Photo of Walt Whitman, year 1854

Wander

Nonfiction

Mark Twain

by Larzer Ziff
Published by Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0-19-517019-9
Hardcover, 126 pages

Reviewed by Michael Pastore

In 1908, the 72-year-old Twain met the attractive English author Elinor Glyn. Twain wrote: "... she was a picture! Slender, young, faultlessly formed and incontestably beautiful -- a blonde with blue eyes, the incomparable English complexion and crowned with a glory of red hair of a very peculiar, most rare and quite ravishing tint." The two authors discussed Glyn's notorious 1906 romance novel, Three Weeks. Twain told Glynn that he "quite agreed" with her theme: that in the realm of sexual relations, the laws of Nature should take precedence over the God-given laws of Man.

And yet Twain refused to publish, or allow to be published, his true opinion of the book. Publishing his true ideas, he said, would be "unthinkable"; and he explained to Ms. Glyn:

"I was in the common habit, in private conversation with friends, of revealing every private opinion I possessed relating to religion, politics and men, but that I should never dream of printing one of them, because they are individually and collectively at war with almost everybody's public opinion ... "

There were two Mark Twains: one too fearful to become the artist who reveals his inner depths; another so humane that he could make books speak to millions, not merely a handful of the educated elite. Those extraordinary Twains can best be understood by reading Twain's best works, by listening to his harshest critics, and by studying his keenest admirers. Far and away Twain's best book is his 1884-published novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The most daring of Twain's critics is Van Wyck Brooks, whose 1933 study The Ordeal of Mark Twain lays into the author's psyche in the same relentless manner as Twain himself, when he carved up Fenimore Cooper's purpled prose. To balance the unflattering pages of Mr. Brooks, we can now, fortunately, turn to the brilliant new biography by Larzer Ziff, whose study of Mark Twain is at once entertaining, intriguing, and profound.

The genius of Ziff's book is his grasp of the cultural factors that shaped Twain's life, thoughts, and works. Today we talk about "the Information Age" and "the Information Revolution." One-hundred forty years ago the Industrial Revolution transformed America with far more significant effects. The pastoral and agrarian lifestyle vanished beneath the speed and power of the urban and industrial world. Consciousness itself changed: the mad rush for gold in the American west (which Twain joined briefly) epitomized the new quest for wealth, comfort, and prosperity. Although Emerson himself lived until 1882, the Age of Emerson died almost two decades before him. Ziff writes: "That age [of Emerson] ended with the Civil War, and the seismic shift in American life that followed in the second half of the century brought on the Age of Mark Twain."

It was a seismic shift; and for the shiftless young Twain, a time of opportunity. The book focuses on four facets of Twain's career: the Celebrity, the Tourist, the Novelist, the Humorist. Be assured that Twain the entrepreneur is generously covered, and the Twain who wished for greater appreciation from his critics is not ignored. Ziff explains one source of Twain's self-doubt: his books were never published by big-name trade publishers, and from 1884 onwards Twain self-published in the guise of his own publishing house called Charles L Webster & Company. For the most part, his books were sold by subscription, door-to-door, by salespersons who were expertly trained to "keep talking, so there was no chance for an objection to be raised ... and, above all, to work themselves up to love the book and love to talk about it."

Ziff is not shy about his likes and dislikes in the Twain canon. He is not enthusiastic about the 1880 travelogue A Tramp Abroad, or the saccharine Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, serially published in 1895. He is lukewarm on The Prince and the Pauper (1882) and The Gilded Age (1873): the latter book fails, but the character of Colonel Sellers is a hilarious success. Ziff's discussions of the works he values are revelatory. These include The Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), the vastly underestimated Following the Equator (1897), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).

An article in today's (18 June 2005) New York Times features Hal Holbrook, who has been performing a one-man-show about Mark Twain for more than 40 years. That fact that Holbrook's performance has been so long-lasting -- and the opinion that it is memorable -- is a tribute both to the actor and to the source. Mark Twain is one of the world's great comic authors. Larzer Ziff's sparkling biography brings us fresh insights, a deeper understanding, and a renewed passion for Twain's best-known and lesser-known works.

—Michael Pastore

About the Author

Michael Pastore is the Editorial Director of BookLovers Review and Zorba Press. Currently he is writing his fourth novel, and working to establish the Youthtopia Institute and Youthtopia website, devoted to children, creativity and the arts, humanized technology, and a sustainable world.