On 2010-02-07 Bill Slocum, Norwalk, CT USA wrote: If you find yourself with a copy of ´Who Is Mark Twain?´, do yourself a favor and skip immediately to ´The Undertaker´s Tale´ in the middle of the book. If you start from the beginning, chances are good you will lose interest long before you reach this hilarious Dickens send-up.
It´s a tough slog even if you are a Twain fan. I´m not particularly, but I like some of his work a lot and admire his style. It bears stating up front that ´Who Is Mark Twain?´ is a book he had no input in, published in 2009 by the Mark Twain Foundation and drawing from pieces he left unpublished and often unfinished. If it works for Tupac, the foundation must have thought...
We get a loyalty test early with a 1895 draft for a speech he never gave, a rambling address in which Twain whines about his tax problems, talks up famous people he knows, and finishes by asking the audience to rise in respect for the long-dead General Ulysses Grant. Twain even raises the question that makes for the book´s title, though he doesn´t answer it except to quote a friend saying: ´God knows - I don´t.´ Gee, thanks for the insight, Sam!
There´s a fair bit of Twain in Germany, buying a music box and struggling with domestic servants for stretched attempts at comedy. He holds a conversation with the Devil that devolves into talk of German stoves and cigars, ridicules a friend´s professed religious sensibilities in light of his enthusiasm for fishing, and tells a sad story about a loyal dog that left me unmoved (and I have a weakness for sad stories about dogs Stephen Crane pinged me on once.) Twain confesses to feeling like a bartender at the gates of Paradise when reading Jane Austen, though that promising start fizzles into a bitty breakdown of which characters of hers he dislikes most.
You feel time and again Twain casting about on paper for a theme, an idea, a hook, and it´s painful because the end result is something he never saw fit to publish.
So when you get to ´The Undertaker´s Tale´, what would seem an enjoyable lark delivers instead like a Slurpie in the Sahara. The Oliver Twist-like protagonist finds himself taken in by a loving family of undertakers. Only there´s a problem: Death has taken a holiday, and they have a big loan to pay. ´Coffins rotting away without sale, a graveyard that´s becoming a grazing ground, a gang of convalescents that the lightning couldn´t make marketable!´ The joke is carried wonderfully all the way to its satisfying O. Henry-ish end.
Two other pieces here approach ´Tale´ for enjoyability. ´Happy Memories Of The Dental Chair´ scrapes a rich vein for humor later jabbed by everyone from Bob Hope to ´Marathon Man´, though it stops abruptly. ´The Grand Prix´ is Twain in a rare, genuinely appreciative mood, describing a day spent at an outdoor event in Paris that comes off rather well.
An introduction by Twain scholar Robert Hirst makes a strained case for the pieces´ importance, noting they represent a kind of tour of Twain´s workshop. That´s a valid point, if one that also speaks to the limited nature of this book´s literary value and appeal.. And summed up by saying Rifling Twain´s Waste Basket. Currently Who Is Mark Twain? has an overall rating of 6 over 10.
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HarperStudio claimed You had better shove this in the stove,´ Mark Twain said at the top of an 1865 letter to his brother, ´for I don´t want any absurd ´literary remains´ and ´unpublished letters of Mark Twain´ published after I am planted.´ He was joking, of course. But when Mark Twain died in 1910, he left behind the largest collection of personal papers created by any nineteenth-century American author. Here, for the first time in book form, are twenty-four remarkable pieces by the American master—pieces that have been handpicked by Robert Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley. In ´Jane Austen,´ Twain wonders if Austen´s goal is to ´make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters.´ ´The Privilege of the Grave´ offers a powerful statement about the freedom of speech while ´Happy Memories of the Dental Chair´ will make you appreciate modern dentistry. In ´Frank Fuller and My First New York Lecture´ Twain plasters the city with ads to promote his talk at the Cooper Union (he is terrified no one will attend). Later that day, Twain encounters two men gazing at one of his ads. One man says to the other: ´Who is Mark Twain?´ The other responds: ´God knows—I don´t.´ Wickedly funny and disarmingly relevant, Who Is Mark Twain? shines a new light on one of America´s most beloved literary icons—a man who was well ahead of his time.
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