BOOK REVIEW

_The Jester and the Sages: Mark Twain in Conversation with Nietzsche, Freud,
and Marx_. Forrest Robinson, Gabriel Noah Brahm, Jr., and Catherine
Carlstroem. University of Missouri Press, 2011. Hardcover. Pp. 174. 5.25 x
8.5". ISBN 978-0-8262-1952-7. $35.00.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Martin Zehr

Copyright (c) 2012 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.


This volume's "conversations" convey commonalities of thought in the
changing worlds inhabited by Mark Twain, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud,
and Karl Marx although the discussions underscore much already known to be
lurking beneath Twain's "jester" persona. We can trace Twain's
preoccupations with philosophical questions through direct sources,
especially his own writings. Secondary sources, notably, Tom Quirk's _Mark
Twain and Human Nature_ (Univ. of Missouri Press, 2007), explores documented
influences in his thinking, e.g., Charles Darwin, Thomas Carlyle, William
Lecky and Adolphe Quetelet. Recently, Shelley Fisher Fishkin's _Mark Twain's
Book of Animals_ (Univ. of California Press, 2009), mine Twain's writings to
produce a cogent, cumulative depiction of a facet of Twain's morality, his
pervasive empathy, for inhabitants of the universe outside "the damned human
race." Within the human race, moreover, the
legacy of Jim Zwick, punctuated by Susan Harris's recent work on Twain's
anti-imperialism, underscores an acute, studied awareness of the economic
oppression discussed by the authors in the context of the "jester's"
"conversation" with Marx.

Robinson, Brahm and Carlstroem present the sages as ". . . figures of
undoubted authority and influence who continue to enjoy large audiences . .
." (p. 3) and connect Twain's thinking to some of the prime emergent
intellectual forces of his era. The reader is given "staged . . .
comparisons" which resemble free-standing journal articles. The first, with
Nietzsche and Twain, has been reprinted, in "modified form," from
_Nineteenth Century Literature_, 60 (2005), pp. 137-62.

The intention, as stated by the authors, is "to deploy consensus readings of
the sages as a foundation for expanding the consensus reading of the jester"
(p. 3). The authors are thoroughly versed with respect to the theory and
reading of the "sages," such that the separate sections could well be read
as solid primers of their subjects, and their Twain _bona fides_ are
certainly beyond question.

The first "conversation" focuses on Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of
western, Christian-grounded morality, a "slave" morality responsible for
binding its adherents in chains forged of guilt and a conscience constructed
of fixed ideas of right and wrong. Twain's late-life philosophical
deterministic discourse in _What is Man?_ and his condemnation of the
stranglehold of "invented bad conscience" in "The Facts Concerning the
Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut" are strong evidence for the
proposition that the "funny-man" and the creator of _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_
(1885) and _The Genealogy of Morals_ (1887) are on common ground. Nietzche's
concept of _ressentiment_, a primary source of human misery, is mirrored in
Twain's own condemnations of guilt, conscience and the repressive force of
what he terms "that mongrel Moral Sense… whose function is to distinguish
between right and wrong." Twain would, the authors argue, share Nietzsche's
opinion that conventional morality requires adeptness at the "art of
simulation" or, as Twain famously put it, the "lie of silent assertion,"
which, among other things, allowed for the unquestioned acceptance of
slavery the young Clemens witnessed during his Hannibal childhood. The
general pessimism of Twain and Nietszche is tempered, according to the
authors, by their implicit recognition of the potential for humankind of
identifying and throwing off the shackles of constructed morality and
conformity which presumably destroyed the blissful perfection of man's
pre-moral era. _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ is cited as an example of the
interplay between this childhood innocence and the "bad faith" requirements
of civilization that provoked ideas of written rebellion for Twain and
Nietszche, who despite their dissent from the civilizations they inhabited,
or because of it, also shared a conviction regarding the necessity of humor.

