The Portable Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  In any event, his system served him well enough in the creation of such short fiction as “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” (1899), What Is Man? (1906), “Little Bessie” (ca. 1908), and Letters from the Earth (ca. 1909); and in parts (but only in parts) of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) and A Connecticut Yankee. Twain might even explain the physical organization of microorganisms as a form of social hierarchy governed chiefly by pride and envy, as he did in “Three Thousand Years among the Microbes” (1905). He would reaffirm his philosophy in essays such as “Corn-Pone Opinions” (1901) and “The Turning Point of My Life” (1910) and in several of his letters. In one of his more amusing philosophic outbursts in a letter to Joseph Twichell (reprinted in this volume), he describes his experience of reading the Puritan Jonathan Edwards on the will as resembling “having been on a three days’ tear with a drunken lunatic.” In a word, however dark this philosophic vision may have been, it did not harness the sheer audacity of his humor or the sting of his wit. Nor did it impinge upon his social and political convictions or restrain his fiery denunciation of tyranny, imperialism, and demogoguery.

  On the other hand, Twain was continually driving beyond the limits of his own philosophy, without regard to logic, system, or continuity. In Chapter 31 of the novel, Huckleberry Finn is tortured by his guilty conscience for depriving Miss Watson of her rightful property by helping Jim to freedom. However improbable his decision is (and given his upbringing it is improbable indeed), he is heroic in choosing to go to hell rather than betray his companion. Twain himself later described Huck’s conduct as the triumph of a “sound heart” over a “deformed conscience.” Hank Morgan believes that “training is everything” and foolishly attempts to transform King Arthur’s England by introducing nineteenth-century ideas of political and religious liberty and the conveniences provided by industrial progress and technological efficiency. The conjunction of these two worlds makes for wonderful comedy, of course. However, in the end the dying Morgan believes his own modern world is the product of delirium and dream and reaches out, across thirteen centuries, for everything that is dear to him—his wife, his child, his friends, his antique life.

  Ultimately, Twain’s determinism is not very interesting in itself, not as philosophy and not as an existential position he fashioned out of his own disappointments. Ironically perhaps, it was useful because it permitted him certain antic freedoms that were more in his line than synthetic explanations of human behavior. And his philosophizing does seem to have supplied him with a rationalized defense post from which he might launch repeated attacks on human vanity or, alternately, on a God that equipped human nature with a “moral sense” but without the necessary means to lead, except passively, the moral life. Twain might ridicule human conceit in several ways: by locating his species as a mere speck in the infinite vastness of space or by treating the human creature as the assembled concatenation of infinitesimally small but overproud particles or as the product of millions of years of evolutionary process leisurely fumbling its way toward some undisclosed end. It was the very absurdity of the human condition, regarded through the lens of incongruous frames of reference, that inevitably summoned humorous remark. “It is easy to find fault if one has that disposition,” Pudd’n-head Wilson records. “There once was a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.”

  In 1896, Twain remarked, “The mysterious and the fabulous can get no fine effects without the help of remoteness; and there are no remotenesses any more.” That was a dilemma he might easily remedy. By locating the human comedy in the distant reaches of space or in a cholera germ in the bloodstream of a tramp, or by reaching back into prehistory, all the way back to the Garden of Eden, Twain found there remained plenty of fine effects to be had. He might observe human foibles in himself and others and dramatize them under such alien conditions and thereby construct a different sort of comedy, one that applied broadly to universal human nature and could teach the lessons of humility and a common destiny. Humility is a social virtue and laughter is its companion. Humiliation, by contrast, is a stigma, alienating and corrosive. However cynical Twain became in his later years, his comedy never degenerated into the merely derisive or spiteful. He remained to the end the reader’s genial companion and ally.

