Mark Twain

Sometimes I wonder what it is with me and long pieces of media. I claim to prefer shorter, denser and more focused pieces, but somehow I seem to end up playing 100+-hour RPGs and reading 1000+-page books.

 

The latest whale I've landed is Mark Twain, the recent-ish biography from Ron Chernow. I've been a fan of Chernow's since I read his majestic Alexander Hamilton biography way back in 2004 - I still have a signed copy from when I saw him at a Rainy Day Books event in Kansas City. Since then I've read most of his older and all of his newer books. What's kind of funny is that Hamilton is the only subject I was highly interested in prior to reading the book. For everyone else, I've thought of the subject as somewhat boring and only picked up the book because it was written by Chernow. In every case I've come away fascinated by the subject and with a much deeper appreciation for their role in history.

Mark Twain has mostly continued that trend. Looking back, I read a fair amount of Twain in elementary school: I'm pretty sure I read Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and probably a few short stories. I don't think I've read anything from him from high school on, though. This was somewhat crystallized in college, where my American Literature professor (who I eventually chose as my advisor) admitted that he disliked Twain's writing, I think because of his frequent use of dialect in prose. The professor skipped over Twain entirely, and instead we read the much more obscure (but very good) novel "The Damnation of Theron Ware".

So, overall I've been aware of Twain's stature as a giant in American literature and one of our most recognizable and influential writers, but I think I've absorbed that criticism of him not being a very good or enjoyable writer, so I've never felt particularly interested in returning to those books or exploring other things he's written. He mostly existed in my mind as a caricature popping up in Gilded Age settings, chomping on a cigar and dispensing witty aphorisms.

Which, in some ways, is pretty close to the truth! This book was filled with quippy quotes from Twain, things he wrote or said to others. Early on in the book those quips tended to leave me cold: I could tell that they were meant to be humorous but they didn't hit me as amusing. That changed, though, and the book as a whole ended up feeling really funny entirely due to all the Twain-isms woven into it, nestling between the frequent darkness of his life. I'm not sure if I appreciated those quotes more because I got more familiar with and in tune with his voice, or if it's just because he actually got funnier as he got older.

Over the years I've gotten the vague impression that Twain had a dark and pessimistic outlook, and that's definitely true. Some of that seems to be due to his nature, and some due to his upbringing, but a lot of it is probably due to the trajectory of his life, which is kind of a rags-to-riches-to-rags story. His parents were originally fairly well-to-do and owned slaves, but they were downwardly mobile throughout his life, frequently moving in search of better work and opportunities, eventually selling off all their slaves.

Samuel Clemens eventually strikes out west, gets some local fame as a humorous newspaper writer, parlays that into some national fame, gets funding to take tours to exotic locales and write about it. He falls in love with Livy, an heiress to a large coal-mining fortune, and they marry and have several children. From a relatively early point in his life, then, he has a pretty perfect situation: a career as a widely beloved and influential author, living in a luxurious mansion attended by servants, raising three charming daughters.

And he isn't content: Twain isn't happy to just be rich, he has to be the richest. So he keeps investing in hare-brained schemes, falling for swindles, doubling down on sunk costs. Worst of all, he throws his wife's money into the pit as well, not merely frittering away his own earnings but hocking her inheritance. The decline is a gradual process, with Twain always convinced that he's on the brink of a massive business success that will catapult him into the highest ranks of wealth. They can continue to float their extravagant lifestyle for several years, but eventually he has to admit that his bets won't pay off and declares bankruptcy. This is a hugely humbling experience for them - especially his poor wife, who grew up in luxury and would have easily stayed there if not for Twain's spending of her fortune.

While you can see why Twain was so well liked, with his sparkling wit and adventurous spirit and deep insight, he also comes off extremely poorly in many ways. The most striking for me was his inability to admit fault: any time something bad happened, he always found someone to blame and heaped all of his scorn on them. When he made a bad investment, he couldn't admit that he was bad at business: he must have been deceived by someone else, or failed by a partner, or customers were too stupid to recognize the superiority of his offering. As Chernow observes, this adds a flavor of Greek tragedy to his life: he was always the cause of his own downfall, due to his inability to learn from his mistakes and admit that he wasn't as good a businessman as he thought he was.

Family tragedies continued to pile up as the years went on. I won't unpack all of it in this post, but the situation with his two surviving daughters felt particularly poignant. Clara was ambitious, and chafed at living under Twain's shadow: she wanted her own independent identity as a musical artist, to make her own mark. (Though, she did depend almost entirely on Twain for financial support, and frequently used her status as his daughter to drum up publicity for her performances, only to then scold reporters for asking her about Twain.) While she wanted independence, Twain would show up and embarrass her, driving her further away. On the other hand, Jean, his youngest, suffered from epileptic seizures. He sent her off to a series of asylums and camps and group living homes. She badly wanted to be with Twain and spend more time with him, but he was uncomfortable witnessing her illness and deliberately avoided her as much as he could. Very late in life they finally reconciled and he regretted their time apart - but, again, he never blamed himself for this, instead villainizing others who he had appointed as her caregivers.

