Constructing Mark Twain: New Directions in ScholarshipMichael J. Kiskis, Laura E. Skandera-Trombley University of Missouri Press, 2001 - 252 pages The thirteen essays in this collection combine to offer a complex and deeply nuanced picture of Samuel Clemens. With the purpose of straying from the usual notions of Clemens (most notably the Clemens/Twain split that has ruled Twain scholarship for over thirty years), the editors have assembled contributions from a wide range of Twain scholars. As a whole, the collection argues that it is time we approach Clemens not as a shadow behind the literary persona but as a complex and intricate creator of stories, a creator who is deeply embedded in the political events of his time and who used a mix of literary, social, and personal experience to fuel the movements of his pen. The essays illuminate Clemens's connections with people and events not usually given the spotlight and introduce us to Clemens as a man deeply embroiled in the process of making literary gold out of everyday experiences. From Clemens's wonderings on race and identity to his looking to family and domesticity as defining experiences, from musings on the language that Clemens used so effectively to consideration of the images and processes of composition, these essays challenge long-held notions of why Clemens was so successful and so influential a writer. While that search itself is not new, the varied approaches within this collection highlight markedly inventive ways of reading the life and work of Samuel Clemens. |
From inside the book
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... turns away from the weight of biographical and literary material that has come our way during the past century. This is especially true of the post– World War II years in which Twain studies flourished as part of a movement to ensure ...
... Turn- ing Point of My Life , " Twain shatters the myth of a bucolic boyhood that he in part , Sattelmeyer argues , helped create . Twain's rewriting late in life was to try to make sense of his present circumstances , circumstances that ...
... turn and run rather than confront the demands of com- munity membership. He runs from the possibility of family. He turns to irresponsibility with relish and anticipation. That is not a moral lesson. I would like to make a different ...
... turn now to his autobiographical writing to consider an even more profound description of the value of human relation . In December 1909 , Mark Twain penned what he called " the final chapter of my autobiography . " The essay ...
... turn away from this to find more seductive , more broadly political , more socially sophisticated readings , we still must face the reality at the heart of Twain's stories — that pain is at the center of home and grows out of the search ...
Contents
13 | |
28 | |
To his preferred friends he revealed his true character | 50 |
Mark Twains Mechanical Marvels | 72 |
Steamboats Cocaine and Paper Money | 87 |
Mark Twain Isabel Lyon and the Talking Cure | 101 |
The Minstrel and the Detective | 122 |
Huck Jim and the BlackandWhite Fallacy | 139 |
Black Genes and White Lies | 169 |
Mark Twain in Large and Small | 191 |
Who Killed Mark Twain? Long Live Samuel Clemens | 218 |
CONTRIBUTORS | 239 |