January 11, 2015
Well...I actually finished this one two books ago. See, I intended to count volumes 1 and 2 as one book together. They're both extremely large; sick of waiting for my ebook reservation, I picked up volume 2 at the library yesterday, and it's massive. I'm only a few pages into it at this point, and I just found out that there will be a third volume, to be published next year I expect. These three volumes together will be the complete, unabridged (one of my favorite words) dictations of his memoirs. Considering all that, and the fact that Goodreads counts each volume as separate books, I'm going to do the same.
Volume 1, which I completed a little less than a week ago, has a little extra. It includes other writings (some, maybe all, previously unpublished) of Clemens's on various topics that he mentions in his autobiography: former president Grant's later years and their friendship, his writings on the shipwreck survivors he interviewed in Hawaii, some family anecdotes. I felt like they enriched the work.
As expected, the tone of this work is humorous and critical at turns. Clemens is especially funny when he talks about himself. I laughed out loud as I read his sarcastic lamentation about the harsh criticism about his looks. He jokes of having an inflated ego, and that with the fact that he'd kind of be justified in having one only highlights his humility.
Clemens explains early on that he doesn't intend to follow a tradition structure in composing his life story. Instead, he just sort of mused on whatever came to his mind, frequently connecting current events to past ones as he discusses people he knew and places he'd been, past and present. He states his intention of discussing what interests him, and I for one think it works. His train of thought isn't hard to follow, and each day of his dictation begins with a helpful list of topics that will be covered.
One framing device used for much of this volume is the inclusion of snippets of Susy Clemens's biography of her father. Clemens and his wife Olivia had four children, a boy who died as a baby and three daughters who lived to adulthood. Susy died when she was in her mid-20s, and Clemens's reminiscence of her is heartbreaking. A little portion of Susy's work would be inserted, and Clemens would go on to elaborate on what she was describing. I enjoyed this book most when Clemens wrote about his children and his wife (who died a year or two before he started his memoirs).
Clemens talks some about his siblings and parents, too, but I can tell that volume 2 will talk more about them, at least Clemens's brother Orion who was a politician. I'm hoping it will also talk more about his riverboat days, as there's only a little of that in this volume. He does talk about the death of another brother, which happened during this time. There's also stories of Clemens's childhood, which I didn't realize was very much the basis for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He himself was Tom; his younger brother was the basis for, though bolder than, Sid; his widowed mother was Aunt Polly; there was a kid who would be Huck Finn, and a real "Injun Joe," who didn't really die in the caves as in the book, and a real-life basis for Jim. Clemens really did mess with the cat, and he really did get lost in the caves with a girlfriend. I don't think my childhood would make a great American classic; his made two.
Clemens seems like he would have been a fun person to be around. As some people do, he calmed down as he got older, but he reflects on how his wife often had to keep his social behavior in check; they even had a system of codes in place for when he committed any faux pas. It's been speculated that Clemens was bipolar, and I could see why that conclusion would be drawn. At one point, he himself questions his extremes in mood, his tendency to feel deeply melancholy or joyous. And there are hints of manic behavior, like when he describes a practical joke he played on a collegiate society in Europe, or something like that. But I wouldn't necessarily label him as "bipolar." Clemens was a wise man; I hold him in higher and higher regard the more I read of his life story. Being wise, he probably was rather in touch with his feelings as well. Why did he feel so deeply? Because he wasn't afraid to. Because he was a thinker.
Many criticisms that Clemens has of American society over 100 years ago could be made today. Extreme bipartisanship isn't a 21st century construct, and Clemens establishes himself as an independent voter in a time when this was uncommon, even socially unacceptable. He also observes the legions of fans who follow the daily events of people who are famous simply for being famous...such newspaper articles were the precursors of today's tabloids and reality shows. Clemens himself was a big celebrity in his time, but obviously for good reason.
Clemens writes in both volumes of his distaste for President (at the time) Theodore Roosevelt. He decries the president's reactions to two events: the slaughter of a tribe in the Phillipines, and the brutal ejection of a middle-aged female citizen from the White House. He felt that Roosevelt himself was a brute, and this coming from a man who was acquainted with at least two former presidents. I have no doubt that Clemens would have much to say about today's political climate, particularly that circus called Congress.
So far, Mark Twain's autobiography is no less than I expected it to be. I hope to finish volume 2 soon (I'll be able to read more when the ebook does come through), and I will eagerly await the release of volume 3, which will probably be just as enormous as the others. Certainly Clemens had a lot to say. People were willing to pay a lot of money in his time to hear him, and based on the success of this newest edition of his autobiography, people still want to absorb his wisdom. I envy those editors of the Mark Twain Project; that's pretty much a dream job right there. The only person more fortunate here was Josephine Hobby, who got to record Clemens's dictations firsthand.
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