  Despite his insistence that originality was impossible, Twain often enough transcended the terms of his own intellectual system and explored literary territory that was at least fresh and often unexampled. He did this in his “Autobiography” by ransacking his recollection vaults, creating a life out of fickle remembrance, and offering it to an indefinite future. He did it as well in his comedies of first and final things. His Captain Stormfield, who sailed for heaven but arrived at the wrong port, is sympathetically ridiculous because he has brought with him the baggage of wrongheaded but conventional expectation about the hereafter. Stormfield learns that planet Earth is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things; it is referred to locally as the “Wart.” He tries his hand at plucking a harp (he knows only one tune) and using his wings (he collides with a Bishop, and they exchange sharp words), only to find out that these customs are not required. When Stormfield drops his pre-possessions about paradise and his final reward, he begins to see things anew and more clearly, and we do too. We also begin to suspect why he is there and not the other place.

  Twain also wrote often about beginnings, most extensively about the experiences of Adam and Eve in the Garden and after. By doing so, he was willfully depriving himself of his constituted gospel of training and inherited ideas. Eve characterizes the pair’s situation in their innocent state: “Interests were abundant; for we were children, and ignorant; ignorant beyond the conception of the present day. We knew nothing—nothing whatever. We were starting at the very bottom of things—at the very beginning; we had to learn the a b c of things.” Twain did not conceive of the pair, nor do they really conceive of themselves, as children—obedient or otherwise. They are self-appointed “scientists,” who through repeated observation and experimentation are trying to get the hang of the place called Paradise. It is Adam’s assigned task to name things, but Eve beats him to the punch every time, simply because she knows the right name for every beast and bird. She also knows that Sunday is a day of rest, whereas Adam thought every day was. Thereafter, his diary for Sunday is always the same: “Pulled through.” Eve puts up signs everywhere—“Keep off the grass.” “This way to the Whirlpool.”—and believes Eden would make a swell summer resort.

  Adam and Eve are evicted from the Garden, but not for eating of the apple. The forbidden fruit, it turns out, is the “chestnut.” Adam partook of this fruit in the form of a hackneyed joke he told, as old as creation, and he compounded the felony by laughing himself silly over it. Many years earlier, in The Innocents Abroad, Twain stood at the Tomb of Adam and tearfully lamented that the old man had not lived to see him, “his child.” In “Extracts from Adam’s Diary” Twain re-imagines his ancestor as one who has discovered a hairless and toothless creature he can’t quite identify. Eve has instinctively named it Abel. Adam supposes it might be a fish and throws it in the water. Eve retrieves it. It might be a frog, a bird, or a snake; but it isn’t. He decides it is “either an enigma or some kind of bug.” He becomes so convinced that it is a kangaroo that he names it “Kangaroorum Adamiensis.” He rejects that hypothesis and concludes it must be a “zoological freak,” either that or a tail-less bear. Adam wears himself out looking for another specimen of the species; meanwhile Eve has caught another one and named it Cain.

  There is preposterous and affecting comedy in these, our first parents, trying to discover where babies come from and establishing themselves, without benefit of consultation or clergy, as the first family. Driven from the Garden, Adam and Eve discover in a new and apparently unsponsored world the lasting pleasures of one another’s company. “After all these years,” says Adam, “I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning;
it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her. . . . Blessed be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit.” If an old joke brought about the Fall, it appears that Adam and Eve have had the last (and the first) laugh.

  In his old age, Twain’s once hopeful optimism may have reached the end of its tether, but, for forty years and more, the imaginative reach of his humor had traveled far and wide—from the Nevada Territory to the Black Forest, from Plymouth Rock to the Rock of Gibraltar, from the outer reaches of the universe to the inner life of microbes, from the creation to the hereafter. Through it all, in multiple personae and in unequal doses to be sure, his antic geniality, his irascible sympathy and self-righteous indignation, his zany irreverence, and ridiculous solemnity traveled with him. The ebullient humor and amiable presence of Twain can be felt on nearly every page of his best work and remain, perhaps, his most important and durable features. Those qualities are good companions, and portable indeed.

  Suggestions for Further Reading

  The sheer volume of criticism and scholarship concerning Mark Twain’s life and writings is immense. The bibliography below is meant to list resources for reliable information about the author and his work, identify certain collections or editions of Twain’s writings that may be of interest but not generally known, and to indicate the range of interpretive approaches to his work, particularly Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Under the general editorship of Robert Hirst, The Mark Twain Project has prepared and continues to prepare authoritative texts of Twain’s notebooks, travel narratives, short fiction, novels, letters, and unpublished writings. These texts are published by the University of California Press and the historical introduction, notes, and annotations are an unusually rich resource of accurate and pertinent information about Twain and his writing. Readers with a specialized interest in Twain scholarship will find these volumes especially rewarding. The items listed below were selected as particularly appropriate for a general audience.

