J E Boles wrote:  I gather I may count on everyone here to hit the
airwaves with academic criticism of my novel, if and when I ever get it
done?  And out there?  It will definitely need expansion, deepening,
broadening and enhancement from the academic quarter, I can guarantee
you.

Not to mention publicity.  First novels rarely get noticed, and
frequently do not lead to second novels.  Notice is good.




On Sun, 22 Apr 2012 11:12:28 -0400, Mark Dawidziak
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> One more thought: I wouldn't reduce this discussion to an either-or 
> argument. Twain is big enough to accommodate all kinds of views and 
> interpretations. And I certainly wouldn't want to see any polarization 
> along the lines of populist vs. academic approaches. We need both, and 
> Twain has benefited from both over the century since his death. I hardly 
> qualify as an academic. I've been a journalist and working writer for 
> almost 35 years. But I can't even begin to quantify and qualify the 
> number of times the work of academics and Twain scholars have expanded, 
> deepened, broadened and enhanced our understanding of Mark Twain. It's 
> all quite essential because we're talking about an essential American 
> writer.
> 
> 
> On 4/22/2012 10:16 AM, J E Boles wrote:
>> J E Boles wrote:  A journalist, as Mark Twain had been, has in his
>> experience the observation of enormous reader fear and reaction to the
>> printed word.  He has likely noted the occasional piece of writing which
>> does turn around some social reality and make real change.  Any former
>> journalist writing fiction might reasonably hope for such change as a
>> result of his works. Indeed, Twain's works are still making change today
>>
>> But for academics to declare a century and more later that Twain's works
>> were in any sense failures or flawed is ridiculous.  Academic
>> declarations are not significant, compared to the overwhelming voice of
>> a whole people's continuous attention to a work of fiction. Twain's
>> characters and fictional events are permanently embedded in the entire
>> culture of the Western World, and always will be so.  There can be no
>> greater achievement than that for a writer.  The academic voice is
>> rarely heard, and seldom remembered, in contrast.
>>
>>
>> On 4/21/2012 3:45 PM, Lawrence Howe wrote:
>>> Dear forum--
>>>
>>> I've really enjoyed the exchange that has been unfolding from Scott Holmes =
>>> observation.  Since my name and work was invoked at the beginning of this t=
>>> hread, I feel obligated to qualify the basis of my characterization of Twai=
>>> n's texts as failures.  My position was influenced by Jim Cox's work, but I=
>>>    can't speak for him, so I'll offer only a clarification of my position. =20
>>>
>>> I have never suggested that his works are failures of literary art.  I woul=
>>> dn't return to them as often as I do if that were the case. I have little i=
>>> nterest in the finding fault with the structural flaws that many early crit=
>>> ics cited.  I very deliberately avoid the questions of formal unity and str=
>>> uctural consistency that New Criticism often hung its hat on because it thi=
>>> nk those expectations are inappropriate criteria for a writer who processed=
>>>    his work as Twain did.  To do so is akin to dismissing Picasso because no =
>>> actual person has two eyes on one side of one's face.   =20
>>>
>>> Rather, my argument is rooted in narrative theories that posit the novel's =
>>> existence as a social genre, one committed to subverting the status quo (an=
>>> d note that, from this theoretical perspective, not all narrative fiction i=
>>> n book length qualifies generically as a novel). But in this regard, not on=
>>> ly Twain's novels but all novels are failures.  Now it might seem rather ab=
>>> surd to think that a story about a fictional character could motivate anyon=
>>> e to attempt to change the world.  But novelists have often expressed their=
>>>    sense of having failed to achieve pretty big changes.  =20
>>>
>>> This does not mean that novels have absolutely no social impact.  One examp=
>>> le of a novel that did achieve real change is  _the Jungle_, but even when =
>>> that example is raised, we must acknowledge that Sinclair himself judged it=
>>>    a failure:  he was trying to bring down capitalism but the result of his e=
>>> fforts was the FDA.  Doris Lessing is another novelist who aimed for large =
>>> social impact, and she dismissed her acclaimed  _The Golden Notebooks_ as a=
>>>    failure because it did not achieve the kind of feminist structural changes=
>>>    that she expected.  The one example that often comes up as a challenge to =
>>> my point is _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, which even Lincoln is said to have cited a=
>>> s the cause of the Civil War.  If Lincoln ever said that, I assume that he =
>>> was being ironic.  But Lincoln aside, I find it incredibly unsettling to th=
>>> ink that it took a story about someone who never existed, who was nothing m=
>>> ore than marks on a page, to inspire the sympathy of people who couldn't ge=
>>> t worked up by narratives written by actual fugitive slaves.  While the tra=
>>> dition of sentimental philosophy cited the emotional affinity that a reader=
>>>    might feel for a character as a mark of that reader's sentimental pedigree=
>>> , I find it more troubling that a character--an artifice--would generate sy=
>>> mpathy where flesh and blood humans could not do so. Richard Wright apparen=
>>> tly felt similarly because it was the fact that banker's daughters cried up=
>>> on reading Richard Wright's collection of novellas, _Uncle Tom's Children, =
>>> that goaded him to compose _Native Son_, a text that he was determined woul=
>>> d shock those readers rather than move them to tears.
