Mark Twain

Anyone who has ever read a Chernow biography knows to expect comprehensive treatment of the subject that covers all phases and every aspect of their lives. The ability to pull all of those aspects of life into a single volume is what makes Chernow the premier biographer of the twenty-first century. Most people know Twain for his literary accomplishments, but he was many other things too. He was a political pundit with a wide-ranging influence and held positions that may make some modern Americans a little uncomfortable. Political commentary is often best conveyed with biting sarcasm or humor and Twain was certainly able to leverage his literary talents to this end. Chernow is very good at brining these different aspects to life, and he does it well with Twain, whose life straddled many areas. In this book, Chernow expands his bibliographic profile, embracing a subject who is not primarily a political or financial figure, but an artist who influenced his world less through policies but through cultural influence. Chernow may be accused of too much detail, but readers should keep in the mind is that his aim is author a nuanced biography that includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. He doesn’t engage in hagiography nor assassination. He writes biographies built on facts worked into a narrative replete with sound historical analysis. Facts and data must be interpreted and that is nature of historical writing. Chernow leverage nuance to build a comprehensive narrative. He interacts with the reader, he does not merely dump information on them. Looking at the manufacturing quality, this book has been elegantly put together. It has a fine matte finish on the dust jacket (much better than glossy!), and exquisite and inviting interior design and font, and is generously supplemented with photos. The spine is stitches and not glued, so readers can be assured the book will be durable. Chernow’s writing is clear and crisp, not bogging down. That may be surprising for a book of this length, but style has little to do with length. The writing is either engaging or it isn’t. This book will make a great summer read and I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

Mark Twain is unique in American literary history. Ron Chernow does his best, the research is awesome, the writing is pristine. (Well, actually, the research is over the top.) Cherie alliows his own perspective to creep in from time to time but it is pretty much impossible to tamper down the radiance of Mark Twain.

Mark Twain by Ron Chernow Books written by noted biographer Ron Chernow are typically not for the casual or occasional reader, but more for those who love history and search for considerable detail about historical figures. Chernow accomplished this with his previous tomes about George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and Alexander Hamilton, and he has done so once again with his latest biography of Mark Twain. And this latest effort may be his most complex, since Chernow wrote about two men in one – the person, Samuel S. Clemens, and the writer and orator, Mark Twain. Including notes, the book is 1,200 pages, so it is obvious that Chernow takes a detailed deep dive into the life, successes, and failures of the famous American author of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee, and so much more. This level of detail reads well as Chernow tells of Twain’s early life in Missouri on the Mississippi River and his travels and adventures in the old west – likely because Twain writes of his childhood home and informative years in his novels. The book slows down, though, while sharing about Twain’s later years and his numerous personal and business setbacks. Chernow paints a picture of the outgoing and gregarious Twain who, despite being recognized as America’s greatest humorist, longs to be taken seriously. Samuel Clemens was a man who felt strongly about the things happening around him and was quick to share his opinions in public as a newspaper journalist. So, Twain’s tendency to address controversial societal and political issues after he found fame was nothing new. One of Twain’s flaws, though, was his highly impressionable tendency to immediately jump head first into an issue based upon the passion – right or wrong – of the person who last spoke to him about it. As a result, we see many instances of Twain strongly expressing his opinion only to do an about face later. Despite some actions to the contrary, Twain was mainly consistent in his feelings about the plight of black people in America and spoke out often in support of expanded rights and improved opportunities. He also supported several black people financially, for example, paying educational expenses for them to go to school. Chernow writes of Twain’s good and bad characteristics and actions, including the use of language in his books that, while vile and ignorant, was unfortunately common during his childhood years. While Twain spoke in favor of better education and treatment for blacks, for many years he held firm in his negative opinions related to native Americans. It was only much later in life that he softened that particular prejudice. It is clear that Twain, while witty and funny, was also a powder keg who could explode into controversy at any time. Most often, he was against oppression, big government, and the system that he believed was designed to hold down the common man. At the same time, he led life enjoying the finer things that included employing butlers, drivers, and other house staff caring for his needs. Accomplished as he was as an author, Twain was the opposite as a businessman and often acted on impulse regarding investments that resulted in financial distress. He was continually writing something new or out on a speaking tour because he had significant monthly expenses and considerable debt to repay. I wrote a college essay long ago where I took the position that, among other desires, Twain primarily wrote Huckleberry Finn to make money. After all, writing was his occupation. My professor held an opposite opinion and my grade for that particular essay suffered. It was gratifying, then, to read Chernow’s book and see so much attention given to Twain’s seemingly never-ending quest for financial success. Twain suffered many losses later in life, including the deaths of his wife, Livy, and daughters, Suzy and Jean, as well as people he trusted taking advantage of him. His only grandchild, a girl, was born after his death, which was sad because he longed for the days when he and Livy were raising their family, realizing he could have done a better job as an involved father. Chernow gives considerable attention to the elder Twain’s fascination with youth and his efforts to recruit and spend time with his “angelfish” – young girls ages 10 to 16 years old. Chernow shares various opinions about this obsession, some unsettling to be sure, but despite Twain’s flirtations, emphasizes there were no actual sexual interactions. Even the thought of that is abhorrent, but Twain was a lonely old man used to being in the spotlight and his angelfish looked up to him and made him feel he was still in the spotlight. Twain was born during an appearance of Halley’s Comet and often said he would likely go out when the comet returned 75 years later. That is exactly what happened, and his time on earth was both lively and sad, successful and challenging, humorous and serious, and filled with volumes and volumes of experiences, books, articles, and letters. That Twain is still relevant more than a century after his passing is reason enough to read about his life. Despite its length and some repetition, Mark Twain by Ron Chernow is worth your consideration. Visit davidajolley.com for more content. ###

