America.” The New Quarterly Magazine (April 1876).

  Turner takes exception to Twain’s satiric depiction of Christian ideals in his short stories and holds that Twain’s “cleverness” pales next to popular humorist Charles Farrar Browne (1834–1867), who wrote under the name Artemus Ward.

  There is one sort of fun much employed by Mark Twain; against which I strongly protest. It is where he turns solemn or sacred subjects into ridicule. It may be a tempting resource to a professional jester, in search of a subject, to exercise his wits upon topics which only require to be treated with levity to make some light-brained people laugh; but it is quite unworthy of such a writer as Mark Twain. . . . At any rate, I counsel Mark Twain, if he is anxious for the suffrages of decent readers, in his own and this country, to leave profanity alone.

  Henley, William Ernest. Review of A Tramp Abroad The Athenaeum (April 1880).

  In stark contrast to Turner’s review, Henley comments on the “tenderness” in Twain’s prose in this early review and points to the author as an important new voice in American literature.

  He has seen men and cities, has looked with a shrewd and liberal eye on many modes of life, and has always something apt and pointed to say of everything; finally, he shares with Walt Whitman the honour [sic] of being the most strictly American writer of what is called American literature. Of all, or almost all, the many poets, novelists, essayists, philosophers, historians, and such like notables (orators excepted) America has produced, the origins are plainly European. . . . Mark Twain is American pure and simple.

  Archer, William. “ ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg’—A New Parable.” The Critic (November 1900).

  Archer’s favorable review mentions the “adhesive quality” of “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” and compares it to Pilgrim’s Progress and Candide for its craft and “shrewd, penetrating” psychology.

  To return to “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.” I am not going to discount it by attempting to tell its story. Indeed, I could not if I would, even in six times the space that remains to me; for though it runs to only sixty pages, its construction is so ingeniously complex that it would take something like half that space to make even a comprehensible sketch-plan of its mechanism. A more tight-packed piece of narrative art it would be hard to conceive.

  Critical Interpretations: 1940s and 1950s

  Bellamy, Gladys Carmen. “The Microscope and the Dream.” Mark Twain as a Literary Artist. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950.

  In this essay, Bellamy explores the The Mysterious Stranger in terms of its autobiographical significance and holds that Twain’s literary devices were, in essence, an attempt to “lend perspective, to lend aesthetic distance, to lend serenity; the very qualities Mark Twain needed most as a literary artist.”

  He [Twain] was not a profound thinker. His reaction to life itself was emotional rather than intellectual, and his criticism of life followed the same pattern. Formal education, perhaps even a planned program of reading, might have aided him to bridge the gaps in his thinking, might have helped him to resolve his philosophical dilemma and thus to achieve philosophic unity in his work. But, on the other hand, formal education might have detracted from the buoyancy and freshness of his writing style. It is often the excellence of the writing itself—its vigor and vividness, its sincerity and emotional drive—which holds the reader’s interest sufficiently to mask the weakness of ideas.

  Lynn, Kenneth S. Mark Twain and Southwestern Humor. Boston: Little Brown, 1959.

  Lynn traces the historical, social, and political influences on Twain’s narrative technique in Roughing It.

  By substituting a victim’s humor for a spectatorial humor, Twain transformed the comic treatment of the American frontier. Not only was his laughter more compassionate and humane, but the attitude of the narrator toward the West was psychologically more complex. . . .

  Critical Interpretations: 1960s and 1970s

  Rule, Henry B. “The Role of Satan in ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.’ ” Studies in Short Fiction (Fall 1969).

  Rule’s article explores Twain’s use of Satan as a benefactor rather than corrupter in the story.

  Twain’s characterization is derived from the Bible, which he had memorized as a boy during many weary Sabbaths. Many Biblical passages depict Satan as a servant of God whose functions are to test man’s faith, punish his weakness and purge his flesh “that his spirit may be saved.” Perhaps Satan’s major service to man is to chasten his pride. This is the role he employs to bring about the fortunate fall of the Eden in Hadleyburg. St. Paul himself was aware of Satan’s usefulness as a means of humbling man’s pride. . . . Perhaps this and similar passages in the Bible, in addition to the encouragement of his kindhearted mother, inspired little Sam at the age of seven to rescue Satan from nineteen centuries of Christian defamation. Hadleyburg is the finest product of that long endeavor.

  Geismar, Maxwell. Mark Twain: An American Prophet. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970.

  Geismar explores a number of Twain’s short stories in terms of their social and historical context, as well as in relation to Samuel Clemens’s personal life. In the following excerpt concerning “The $30,000 Bequest,” Geismar compares the Fosters’ downfall to Twain’s own tenuous relationship with wealth.

  Clemens himself was expressing an artistic catharsis of his own earlier panic and frustration in the business world. If he had not suffered through the bankruptcy ordeal, he would not have understood, much less created such literature—in which a deeply personal experience was fused with a very pertinent kind of social criticism.

  Gibson, William. The Art of Mark Twain. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

  Gibson’s study of Twain’s lesser-known works is intensive. With sections on the developmental history of “Excerpts from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven,” and an in-depth analysis of the layers of meaning in “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime,” the book provides an excellent resource for those wishing to learn more about his later short stories.

  The Freudian dimension of the tale might be defined fully by a practicing Freudian critic, which I am not. Nonetheless, anyone with an elementary awareness of psychoanalytical concepts can see that Twain anticipated Freud (who, we know, read the humorist with pleasure) in several striking ways, particularly in his chapter “The Anatomy of the Mental Personality” in New Introductory Letter on Psycho-Analysis. In his description of “the anatomy of the mental personality,” for example, Freud occasionally uses effective metaphors, such as a cracked crystal for the complex relations of Germans, Magyars, and Slovaks, and the sustained metaphors of the geography, the exploration, and the anatomy of the psyche. Most vividly, he personifies superego, id, and external world as “harsh mas
ters,” and creates a genuine drama in which the ego, crying “Life is not easy,” must make a go of life by reconciling the divergent and even incompatible demands of its three masters.

  Critical Interpretations: 1980s and Beyond

  “Kemper, Steven E. “Poe, Twain, and Limburger Cheese.” Mark Twain Journal (Winter 1981–1982).

  In this essay Kemper examines Twain’s “The Invalid’s Story” as a parody of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Descent into the Maelstrom.”

  Twain parodies the typical Poe character’s perverse over-exercise of imagination. Scores of Poe’s characters accept as reality the distortion created by their excessive imaginations. In this way, Twain insists, absurdity defeats simple common sense. Thompson sticks his nose right in the cheese but does not even realize it. The narrator knows his friend is freshly dead and could not be decaying already, but his imagination betrays his common sense. To paraphrase an adage, they can’t smell the Limburger for the cheese. As in Poe, unregulated imagination does them in, but Twain emphasizes the absurdity and humor of such excess, not its pathos and troubled genius.

  Wright, Daniel L. “Flawed Communities and the Problem of Moral Choice in the Fiction of Mark Twain.” The Southern Literary Journal (Fall 1991).

  Wright’s interesting study examines several of Twain’s short stories in terms of setting, and points to examples of Twain’s use of various towns to illustrate man’s inherent desire to conform.