  REFERENCE

  Camfield, Gregg, The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain (New York, 2003)

  LeMaster, J. R., and James D. Wilson, eds., The Mark Twain Encyclopedia (New York, 1993)

  Long, E. Hudson, and J. R. LeMaster, The New Mark Twain Handbook (New York, 1985)

  Rasmussen, R. Kent, Mark Twain A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Writings (New York, 1995)

  Tenney, Thomas Asa, Mark Twain: A Reference Guide (Boston, 1977). Annual supplements to this reference guide have been published in American Literary Realism (1977-1983) and the Mark Twain Circular (1984-present)

  EDITIONS

  Baetzhold, Howard G., and Joseph B. McCullough, eds., The Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings on Heaven, Eden, and the Flood (New York, 1996)

  Budd, Louis J., ed., Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays, 2 vols. (New York, 1992)

  Fatout, Paul, ed., Mark Twain Speaking (Iowa City, Iowa, 1976)

  Kiskis, Michael, ed., Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography (Madison, Wis., 1990)

  Zwick, Jim, ed., Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War (Syracuse, N.Y., 1992)

  BIOGRAPHY

  Andrews, Kenneth R., Nook Farm: Mark Twain’s Hartford Circle (Cambridge, Mass., 1950)

  Baetzhold, Howard G., Mark Twain and John Bull: The British Connection (Bloomington, Ind., 1970)

  Fatout, Paul, Mark Twain on the Lecture Circuit (Bloomington, Ind., 1960)

  Dolmetsch, Carl, “Our Famous Guest”: Mark Twain in Vienna (Athens, Ga. 1992)

  Emerson, Everett, Mark Twain, a Literary Life (Philadelphia, 2000)

  Ferguson, Delancey, Mark Twain: Man and Legend (New York, 1943)

  Harris, Susan K., The Courtship of Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain (New York, 1996)

  Hill, Hamlin, Mark Twain: God’s Fool (New York, 1973)

  Kaplan, Fred, The Singular Mark Twain: A Biography (New York, 2003)

  Kaplan, Justin, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, a Biography (New York, 1966)

  Meltzer, Milton, Mark Twain Himself: A Pictorial Biography (Columbia, Mo., 2002)

  Paine, Albert Bigelow, Mark Twain: A Biography, 3 vols. (New York, 1912)

  Powers, Ron, Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain (New York, 1999)

  Skandera-Trombley, Laura, Mark Twain in the Company of Women (Philadelphia, 1994)

  Steinbrink, Jeffrey, Getting to Be Mark Twain (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991)

  Ward, Geoffrey C., and Dayton Duncan, with a preface by Ken Burns, Mark Twain (New York, 2001)

  Wecter, Dixon, Sam Clemens of Hannibal (Boston, 1952)

  CRITICISM

  Bellamy, Gladys, Mark Twain as a Literary Artist (Norman, Okla., 1950)

  Branch, Edgard M., The Literary Apprenticeship of Mark Twain (Urbana, Ill., 1950)

  Bridgman, Richard, Traveling in Mark Twain (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987)

  Budd, Louis J., Mark Twain: Social Philosopher, rev. ed. (Columbia, Mo., 2001)

  ———, Our Mark Twain: The Making of His Public Personality (Philadelphia, 1983)

  Covici, Pascal, Jr., Mark Twain’s Humor: The Image of a World (Dallas, Tex., 1962)

  Cox, James M., Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor (Columbia, Mo., 2002)

  DeVoto, Bernard, Mark Twain’s America (Boston, 1932)

  Gerber, John, Mark Twain (New York, 1988)

  Gibson, William M., The Art of Mark Twain (New York, 1976)

  Gillman, Susan, Dark Twins: Imposture and Identity in Mark Twain’s America (Chicago, 1980)

