The following book review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Taylor
Roberts.

~~~~~

BOOK REVIEW


_"Was It Heaven Or Hell?": The Triumphs and Torments of Mark Twain_. By
Billie Valentine-Fonorow. Tucson, AZ: Fonorow and Associates, Inc., 1995.
Distributed by Intelisoft Media, Inc., Lisle, IL. Pp. 199. Paper, 5-3/4" x
8-3/4". $16.95. ISBN 0-964-45570-6.


Many books reviewed on the Forum are available at discounted prices from
the TwainWeb Bookstore, and purchases from this site generate commissions
that benefit the Mark Twain Project. Please visit <
http://www.twainweb.net/bookstore/>


Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Taylor Roberts


Copyright (c) 2017 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.



Who was Billie Valentine-Fonorow and why did she, at age 70, write a
perceptive biography of Mark Twain that addressed the underappreciated
aspect of the impact of women on Samuel Clemens's life and writing?


The author sent _Triumphs and Torments_ to the Forum in 1996, but the
original reviewer never delivered, and the author died in 2008 apparently
without ever having posted to the Forum herself. Some unusual coincidences
have recently happened to make me think that Valentine-Fonorow's ghost has
been prodding me to realize that I had another copy of book (which has
become rare) in storage for many years and that I had better complete what
is herewith the most hideously overdue review that has appeared on the
Forum.


The first edition of _"Was It Heaven Or Hell?": The Triumphs and Torments
of Mark Twain_ was published in 1995, but the copyright page states "1990,
1994." To properly review the book, we must stand in the time the author
wrote it, which was probably before the appearance of reference works such
as _The Mark Twain Encyclopedia_ (1993), _Mark Twain A to Z_ (1995), and
before the Internet had (m)any authoritative sites. Judged from this
perspective, Valentine-Fonorow's biography is a substantial accomplishment
that cannot supplant today's biographies, but that provides a complementary
point of view (of women) that was needed then and probably still needed.


The preface of _Triumphs and Torments_ states that it is not intended to be
a chronological account of Mark Twain's life, but rather an examination of
"the elysian highs and stygian lows" that provoked him to write the story,
"Was It Heaven? Or Hell?"  first published in _Harper's Monthly_ in 1902.
Valentine-Fonorow's biography is, in fact, a mostly chronological biography
that has very little to do with that story which is not mentioned again
until page 166, and then never discussed. This gives the impression that
the book was mistitled and that Valentine-Fonorow did not articulate well a
larger objective for her biography.


_Triumphs and Torments_ is a concise overview of the major events of the
life of Samuel Clemens. Valentine-Fonorow understands well the timeless
appeal of Mark Twain, which she ascribes in part to his humour and his
ability to look forward, noting that Mark Twain intentionally left many
writings to be released only many years after his death. While Mark Twain's
best-known works are set in the period of his boyhood, Valentine-Fonorow
observes astutely that "he never viewed the past sentimentally. When he
looked to past eras in his works it was to portray the barbarism of those
earlier times and to show that only outward appearances change over the
years. . . His works remain new because . . . essentially, people haven't
changed" (11).


Valentine-Fonorow sees beyond many of the common misconceptions about Mark
Twain. She explains that despite any impression that Mark Twain himself may
have conveyed, Samuel Clemens was an industrious writer and a voracious
reader, had a scientific mind, and loved technological innovation.
Valentine-Fonorow is careful to explain the satiric intention of many of
Mark Twain's works to show that he was the opposite of a racist, and that
he was forward-looking concerning the equality of humans. "Humanitarianism
was the force behind Mark Twain's works," Valentine-Fonorow writes
positively. "However, if his craftsmanship and humor had not been great
they may have fallen on deaf ears" (55). Although Mark Twain is the best
satiric successor of Jonathan Swift, Valentine-Fonorow reports that Clemens
disliked Swift for his attitude toward women (61).


_Triumphs and Torments_ has twelve chapters focusing on various themes
including lecturing, humanism, tragedy, spirituality, bankruptcy. The
sources for most of the facts are the biographies and editions of letters
and notebooks by Albert Bigelow Paine and his successors. Most sources
predate 1950, and the author does not discuss some later biographies that
one might have expected, such as those written by Justin Kaplan or Hamlin
Hill. Caveat lector: Valentine-Fonorow is not always as critical enough of
her sources as she should be, and although no single biography of Mark
Twain can be trusted entirely, too often _Triumphs and Torments_ reads like
a copy of a copy of an account of Mark Twain's life; the general outline is
correct, but the details may not always be.