The second, and longest, of these "conversations," "Twain and Freud," is
also the most problematic. Unlike Nietzsche and Marx, whose proponents and
detractors would have little argument regarding their categorization as
moral philosopher or economic theorist, Freud considered himself the founder
of the "science" of psychoanalysis or, as Forrest Robinson states, having a
". . .faith in science."  While Freudian ideas continue to exert a pervasive
influence in literature and entertainment, the notion of Freud as scientist
has long been rejected, even before Einstein refused to support Freud's
self-promoted attempts to obtain the Nobel Prize in the 1920s.
Psychoanalysis continues to attract a cult of adherents outside the
mainstream of scientific psychology and psychiatry, but, from its
beginnings, despite its popularity and cultural impact, Freud's
self-generated conclusions regarding human nature have repeatedly failed the
test of scientific scrutiny and, in some instances, have been a documented
source of human suffering, e.g., the eruption of cases of "repressed (false)
memory syndrome" in the 1980s in which families were torn apart and criminal
prosecutions initiated on the basis of assertions made by mental health
professionals predisposed to uncritical acceptance of Freudian theories.
Literary studies, however, continue to demonstrate a conspicuous blind spot
to the long-established academic acceptance of psychoanalysis as a "science"
in name only, akin to the status of alchemy and astrology.

Given the above caveat, if we approach a discussion with Freud as its focus,
categorizing him instead as a philosopher of human nature, then the
comparison of the ideas of the "sage" with Twain's has, at the very least,
entertainment value. In Robinson's essay, Freud and Twain are shown as
sharing ideas of repression, in Twain's case, the repression of guilt, and
in Freud's, the repression of sexual instincts. With Freud, for whom
"biology is destiny," guilt is present at birth, while, for Twain, likely in
more agreement with Nietzsche in this regard, guilt is acquired ("Training
is everything."), a product of living in a society which teaches, and
reinforces, Christian morality. Both writers were fascinated by the study of
dreams, and the author of _The Interpretation of Dreams_ (1900) might well
have recognized some of his own thinking in this regard in _No. 44, The
Mysterious Stranger_. "My Platonic Sweetheart," and "Which Was the Dream?"
are among other Twain writings discussed in this section.

Repression and guilt are, as Robinson points out, concepts central to the
writings of the sage and the jester, and both would likely have little
disagreement on the subject of the destructive power of repression and its
role in the creation and maintenance of unhappiness. Robinson notes Twain's
observation, that "Civilization is Repression," is consonant, in a general
way, with the "renunciation of unrestrained instinctual pleasures" outlined
by Freud in _Civilization and Its Discontents_ (1930).

With these shared viewpoints, however, Robinson over-emphasizes the
similarities in their concepts of human nature. For Freud, the instinctual,
birth-born impulses are the primary determinants of behavior, while, in
Twain's writings, infused with the determinism he shares with Freud, there
is much more of an emphasis on outside influences, "circumstances," and
"training," vital components of his "Corn-Pone" analysis. Indeed, as Tom
Quirk has observed, "Twain's imaginative apprehension of behavioristic
science . . . was in essential agreement with the facts of science and
psychology" (_Constructing Mark Twain: New Directions in Scholarship_. Univ.
of Missouri Press, 2001, p. 199). A strong argument could be made that
Twain's emphasis on training and circumstance places him squarely in the
camp of the behaviorists, and _What Is Man?_ contains more shared ideas with
B.F. Skinner's _Beyond Freedom and Dignity_ (1971) than it does with Freud's
_The Interpretation of Dreams_.

Robinson tends to over-emphasize similarities in the lives of both men. As
Robinson notes, Twain and Freud "came from large families in the throes of
economic hardship," but it's highly unlikely that the young Freud, who
entered a university at age 17 and subsequently attended medical school,
ever experienced the degree of penury that ended Sam Clemens's formal
education at a young age and forced his indenture as a printer's devil to
Joseph Ament. A major difference, however, is attributable to the variety
and extent of their interactions with the world at large, much more
extensive for Twain, with his myriad careers and extensive travel. Freud, on
the other hand, was indefatigably devoted to a single career and, had it not
been for the Nazi Anschluss of 1938, would have spent the last four decades
of his life in his Bergasse apartment. The last fact, moreover, underscores
a limitation that was never a factor for Clemens-Twain, namely the pervasive
anti-Semitism Twain observed during his stay in fin-de-siecle Vienna.

