How and why Clemens came to adopt his doppelganger and from whom he may 
have “borrowed” his pseudonym are of much less relevance to his work than 
are his characterization of MT and management of his of point of view and 
narrative voice. Van Wyck Brooks, Leslie Fiedler, and Andrew Hoffman have 
speculated about his anxiety and repression as he sought acceptance in 
society’s upper crust; although they raise questions of psychological and 
biographical interest, like the ”Sam and Henry” query that initiated this 
thread, these questions can distract readers from a literary focus on 
narrative technique—especially point of view—in SLC’s fiction. 
In Huckleberry Finn, for example, it is possible to distinguish the point 
of view of Clemens from that of MT, as Andrew Hoffman asserts when he 
writes that Clemens “hides behind the scenes” and “challenges the moral 
foundation carefully set by Mark Twain” in a “disguised effort to secure 
recognition for himself.” While Hoffman’s interpretation is debatable, his 
sense of dramatic tension between Clemens and Mark Twain in the text is 
valid. This subtext is explored at length in Mark Twain and the Brazen 
Serpent (McFarland, spring 2017). 
The distinction between the respectable S. L. Clemens and the irreverent 
Mark Twain is a “twaining” that Clemens himself consciously and 
artistically exploited in many ways (see the “S. L. Clemens/Mark Twain 
trade mark” in the front matter of the OMT 1st ed. facsimile of Life on the 
Mississippi). Performing Mark Twain publicly enabled Clemens to play the 
role of the sacred clown, as James Caron has shown, while performing S. L. 
Clemens off stage gave him the upward mobility that he could not achieve 
as “a mere humorist.” The convention among 19th c. humorists of adopting an 
alias is the obvious explanation for Sam’s invention of MT, but when it 
comes to explicating his writings, it explains little. Perhaps that’s one 
reason why this is not The Artemus Ward Forum.  
It is often said that Mark Twain was ahead of his time, but in many ways, 
as Andrew Levy has shown, we are still living in his era. William Faulkner 
said that the past isn’t dead, it’s not even past. Let us not forget that 
SLC’s most famous fictional creation is the now-mythic character Mark 
Twain, who has survived his author by going-on 120 years, while his 
contemporary “phunny phellows" have been widely forgotten. Conflating these 
extraordinary twins by ignoring their divergences obscures important 
aspects of Clemens’s art. Subtle ironic effects often disappear when 
readers view them through the lenses of habit and convention, forces to 
which Clemens often opposed Mark Twain with subtle but devastating irony.
 
Respectfully,

Doug Aldridge
Author of Mark Twain and the Brazen Serpent:
    How Biblical Burlesque and Religious Satire Unify Huckleberry Finn.  
(McFarland, 2017)
MarkTwainandtheBrazenSerpent.com