>>>
>>> What is most intriguing about Twain is that even when his books were popula=
>>> r or critically praised, he signaled his sense of disappointment about them=
>>>    along the lines that I'm describing.  But even more intriguing, and satisf=
>>> ying, is the fact that he didn't just abandon novels given what he'd experi=
>>> enced.  He continued to push the edges of the genre to see if he could achi=
>>> eve a social impact (I can see no other way to explain _CY_) or to expose t=
>>> he unfulfillable promise of the genre of the novel itself. =20
>>>
>>> So I hope I've made the terms of my argument somewhat clearer.  When I use =
>>> the term "failure," I don't mean it in the sense that Hemingway did when he=
>>>    discounted the ending of HF_ (rather stupidly in my view, for without that=
>>>    ending the satirical and novelistic purpose of the narrative evaporates). =
>>>    Twain produced remarkably engaging, deceptively complex, and profoundly pr=
>>> ovocative narrative literature.  By that measure his career is a genuine tr=
>>> iumph.  But he also worked in a form that imposes rather lofty ambitions; a=
>>> nd what his remarkably adept writing shows is that the genre of the novel t=
>>> antalizes its practitioners into chasing its promise: that a truly successf=
>>> ul novel can re-make the world.  And that promise is more like a confidence=
>>>    game, as Melville suggests, or a Catch 22, as Heller does. =20
>>>
>>> --Larry Howe  =20
>>> ________________________________________
>>> From: Mark Twain Forum [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mark Dawidziak [hlgr=
>>> [log in to unmask]]
>>> Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2012 4:38 PM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Failures in the works of Mark Twain
>>>
>>>        Just a thought tossed into what's already an extremely thoughtful
>>> mix: there's a monumental difference between "flawed" and "failure." It
>>> certainly could be argued that "Huckleberry Finn" and "Connecticut
>>> Yankee" are structurally flawed. I'm trying to wrap my brain around the
>>> notion that either of these books would be classified as failures. If
>>> this be failure, please, let me write something 1/100th as good.
>>>         But flawed? Is there a work of art that isn't flawed in some way?
>>> And just because something is flawed doesn't mean it's not a
>>> masterpiece. In his introduction to an annotated edition of Bram
>>> Stoker's "Dracula," scholar Leonard Wolf writes, "Let me say at once
>>> that we have a complete masterpiece, flawed here and there, as the
>>> Chinese insist masterpieces should be, but, nevertheless, the real thing."
>>>        Seems to me the same might be said of "Huckleberry Finn,"
>>> "Connecticut Yankee" and many other Twain works. Which isn't to say
>>> there are not failures within these works -- flaws, if you will. Even
>>> the last third of "Huckleberry Finn" is now viewed in a vastly different
>>> light, thanks to the scholarship of Vic Doyno and others. The appraisal
>>> presented by William M. Gibson and others, if hardly overturned, has
>>> been treated to a substantive alternate interpretation. Whatever the
>>> view of this ending, or "Connecticut Yankee," for that matter, I'm
>>> guessing that most of us would contend that we are in the presence of
>>> the real thing.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----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. =3D20 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. =3D20 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.=3D20 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?
>>>
>>>