Chapter 3 ("Family Life") provides a good consolidation of information from
post-Paine sources, such as Mary Lawton's collection of memories of maid
Katy Leary in _A Lifetime with Mark Twain_, Clara Clemens's _My Father,
Mark Twain_, and Caroline Harnsberger's _Mark Twain, Family Man_. Some
sources are very old now, but obviously were less so when _Triumphs and
Torments_ was written, and there is no harm in (re)discovering previous
insights from such distant articles as Andrew Lang's "Art of Mark Twain"
(1891), Benjamin De Casseres's "When Huck Finn Went Highbrow" (1934) or
John Olin Eidson's "Innocents Abroad, Then and Now" (1948).
Valentine-Fonorow also mentions many curiosities that are not now front of
mind when thinking about Mark Twain. For example, Clemens seldom touched
others (except for shaking hands) and did not like others to touch him
(19), and the family's maid Katy Leary remembered Clemens blushing when his
daughters came across him holding hands with Livy (33). Also, although Mark
Twain had never been afraid to lecture, we are reminded of his recurring
dreams in which "his fear was that no one would come to hear him" (26). It
is heartening to learn that during construction of his house in Hartford,
Clemens stopped a worker from chopping down a tree that was in the way of
the construction, and instead moved the location of his house to
accommodate the tree (34–35).


The longest and most unique part of _Triumphs and Torments_ is Chapter 8
("Mark Twain and Women," pp. 101-153), which presciently addresses its
subject at around the same time Laura E. Skandera-Trombley's _Mark Twain in
the Company of Women_ (1994) was released. Skandera-Trombley's well-known
thesis that Mark Twain's best work was "dependent on female interaction and
influence" seems obvious now, but was less so more than twenty years ago.
Valentine-Fonorow echoes this theme with similar thoughts: "Mark Twain had
an affinity for women that, in some cases, amounted to an emotional
dependence, and which lasted all his life. He did not like masculine
authority but he did not mind taking orders from girls and women, and in
Livy's case 'he gloried in it'" (101). This chapter touches on Elinor Glyn,
Laura Hawkins, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Mary Mason Fairbanks, Elizabeth
Wallace, and many others, including female characters in his own works, and
of course Clemens's wife and daughters, and frequently offers more nuanced
interpretations of the contributions that women made to Mark Twain's
writing. For example, we are reminded that Clemens's knowledge of the evil
of slavery was imparted early by his mother. And while Mark Twain may have
publicly supported women's suffrage at the dawn of the Edwardian era,
Valentine-Fonorow observes that "his daughters may not have agreed with his
interpretation of women's rights . . . as Susy, Clara and Jean matured, he
changed from the playful father to the typical Victorian autocrat, keeping
a watchful eye on them" (125).


Startlingly, this chapter even answers a question that Hal Bush posed to
the Forum in June 2014 (which was never answered well) about a specific
source for the oft-repeated claim that Susy was Clemens's favourite child.
While Mark Twain never stated it outright, Valentine-Fonorow identifies
perhaps the best early source as Clara Clemens's _My Father, Mark Twain_
(1931): "One remarkable characteristic of both Mother and Father was that
they never showed partiality to any child. I realized, after I was grown,
that they must always have loved and admired my elder sister, Susy, by far
the most, which made it all the more wonderful that they could so
completely disguise the fact" (138, quoting _MFMT_ 64).


Skandera-Trombley observed that while Clemens always acknowledged in the
most positive terms that Livy had been his editor, his mostly male
biographers have interpreted Livy's influence on Mark Twain as either
negative or neutral. Though never articulating overtly that she is doing so
(as does Skandera-Trombley), Valentine-Fonorow offers a more refreshing and
correct perspective on Livy's role: "From her own point of view, Livy had
found a solution to the problem of an intelligent woman with a limited
choice of life-styles. In an era when women did little that was not
centered on home and family, her work as editor was vital and probably
fulfilling" (147). Some male biographers may have acquiesced to the sharp
gender divide that existed in careers in Victorian times while absurdly
reserving the prerogative to blame women like Livy for not having become
successful in their own careers.


Valentine-Fonorow considers the Clemens daughters in an unexpected order
(Clara, Jean, then finally Susy), as if to give greater attention to the
daughters who have had it least. Daughter Clara also fares better than
usual under Valentine-Fonorow's respectful interpretation. For example, she
quotes Major Pond's reminiscence of Clara as a "great pianist" when she
entertained the guests at the Spokane Hotel during the 1895 tour (126–127).
While some biographers have implied that Clara's career as a singer was not
fabulous, _Triumphs and Torments_ instead quotes several reviews in which
Clara's performances are praised. Again, Valentine-Fonorow offers other
perspectives that should not be dismissed outright.