So, given all that, it's very unsurprising that his views darkened even more as he grew older. Much like how Hamilton seemed to come unhinged and increasingly erratic after Washington died, Twain spiraled into greater controversy after Livy died: both of them had lost trusted, reserved, thoughtful people who could temper their worst impulses. Where he had always poked fun at authority and questioned conformity, he came to believe that life itself was inherently terrible and meaningless and filled with suffering. And yet, he said so in very funny ways! People are interesting.

I found Twain's views very interesting. They did evolve over time: most strikingly, as a boy in rural Missouri he absorbed his family and social class's values, in particular generally being pro-Union but also anti-abolition, and he even briefly served in a Confederate-aligned battalion. From early life experience, though, he gained a profoundly deep empathy towards black people, came to abhor slavery in all of its forms, and would eventually emerge as a full-throated supporter of Reconstruction. In general his attitudes for the time seemed to be progressive and iconoclastic: he fervently supported universal suffrage for women, when that was considered a "crazy" idea, and he was deeply skeptical of not just organized religion but religious faith broadly. And yet, in some ways he was extremely parochial and conservative, reflecting the Victorian values of his time. He was very squeamish about sex, both personally and in his writing. He and Livy were aghast when, say, Clara (as a woman in her twenties) would visit men without a chaperone, or wear a striking hat in the incorrect function. He chided Jean whenever her letters seemed insufficiently happy. Overall it's really hard to categorize Twain. Politically he identified strongly with the "Mugwump" movement, which grew out of the Republican party but would support reform-minded Democrats over corrupt machine Republicans. Sometimes it seems like he was being ornery for its own sake, but it also seems like he did have consistent values, even if it's difficult to map those values onto our current landscape.

Some minor criticisms: Chernow constantly places "[sic]" after misspellings in quotes, which are very frequent, and I found this annoying and thought it broke up the flow. I don't recall that being an issue with his earlier books, but I can't remember if he didn't do that or if those subjects were just better spellers. I would have been fine with all misspellings being preserved as-is without comment, or obvious ones being silently corrected, but it doesn't add much to my experience for each individual misspelled word to be pointed out separately.

The book as a whole seemed to be less well edited than his earlier ones. There are quite a few places where he'll make an observation, and then make that exact same observation a page or two later. That would be helpful if he was recalling things discussed many chapters ago, but it just felt like a waste of time as done here.

I've now read six of these large (often thousand-plus pages in hardcover) biographies, and it's interesting to see Chernow's repeated interests throughout his subjects. They often broadly examine racial justice through their eyes, the treatment of African-Americans in particular, and usually some sidebar on the subjects' attitudes towards Jewish people. Twain comes off really well here, significantly evolving from his received racist attitudes and becoming a full-throated defender of racial equality. Twain's aims in this area seem great, though the execution doesn't always land well by modern standards. "Huckleberry Finn" does a great job at portraying the slave Jim as a real human being, and accurately portrays the speech patterns of the black and white characters in the book, but that same language makes it almost impossible to teach in schools before college level today. Twain also strongly opposed anti-semitism, both and home and abroad, throughout his life, culminating in him warmly welcoming a Jewish man to marry his daughter. But while singing the praises of Jewish people he could end up perpetuating stereotypes, like claiming that they were all above average intelligence and never fought in battles.

I enjoyed seeing "crossovers" with Chernow's other biographies. The biggest one is definitely Grant, where we see a strong and evolving relationship. By the end of the Civil War, Twain was a strong supporter of the Republican party, but he loathed the corruption swirling around Grant's administration. But he consistently admired Grant's military leadership, and after meeting him in person several times Twain came to deeply revere Grant's personal character. Twain praised Grant in many public settings, and eventually convinced him to publish his autobiography with Twain's new publishing company.

I don't recall any direct references to Washington or Hamilton, but I was intrigued to see Twain spending time in Bermuda at the Hamilton Hotel in the company of a Schuyler - I am very curious if there is any relation.  Rockefeller isn't directly mentioned, but his fellow Standard Oil executive Henry Rogers becomes a major and extremely beneficial figure later in Twain's life. J. P. Morgan himself is only very briefly mentioned, but the Morgan family is noted for their presence at some of the high-society New York City functions Twain enjoyed performing at.

Twain's path as a man who worked in humor while delving into politics, social issues and occasional psychological turmoil feels striking, and at the same time familiar. I realized while reading this biography that you can see the sort of court-jester / truth-speaker / insightful-comedian as a recurring archetype in American letters. It might have started in an embryonic form with Ben Franklin, with his witty sayings and trenchant calls for revolution. Twain defined and dominated the form during the Victorian Era. In the twentieth century, the names that immediately come to my mind are James Thurber and Dave Barry, though now that I'm writing this The Onion and Jon Stewart certainly qualify as well.

Overall I enjoyed reading Mark Twain, though I think it's on the bottom half of my personal ranking of Chernow books. I was going to rank them all here, but I realize now that there's still one major biography I'm missing: The Warburgs, which seems like a good companion to The House of Morgan, as well as a collection of essays called The Death of the Banker. That gives me some good mid-term reading, and I'll return eventually with that final list!