People have been declaring Twain a failure beginning with Brooks in 1920, 
but Twain was a successful journalist, humorist, lecturer, story-teller, 
after-dinner speaker, novelist, and satirist. And some of his poetry ain't 
too bad, although I can't think of any that is really that good either.

But his novels, speeches, and even his humor are often structurally flawed. 
Most of it works anyway, then and now, so I'm not hauling my library to the 
town dump just yet.

Sometimes Twain deliberately plays with the structure of his works --I'm 
reminded of that story where a young man is left sitting naked in a buggy 
with a blanket over his knees. What happened next? Twain does not say.

Dare I mention an author other than Twain in this listserv? Hawthorne's THE 
MARBLE FAUN is structurally tighter than any of his other novels 
("romances") but his readers screamed at him for a better ending until he 
actually wrote an additional chapter to shut them up. Nobody screamed at him 
about the structures of THE SCARLET LETTER, THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES, or 
THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE, FANSHAWE, or THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE, or DR GRIMSHAWE 
(he was dead by the time it appeared so screaming would have done no good 
anyway), and none of those is structurally as sound as THE MARBLE FAUN. 
Clearly, structure is not the only measure of success.

I suppose Walter Scott was structurally sound, but Twain found fault with 
his dialogue and characters. I suppose MOBY DICK is structurally sound but I 
found myself wishing the damn whale would show up and put me out of my 
misery. I suppose WAR AND PEACE is sound too, but the war was more fun than 
the peace, and I'm a pacificst. Is Proust structurally sound? I have no 
idea; I never got far enough along to find out. But I read Twain to the very 
end, the silly hijinks of Tom Sawyer notwithstanding.

Kevin
@
Mac Donnell Rare Books
9307 Glenlake Drive
Austin TX 78730
512-345-4139
Member: ABAA, ILAB
*************************
You may browse our books at
www.macdonnellrarebooks.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sam Sackett" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2012 9:46 AM
Subject: Re: Failures in the works of Mark Twain


>I think we can start from the premise that nobody is perfect and therefore 
>=
> no human product is perfect.  But some human products are so damn good 
> that=
> you can overlook the imperfections.  Of the works Holmes mentions, for me 
> =
> that includes Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A  Connecticut Yankee at 
> t=
> he Court of King Arthur.
>
>
> Again speaking only for myself, I grew up in a house that contained a 
> libra=
> ry containing the collected works of several authors:  George Eliot, 
> Edward=
> Bulwer-Lytton, and Mark Twain among them.  I confess I never got all the 
> w=
> ay through George Eliot or Bulwer-Lytton, but I liked Twain so much that I 
> =
> read every volume in the set.  I remember especially enjoying the story 
> abo=
> ut the lightning-rod salesman; and another story, which I considered on 
> the=
> whole a failure, left in my mind two lines that after all these years I 
> st=
> ill can't get out of my head: "Punch, brothers, punch with care, / Punch 
> in=
> the presence of the passenjare."  Some of what I read I considered 
> failure=
> s, including Tom Sawyer Abroad, but I was willing to forgive Twain for 
> them=
> because I enjoyed the others, especially Roughing It, so much.
>
>
> Then I was fortunate enough in college to have a class from Dr. Benjamin 
> Ha=
> rrison, who showed me beauties and elegance in Huckleberry Finn that I had 
> =
> not found on my own, and then at UCLA my admiration was deepened in a 
> class=
> from Leon Howard, who in his own personality shared some of Huck's 
> impishn=
> ess.  So my conclusion is that Twain's masterpiece  may not be perfect, 
> but=
> who cares?
>
>
> Sam Sackett
>
>
> http://samsackett.us
>
> http://about.me/www.samsackett.com
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Holmes <[log in to unmask]>
> To: TWAIN-L <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Fri, Apr 20, 2012 6:44 pm
> Subject: Failures in the works of Mark Twain
>
>
> I've been aware for some time now that there has been dissatisfaction
> with the concluding portion of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but not
> until this last year have I become aware of what seems to be a sense of
> failure in much of his work. =20
>
> A few weeks back I mentioned I was reading Cox's Mark Twain The Fate of
> Humor and I was surprised at the thought that Connecticut Yankee and/or
> The Prince and the Pauper were failures.  Upon finishing this book it
> seems to me that Cox felt most of Twains work were failures.  And this
> surprised me greatly especially sense he seems to be so well informed on
> the topic. =20
>
> I started today on Lawrence Howe's Mark Twain and the Novel.  This
> appears to argue that the failures were not Twain's but are structural.
> Nevertheless, the idea that there are failures or faults in these works
> surprises me.  In fact it disturbs me.  I suppose this is because I am
> not a literary critic  or even academically trained in English (my
> degrees are in Geography).  In my mind, a book, in this case a novel, is
> a failure only if it fails to interest the reader and/or proves to be
> unreadable.  This is not the case with any of Twain's works in my
> experience.=20
>
> On further searching for why this sense of failure exists I came upon a
> review of Cox's book by Kristin Brown.  It would seem that Mark Twain IS
> a Humorist and must write humorous material, otherwise "Twain had
> attempted to suppress his genius".  This is the crux of my problem with
> the idea that there are failures.
>
> This strikes me very much like the argument that Miles Davis was a
> failure after he progressed beyond Bebop.  An artist is not allowed to
> venture away from their established genre.  Humor might have been his
> "strongest suit" but by no means need it be his only suit.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> =20
>
> =20
>
>
>
> -----
> No virus found in this message.
> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
> Version: 2012.0.1913 / Virus Database: 2411/4950 - Release Date: 04/21/12
> 



-----
No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2012.0.1913 / Virus Database: 2411/4950 - Release Date: 04/21/12