The final "conversation" in this series, between Twain and Karl Marx,
explores their shared condemnation of the economic injustices which were the
direct product of the unrestrained capitalism of the era and its byproduct,
the economic and political imperialism both decried. Robinson and Carlstroem
introduce this section with the observation of William Dean Howells that
Twain was "a theoretical socialist and a practical aristocrat," a remark
which underscores much of the analysis of the Twain-Marx discussion. Twain
was a "member of the elite capitalist class that he singled out for
criticism," evidence of a hypocritical "bad-faith denial" charge that
couldn't be leveled at Marx. Given this disparity in their respective
entanglements in the system of economic divisions they inhabit, both exhibit
moral outrage at critical components of capitalist-generated oppression,
e.g., religion and the self-deception inherent in assumptions underlying the
illusion of progress. Twain tempers his attitude regarding religion with the
acknowledgement "that illusions could afford precious solace to sore minds,"
a backhanded endorsement of Marx's famous dictum, "Religion is the opiate of
the masses." Marx, despite his condemnation of the economic and political
injustices wrought by capitalism, appears more optimistic than Twain
regarding the possibility of solutions through change of the external
structures that have created and reinforced the maintenance of inequities.
Twain, by contrast, is shown to be more cynical in this regard, based on his
assumptions about human nature, which render the problems much more
resistant to amelioration.

More than in the preceding "conversations," the authors discuss the
problematic aspects of comparing the positions of the sage and the jester,
in this case based, not on their respective sympathies, but on what they
term the "ambivalence and contradiction (that) pervaded his (Twain's) life
and works (p. 89). Marx not only exhibits single-mindedness in his
philosophical explorations, but lives a life which doesn't present
conspicuous contradictions to his major ideas. Twain, on the other hand,
while sincere in his sensitivity to the economically and politically
oppressed, nonetheless aspires to membership in the economic aristocracy
that Marx insists is responsible for the alienation of the proletariat from
the products of their labors. The same Twain who mocks the rush to
entrepreneurial riches in _The Gilded Age_ answers a reporter's question
about the "taint" of the Standard Oil wealth of his friend Henry Huddleston
Rogers by asserting that, yes, it is tainted, "T'ain't yours, and t'ain't
mine."  The discussion reinforces the perception of Twain as a
psychologically complex figure for whom single labels are inadequate.

This book's title inevitably begs the question, who are the intended
readers?  Twain is the designated jester who, according to the authors, is
the focus of this tripartite analysis, which, according to the blurb on the
book's jacket, ". . . rescues the American genius from his role as funny-man
. . ." For the serious scholar/reader, Twain hasn't lacked for "rescuers,"
at least since the pioneering work of Philip Foner (_Mark Twain: Social
Critic_, 1958), Lou Budd (_Mark Twain: Social Philosopher_ 1962), Hamlin
Hill (_Mark Twain: God's Fool_ 1973), and countless others, including those
listed in this book's introduction. Even the general public, through
exposure to the continuous controversies surrounding _Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn_ or the 2001 film biography by Ken Burns, is aware of the
woefully inadequate depiction of Twain as a "mere humorist." The
unelaborated "jester" designation, at this point in Twain's posthumous
career, seems antiquated, a straw man put forth for easy counter-argument.

Twain's immersion in the philosophical tides of his era are not to be
interpreted as the "jester's" wholesale endorsement of the thought castles
constructed by these "sages," which, it is noted, is _not_ the intent of the
authors. Nonetheless, they have certainly accomplished their expressed aim
of highlighting Twain's overlapping thinking with respect to the moral,
religious, economic, political and personal explorations which dominated the
respective careers of these "sages," who, for better or worse, have had a
lasting impact on critical thought and popular culture. The ultimate irony
engendered by a reading of this book is the conclusion that, considering
Twain has something to say to each of these sages, arguably based on study
and life experience at least as rich and varied as each of the
"conversationalists," the appellations may be misapplied.
________

Martin Zehr, Ph.D., J.D., of Kansas City, Missouri is a clinical
psychologist in private practice.