What would any Mark Twain book be without its flaws?

He was such a great writer but since he wasn't schooled in "how to write 
the perfect 19th century novel" he almost never did.   He was bursting 
with ideas and tended to put 'em all down on paper.  Many of his books 
are uneven in tone, for example -- with some parts played for farce, 
some for tragedy. 

Sentence for sentence, I personally think he is as great a utilizer of 
the English language as anyone I have ever encountered, dead or living.  
But his novels typically aren't flawless.

Heck, AHF -- considered by so many his greatest work --  is arguably 
flawed by all those lame chapters at the end when Tom Sawyer enters 
stage center and turns Jim's freedom into one of his games.  Most 
readers find those sections quite a literary let-down. 

I honestly think one that one thing that attracts so many of us to 
Twain's works is that they are not perfect literary "works" but are 
living and breathing with the humanity of the author -- so often, one 
quite literally gets the feeling of being in Mark Twain's company when 
reading his works -- and somehow to me the flaws are part of that 
ongoing conversation.

When you mention the Bing Crosby movie, by the way, this makes me 
contemplate what an excellent movie could be made of Conn Yankee 
nowadays -- by one of today's directors specializing in dark, ironic, 
post-modern film-making -- in contrast to the upbeat song-filled 1949 
Hollywood version!

-Steve Hoffman
Takoma Park MD



David Davis wrote:
> It is a terrific work, although I seem to remember (what I perceived as)
> flaws. Grabbed a PDF from Google Books Search, re-reading starting
> yesterday. 
>
> I wonder what Clara made of the Bing Crosby version? ;-) 
>
> DDD
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of L T
> Oggel/FS/VCU
> Sent: Sunday, September 06, 2009 1:24 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Conn Yankee
>
> Here's a piece from yesterday's Wash. Post that's perfectly timed for
> our 
> recent/on-going discussion on Conn Yankee:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/04/AR200909
> 0403802.html?referrer=emailarticle
>
> Henry Nash Smith's book on CYankee, Mark Twain's Fable of Progress, left
> a 
> strong impression on me when I first read it, and it still does seem to 
> hit the nail on the head.  Smith's book, one of (few) literary studies 
> that endures, might be old but it's not out of date, like the Twain book
>
> it examines.  Smith's book is sub-titled, Political and Economic Ideas
> in 
> A Connecticut Yankee.
>
> Terry Oggel
>  
>
>