  Howells, William Dean, My Mark Twain (New York, 1910)

  Krauth, Leland, Proper Mark Twain (Athens, Ga., 1999)

  Lynn, Kenneth S., Mark Twain and Southwestern Humor (Boston, 1970)

  Melton, Jeffrey Alan, Mark Twain, Travel Books, and Tourism: The Tide of a Great Popular Movement (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2002)

  Messent, Peter, Mark Twain (New York, 1997)

  Michelson, Bruce, Mark Twain on the Loose: A Comic Writer and the American Self (Amherst, Mass., 1955)

  Quirk, Tom, Mark Twain: A Study of the Short Fiction (New York, 1997)

  Rogers, Franklin R., Mark Twain’s Burlesque Patterns as Seen in the Novels and Narratives, 1855-1885, (Dallas, Tex., 1955)

  Sloane, David E. E., Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian (Baton Rouge, La., 1979)

  Smith, Henry Nash, Mark Twain: The Development of a Writer (Cambridge, Mass., 1962)

  CRITICISM ON ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

  Arac, Jonathan, Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target: The Functions of Criticism in Our Time (Madison, Wis., 1997)

  Blair, Walter, Mark Twain and Huck Finn (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1960)

  Chadwick-Joshua, Jocelyn, The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn (Jackson, Miss., 1998)

  Doyno, Victor A., Writing “Huck Finn”: Mark Twain’s Creative Process (Philadelphia, 1992)

  Fishkin, Shelley Fisher, Was Huck Black?: Mark Twain and African-American Voices (New York, 1993)

  Inge, M. Thomas, Huck Finn among the Critics: A Centennial Selection (Frederick, Md., 1985)

  Mensh, Elaine, and Harry Mensh, Black, White, and Huckleberry Finn: Re-Imagining the American Dream (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2000)

  Quirk, Tom, Coming to Grips with Huckleberry Finn (Columbia, Mo., 1993)

  Sattelmeyer, Robert, and J. Donald Crowley, eds., One Hundred Years of “Huckleberry Finn” (Columbia, Mo., 1985)

  Twain, Mark, The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, edited by Michael Patrick Hearn (New York, 2001)

  Wieck, Carl, Refiguring Huckleberry Finn (Athens, Ga., 2000)

  Note on Texts

  In some instances, I have supplied titles for excerpted pieces because the chapter title or running head was not especially descriptive of the text at hand. Whenever possible, the texts used are taken from the first American book publication of the text in question.

  The text for “The Celebrated Jumpin
g Frog of Calaveras County” is taken from The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (New York: C. H. Webb Publisher, 1867). “How I Edited an Agricultural Journal Once” was first published in the Galaxy for July, 1870, the source for the text printed here. “An Encounter with an Interviewer” first appeared in the volume Lotus Leaves, edited by John Brougham and John Elderkin (Boston: William F. Gill and Co., 1875), the source for the text printed here. “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It” first appeared in Atlantic Monthly for November, 1874, the source of the text printed here.

  The texts for the following selections were derived from the first American edition published by The American Publishing Company of Hartford, Connecticut: “The Sea of Galilee” and “At the Tomb of Adam” are from The Innocents Abroad (1869). The texts for “The Story of the Old Ram,” “Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral,” and “Letters from Greeley” are from Roughing It (1872). The text for “Colonel Sellers Entertains Washington Hawkins” is from The Gilded Age (1873) which was jointly written with Charles Dudley Warner. The texts for “Jim Baker’s Blue-Jay Yarn” and “The Hair Trunk” are taken from A Tramp Abroad (1880). The text for “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar” is from The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson and the Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins (1894). The texts for “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar” and “Decimating the Savages” are from the first American edition of Following the Equator (1897).

  “A Boy’s Ambition,” “Perplexing Lessons,” and “Continued Perplexities” first appeared in “Old Times on the Mississippi,” serialized in the Atlantic Monthly from January to August, 1875; they were later included as Chapters 4, 8, and 9 of Life on the Mississippi. The texts for these selections, along with “The River and Its History,” “Sunrise on the River,” and “The House Beautiful,” are taken from the first American edition of Life on the Mississippi (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883).