The Autobiography of Mark Twain--highlights

OK, I just finished the Mark Twain autobiography. My poor wife was forced to endure the following: Imagine she is sitting in the front room reading a book on current politics. Then she hears loud chuckling and snorting coming from me. At that point I say, "Can I just read you this part?" Because she is kind and patient, she lets me read a funny part from his work. But I’d like more people to enjoy his work, so I want to share a few highlights from Twain’s autobiography.

He has a great story involving a duel that he nearly fought. He was in Virginia City at a time when miners and associated ruffians were digging for silver. Twain was working at a newspaper under an editor who engaged in a duel and ended up "modifying" an opponent by shooting him in the leg. All the people at the newspaper treated this editor with great respect. One day when the editor was gone, Mark Twain ran out of things to write about and ended up using a column to attack an editor of a rival newspaper. Of course, his co-workers egged him on, hoping that this rival would challenge Mark to a duel. When nothing of the sort happened, the co-workers urge Mark to send his own challenge to the rival. This he did repeatedly, but there was no reply. Of course, Twain should have stopped at this point, but he was young and full of testosterone. He sent one challenge too many; his rival finally accepted. Twain realized his blunder and was angry with the rival for accepting, claiming that this man was simply not reliable. He got up early on the morning of the duel to go practice, but he couldn't hit anything with a pistol that was given to him. He could hear shooting sounds coming from a nearby ravine -- his opponent was getting ready too. A friend who had accompanied Twain saw a bird perching in a nearby tree and shot its head off. The man acting as the second for the rival came into view to see what was going on. Twain's friend claimed it was Mark who had shot the bird's head off. The rival was horrified at his opponent's supposed accuracy, so he called off the duel. What makes this scene memorable, of course, is the language Twain uses to describe his feelings during this event.

He also tells hilarious stories of life in his family. For example, he was forced to drink an awful concoction when his mother feared that typhoid fever might strike him. Twain took a spoonful of the medicine each day and carefully poured it through cracks in the floor when his mother wasn't watching. The family cat came into the room one day, and Twain proceeded to acquaint it with the medicine. Again, Twain is master of the language as he describes the cat spinning out of control, racing around the room, and hurtling through a nearby window. Then there are the stories of him and his brother, constant rivals and combatants. Mark is bored one day as he sits in an office where he is an apprentice. He has just finished a watermelon half and is wondering what to do with the heavy shell. Since he is up on the third floor, he wanders over to the window to look out. Who does he see coming down the street? His brother. So he takes the watermelon, times it perfectly, and drops it so the piece lands on his brother's head. He claims this action drove his brother into the ground up to his jaw, forcing onlookers to use a jack to lever him up and out of the hole he was in. The brother got even with Mark a few days later by whacking him on the side of the head with a cobblestone. Twain claims this raised such a bump that he had to wear two hats for several days.

There are tender moments in the autobiography as well. Twain tells of the love he had for his wife, Livy, and his children. Livy acted as his editor, reading aloud his work and making corrections. As the children grew older, they would form an audience during this process, often arguing with the mother about the virtues of some part that she was editing and begging her to leave it in. Twain says he often intentionally included atrocious sections in his writing. When his wife would try to eliminate these awful writings, the children would beg her to leave them alone, and Mark would take their side, begging tongue-in-cheek for her to keep these selections. He later tells of a terrible burden that he lived with ever since his son died. He took the young child out for a ride in cold weather and failed to notice when the boy’s blankets had slipped off, allowing him to get very cold. A few days later the child died, and Mark carried with him a tremendous guilt, believing that his lack of attention had led directly to his son's death. He also speaks with great tenderness about the death of one of his daughters as well as the death of his wife. For a man known to be cynical about the human race, he had loved his wife and children deeply.

Mark Twain

Sharon surprised me this past Christmas by getting a copy of Mark Twain’s autobiography for me. Twain asked that this work not be published until one hundred years had passed after his death, so it just came out (the first volume). I’m working my way through it (it’s huge) and rediscovering why I like him so much.

It’s mostly his nonfiction that I enjoy. Of course, he’s famous for Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, The Gilded Age, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Prince and the Pauper, and other fictional works, but the way he describes his own adventures knocks me out.

For instance, he wrote Innocents Abroad, the story of a trip he took with other Americans to Europe. It’s fun to see the contrast of the brash Americans as they navigate their way around cosmopolitan cities with their hundreds of museums and art galleries. The Americans are not really hicks in this entourage; they show up well in comparison with the people they run into during their sightseeing excursions. Twain tells of his group’s suspicion when they are shown in one museum the skull of Christopher Columbus as a child and another skull of Columbus as an adult.

He also wrote Life on the Mississippi, where he describes in beautiful prose the allure of the river. We meet all sorts of odd and intriguing people, engaged in piloting and working on those magnificent paddlewheelers as they trekked up and down the Mississippi. Twain narrates his story of becoming a riverboat captain, in which he goes from a naïve kid to a seasoned veteran of the journeys up and down the dangerous and ever-changing river.

Then there’s Roughing It, probably my favorite. Here Twain looks at the American West through eyes of wonder and confusion. Again he starts out as the innocent outsider who has to learn the ways of a very different culture and landscape. He gets lost in a snowstorm, has to deal with a bunch of tarantulas let loose in a dark room at night, buys a horse with qualities he didn’t count on, and encounters all sorts of picturesque people and places.

If you haven’t read Twain in a long time, you can probably get these somewhere on the internet for free. I hope you enjoy him half as much as I do.