While I was weathering health crises and experiencing the initial stage of dialysis, I had the great good fortune to have with me MARK TWAIN, Ron Chernov’s massive, eminently readable biography of the American legend. It helped get me through. Twain was a person of conflicts and contradictions. No one has ever bern more critical of the American Dream, and yet yet while railing against greed and materialism, he pursued every get-rich-quick scheme that came his way, almost always to no avail and ultimately leading to financial disaster. He married above himself, to a younger woman with a dowery that included an 18-room mansion in Hartford, Connecticut, and he never stopped aspiring to be one of the big shots. Chernov has meticulously researched all of this., He traces Twain’s many unsuccessful inventions and ventures, as well as international reading and speaking tours that made Twain one of the most popular figures in the country. He thrived on being recognized and praised, receiving invitations to important placers from important people, and traveling and making purchases on a grand scale. To be sure, he was also generous philanthropically, at one time supporting a young artist and his wife and enabling them to live and study in Paris for several years, All his life, Twain was inclined to stretch an embellishment as far as it would go, Complaining of excessive heat, he wrote: “I was told by the Bishop of Keokuk that he was not allowing crying at funerals, because it scalded he furniture.” At the time of the publication of Twain’s A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR”S COURT, which presented some of his most radical views, he wrote: “Irreverence is the champion of liberty, and its only sure defense.” Twain, who never went to college received an honorary degree from Yale. Having been increasingly referred to as American literature’s funny man, he sought to correct this simplification by telling the president of Yale that the humorist’s mission was”the deriding of shams, the exposure of pretentious falsities, the laughing of stupid superstition out of existence; & that whoso is engaged in this sort of warfare is the natural enemy of royalties, nobilities, privileges & all kinds of swindlers & the natural friend of human rights and human liberties.” The book abounds with Twain’s trademark witticisms and turns of phrase, as when he refers to gout, which plagues him, as “toothache in the toes.” As the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that the startling constant in Twain’s troubled adult life is his marriage. His wife’s unwavering commitment to civility and propriety countered Twain’s roughness and indiscretions. She edited his manuscripts and correspondence, corrected his table manners, and held him back when he was acting in anger. Twain almost always complied when Livy thought something in his writing was questionable and should be deleted. Chernov’s account of Twain’s late life is grim, with physical and mental problems in all members of his family, as well as unreliable household help. After Livy’s death, Twain went into precipitate decline. Mary Louise Houden, his stenographer late in life, described him as “a tragic figure lost in his fame.” Particularly disturbing is an attraction Twain developed for young girls, often as young as ten. For this reader, a major question Chernov’s biography suggests s how Twain’s writing might haves differed without Livy’s influence and, in effect, censorship. Might his lighter writing have been more ribald and his serious writing more trenchant? It seems ms to me that no one can write a biography without to some extent resorting to conjecture. Given the limited availability of confirmable facts, you’d be hard put to come up with 100 pages without some guesswork and imagining. The process requires care and judgment. If a biographer oversteps the mark and appears to know, for instance, what Hart Crane was thinking when he jumped to his death, a reader is entitled to say, “Now wait a minute!” Chernov manages his challenging way through 1033 pages without significantly losing credibility.