While daughter Jean has usually been regarded as little more than a pawn
between several players after her mother's death, here "Jean was the beauty
of the family, with classical features, but this 'gift' meant little to her
when she compared her talents with that of her sisters" (129). We hear in
Livy's words, writing to her husband from Paris, about how Jean had been
concerned about the poor treatment of cab horses there. We are also offered
thirteen-year-old Susy's journal entry announcing Jean's fifth birthday on
26 July 1885, when 'Papa' himself was away.


Valentine-Fonorow here as elsewhere lets women tell their own stories by
cleverly drawing upon their letters and journals, which have usually taken
second place to the letters of men in many biographies--a method that is
unstated and deployed well throughout the book (for example, Livy's mother
writing to Mrs. Fairbanks about Clemens, and Katy Leary remembering Livy).
Many comments about daughter Susy by women are also included, though
necessarily many derive from Mark Twain himself having included many of
them in his _Autobiography_. Valentine-Fonorow speculates also whether Susy
"may have harboured some guilty feelings for living in luxury and not being
'useful'" (140).


What is remarkable is that Valentine-Fonorow offered this female-centered
perspective without much hand-waving so long ago, and yet its lessons
continue to be learned. For example, it was only as recently as 2014 that
Clara's daughter Nina finally received a sympathetic biography in _The
Twain Shall Meet_ by Susan Madeline Bailey and Deborah Lynn Gosselin. In
this context, Valentine-Fonorow also drops a possibly related bombshell
about Clara that makes us wish Valentine-Fonorow were still alive to tell
us her source: "There is a report that another daughter [than Nina] had
been born to Clara, and that she lived to the age of ten in an institution"
(128). Children in institutions received poor treatment then as now, and
not all had the dignity of having had their vital information recorded.
Possibly Valentine-Fonorow's information was confused with similar
unsubstantiated reports of a daughter born to Nina.


Given the positive treatment that so many women receive in this chapter, it
is surprising that Valentine-Fonorow accepts without much discussion the
claims of wrongdoing against Isabel Lyon. The noticeably brief treatment of
Lyon is probably modeled too closely on the similarly brief treatment by
Paine.


Despite Valentine-Fonorow's emphasis on the strong positive impact of women
on Mark Twain, she concludes that "Twain changed Livy more than, as has
been claimed, the reverse" (173), especially regarding religion.
Valentine-Fonorow also interprets Clemens's later years sympathetically,
stating that although he was not religious, he was spiritual and moral,
possessing intuition and even clairvoyance, for example anticipating that
Dan DeQuille would soon write the book that would become _The Big Bonanza_
(1876). She suggests that Clemens's guilt over the deaths of his family
members led him to fatalism--a conviction that many events are beyond human
control, and comprise more chance than meaning--a theme that
Valentine-Fonorow does not perceive in Mark Twain's early writings or
during his Hartford years. Contra Skandera-Trombley, however,
Valentine-Fonorow believes that some of Mark Twain's best work such as "The
War Prayer" was written after Susy and Livy had died.


_Triumphs and Torments_ was self-published and is pervaded by errors in
references, dates, names, spelling and punctuation that are too numerous to
list. There is no index. There are other minor annoyances, such as William
Dean Howells being oddly referred to several times as "Dean Howells."  No
one should trust information from this biography without first checking it
against more authoritative sources--but then, the same proviso must be
given about any biography that does not cite primary sources. Thus,
Valentine-Fonorow need not be more strongly faulted than other authors in
this regard, and it is unlikely that anyone will mistake this biography for
the more careful scholarship that most Mark Twain enthusiasts admire.


Readers are always reminded not to judge a book by its cover, and the
proviso applies particularly strongly to _Triumphs and Torments_, with its
first edition monochromatic smudged pink (was the colour meant to be
'feminine'?) drawing of Mark Twain hovering above a steamboat, and spine
title printed bottom to top. Viewed more gently as a good first draft, had
_Triumphs and Torments_ received a couple rounds of editing and a
professional cover, imaginably it could have taken a more respected place
among the other specialized biographies that appear almost every year.
Reframed as a female perspective on Samuel Clemens, Valentine-Fonorow's
incipient accomplishment would have ranked nearly alongside the other
female-centered biographies that were beginning to appear at that time.


Had Samuel Clemens been born a decade earlier or later, he probably would
not have become Mark Twain; as Valentine-Fonorow states in Chapter 1,
Clemens was born "in the right place and at the right time." Had
Valentine-Fonorow been born a decade later, it is likely that she would
have had more opportunity to realize the strong potential of _Triumphs and
Torments_.