BOOK REVIEW

_Mark Twain's Helpful Hints for Good Living: A Handbook for the Damned
Human Race_. Edited by Lin Salamo, Victor Fischer, and Michael B. Frank.
University of California Press, 2004. Pp. 256, 6 x 8", 36 black and white
photographs. ISBN 0-520-24245-9. $19.95.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by
Barbara Schmidt

Copyright © 2004 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.

_Mark Twain's Helpful Hints for Good Living: A Handbook for the Damned
Human Race_ is the second book from University of California Press in the
Jumping Frog series--a new series of titles showcasing Twain's
"Undiscovered, Rediscovered, and Celebrated Writings."  The first book in
the series was Twain's previously unpublished play _Is He Dead?_ with
extensive introduction and annotations by Shelley Fisher Fishkin. Fishkin's
research set high expectations for future titles in the Jumping Frog lineup.

Scholars who expected _Mark Twain's Helpful Hints for Good Living_ to be a
publication of his unfinished 1881 manuscript burlesquing etiquette books
or, perhaps, his last 1910 manuscript often referred to as "Advice to
Paine," will be disappointed. _Mark Twain's Helpful Hints for Good Living_
is best described as a "gift book" designed for the general reader who has
never sampled a wide variety of Twain's writing. The publicist for the
Press explains, "The publisher is promoting it as a gift book through the
trade to the general public, not as a scholarly work. I am pitching it to
media people who cover general interest subjects, especially travel,
cooking, parenting, and humor." One advance publicity blurb best described
it as "wit and humor loosely tied together under the guise of an advice
book."  The book is neither all advice, nor hints. Much of it could be
better classified as thoughts and observations as only Twain's eye and pen
could report them.

For this collection, the editors of the Mark Twain Project have harvested
fifty-one short pieces, most from Twain's longer works, speeches and
letters. Thirty-eight selections have been retitled by the editors. Only
thirteen works retain titles written by Twain or titles that were provided
by his original publishers. A handful of maxims and quotations are
scattered throughout. The book is divided into eight sections: Everyday
Etiquette; Modest Proposals and Judicious Complaints; The American Table;
Travel Manners; Health and Diet; Parenting and the Ethical Child; Clothes;
Fashion and Style; and In Case of Emergency. End notes provide information
regarding the original sources of each selection. The majority of this
content can be found in previously published editions of Twain's
autobiography, editions of Twain's speeches, editions of Twain's letters
from University of California Press, previously published sketches, Albert
Bigelow Paine's _Mark Twain: A Biography_, _Innocents Abroad_, _A Tramp
Abroad_, _Roughing It_, _The Gilded Age_, _Following the Equator_, and
_Europe and Elsewhere_.

Even though the book is edited with the general reader in mind, there are
several items that will be new to many scholars who do not have access to
the microfilm editions of Twain's letters and manuscripts. These include an
1883 letter to J. W. Bouton regarding an unwanted magazine subscription.
The letter is one of several illustrating that Twain had the ability to
compose a letter of complaint that remains unrivaled. One essay titled "On
Telephones and Swearing" from his 1906 autobiographical dictation is a
different version than was printed in the _New York Times_ on December 23,
1906 which was titled "Twain and the Telephone."  An 1883 letter to the
Magnetic Rock Spring Company, herein titled "The Miracle Cure," and
published in 1883 in the _Colfax (Iowa) Clipper_ illustrates Twain's
ongoing fascination with home remedies and is served with a dose of typical
Twain humor. There is a generous sampling from Twain's manuscript of "A
Record of the Small Foolishnesses of Susy & 'Bay' Clemens (Infants)".
However, the most poignant piece in the collection is from a manuscript
that continues to slowly trickle piecemeal out of the Twain archives in
scattered short quotes and segments--"A Family Sketch."  In this fragment
written in 1906, titled by the editors "On Training Children," Twain
discusses why for the past fifty-five years he has never intentionally
injured a dumb creature:

"When I was a boy my mother pleaded for the fishes and the birds and tried
to persuade me to spare them, but I went on taking their lives unmoved,
until at last I shot a bird that sat in a high tree, with its head tilted
back, and pouring out a grateful song from an innocent heart. It toppled
from its perch and came floating down limp and forlorn and fell at my feet,
its song quenched and its unoffending life extinguished. I had not needed
that harmless creature, I had destroyed it wantonly, and I felt all that an
assassin feels, of grief and remorse when his deed comes home to him and he
wishes he could undo it and have his hands and his soul clean again from
accusing blood. One department of my education, theretofore long and
diligently and fruitlessly labored upon, was closed by that single
application of an outside and unsalaried influence, and could take down its
sign and put away its books and its admonitions permanently" (p. 123-4).

A photo Isabel Lyon snapped of Clemens in Bermuda in his bathing suit and
carrying his white shoes serves as the jacket cover and will be new to many
Twain scholars. A rare photo from the Kevin Mac Donnell collection
featuring actor John Raymond with a bowl of turnips accompanies the turnip
dinner story from _The Gilded Age_, (retitled "A Remarkable Dinner"). There
are family photos throughout and several photos of Twain's actual
manuscript pages. Other photos and illustrations have been previously
published and will be familiar to most scholars.

If criticism is to be directed at this volume, it has to be directed at the
graphic designer. A number of photos that serve as section frontispieces
seem to have been cropped too closely. The main frontispiece of the book is
an intentionally "reversed" or "flopped" photo that shows Clemens aiming a
pistol with his left hand--pointing it toward the book's title for the
purpose of graphic emphasis. (This photo, snapped by Isabel Lyon shortly
after a burglary at Stormfield, was previously published in Hamlin Hill's
_God's Fool_ and accurately shows Clemens holding the gun in his right
hand.) Although a tiny version of the same photo appears correctly oriented
on the back jacket, the reader is never told which photo is the correct
photo nor offered any explanation that Clemens was actually right-handed.

Overall, the book contains a varied sampling of Twain's works--some hard to
find elsewhere. Those readers who are familiar with only the Huck Finn and
Tom Sawyer adventures may be pleasantly surprised at the massive body of
Twain material this book samples and is yet waiting for them to discover.
The relatively inexpensive price of under $20 combined with the selected
items of fresh material makes it a nice gift for the scholar's bookshelf as
well.