I had long anticipated the release of Ron Chernow’s new biography of Mark Twain. He is an outstanding biographer without rival, in my opinion. Mark Twain, the biography, tackled the life of one of the United States’ early iconic writers. He started his career as a satirist, but wrote a prodigious amount throughout his entire adult life, extending into genres far beyond his earlier works. He wrote books about travel, his boyhood home (Hannibal, Missouri), philosophy, a mystery, and even science fiction. He was much more than just an author who added Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer to the pantheon of literary immortals. His career and reputation was unrivaled in the US and around the world. He was the first American literary superstar celebrity, not just in the US but abroad. He spent 11 years of his life living internationally where he met some of the most important people of his time — authors, musicians, politicians, and kings. In the US, it seemed he knew nearly every president, and even future ones, like Woodrow Wilson who was friend who became president after Twain’s passing. Yet, Twain was a very complex man of baffling dualities. The public side of Twain, the beloved satirist who wrote about yesteryear. He made tremendous amounts of money, but he and his wife were profligate spenders, who ended up in bankruptcy. He was an author, yet he was a dreamer who fancied himself a master businessman, which he wasn’t. As such, he was an easy target for numerous get-rich-quick schemes that cost him enormous amounts of money and all went no where, but he never seemed to learn his lesson despite his losses. He faced a life of a lot of personal loss worth the death of his beloved wife and three of his children. His personal tribulations, gave him a very dark outlook on life, yet publicly he was known for his outstanding wit and was famous for his speaking tours making him a kind of comedian superstar of his day. But he was also a surprisingly progressive thinker of his day. His view of African Americans was one that evolved throughout his lifetime. He fought briefly for the south for only two weeks during the Civil War, but yet he held some lifelong racial prejudices as well, and ended up being a close friend to Ulysses Grant, US president and the military conqueror of the South. He encouraged one daughter to have her own musical career, and another one to write, but he also stifled the lives of his adult children, whose lives seemed to be in service of their parents, unhealthily so. I knew a bit about Twain, but this biography presents a very thorough view into his life — warts and all. Twain was a befuddling person, which Chernow captures well. Twain was very eccentric person and held some strange predilections, so I can’t say I found him especially likable, which is a reason this book was a little slower reading than I thought it would be. Technically, as well, this wasn’t my favorite book of Chernow’s. I felt it was a bit repetitive at times, and sometimes got too carried away with minutiae that didn’t further the biography but did extend the length of the book unnecessarily. Still, you will learn an enormous amount about Twain and his life’s work and views in this book. As a whole this was a satisfying biography which I rate a 5-.

This is not a book for the elderly who are likely to meet their demise well before the final 1,200 words Chernow has penned. Twain is well written and well researched, perhaps too well researched for Chernow seems to have included and carefully explored and scrutinized virtually every experience of Twain's life. It is a book that requires no small degree of a reader's dedication to recount Twain's journey through life. Unlike my favorite of Chernow's biographies, "Titan," this book lacks the excitement of Twain's times. So, while I found the book interesting, I did not find it exciting nor did I come away from it with a changed and enlightened view of the man as well of his times as I did after "Titan." Perhaps, for many reasons, it is an unfair comparison but it is what it is.

This biography of over 1000 pages plus meticulous Notes and Bibliography, is another great achievement by Ron Chernow, who has produced a series of magnificent biographies. But monumental is the only way to describe not only this biography but also the man whose life it presents to its readers in great, but not overwhelming, detail. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was the product of a respectable though not wealthy family which early in his life settled in the riverboat town of Hannibal, Missouri. Clemens grew up to be an intelligent, adventurous, imaginative, and often bull headed individual who quickly made a name for himself as a writer and humorist. After following several careers he made an advantageous marriage into a wealthy family. His bride Livy was an intelligent, soft spoken, and calming influence on the often mercurial Clemens (who had adopted the pen name Mark Twain). Theirs was a devoted partnership filled with love and calling for eternal patience on Livy's part. They produced four children, three of whom lived into adulthood, and spent much time traveling, building houses, and above all finding ways to spend money. Twain was one of the superstars of nineteenth century literary America. He produced a series of classic novels and short stories, along with travel guides and polemics fulminating against a series of perceived injustices. He went from being wealthy to bankruptcy thanks to his foolhardy investments and enthusiasms, but eventually managed to rebuild much of his fortune. By the time of his death in 1910 he had become a national institution. This book is long and detailed, but thanks to Chernow's gift for fine writing and clear analysis it never once grows boring. I was actually sorry to reach the final pages because Twain had become such a fine friend and companion to me!

It took me over two months to read this well researched biography of Mark Twain. He lived an amazing life between his many books, his on stage performances and his worldly travels. His home life was not easy as he suffered many personal tragedies and business setbacks. 1200 pages is too much for any book and some tighter editing would have helped. But if you are patient and think about this book as about 70 individual stories, I think you will be rewarded.