BOOK REVIEW

_The Author-Cat: Clemens's Life in Fiction_. Forrest G. Robinson. Fordham
University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi + 242. Cloth, $45.00. ISBN
978-0-8232-2787-7.

Many books reviewed on the Forum are available at discounted prices from
the TwainWeb Bookstore, and purchases from this site generate commissions
that benefit the Mark Twain Project. Please visit <http://www.twainweb.net>.

Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Barbara Schmidt

Copyright (c) 2007 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.

Forrest G. Robinson's _The Author Cat_ explores and identifies
psychological forces behind the dynamic and volatile personality of Samuel
Clemens and his writings. Torment is a "dark mansion with many rooms,"
writes Robinson in the beginning pages of his book. His thesis is that
Clemens was "the most guilt-ridden of major American writers" (p. 6) who
wrote compulsively about himself with both a need to reveal and a need to
conceal. This book is a study which explores Clemens's inability to come to
grips with an uneasy conscience.

The title _Author-Cat_ is taken from a letter Clemens wrote to his friend
William Dean Howells claiming that truth in an autobiography was to be
found "between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which
hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell." To this
end, Robinson explores "between the lines" of Clemens's autobiography,
travel writings (often autobiographical in nature), fiction, notebooks,
later unfinished writings, and letters. Robinson identifies and dissects
various sources of guilt Samuel Clemens wrestled with throughout his
lifetime.

Robinson's book consists of five chapters, epilogue, notes and index. Much
of the material in the chapters titled "Never Quite Sane in the Night,"
"The General and the Maid," "My List of Permanencies," "Telling Fictions,"
and "Dreaming Better Dreams" has appeared over the past twenty-five years
in various scholarly journals and publications. Robinson's studies have
been expanded and updated and are now brought together in one volume.

Robinson's previous major publication, _In Bad Faith: The Dynamics of
Deception in Mark Twain's America_ (1986), explores the social dynamics of
"bad faith" which can be defined as self deceptions which take place when
public ideals are violated. In _The Author-Cat_ Robinson writes, "I want to
apply the notion of bad faith in a rather different way, to Clemens's
theory and practice of autobiography" (p. 18). To this end, Robinson
concludes that Clemens's autobiography, which was intended to reveal all,
is the work that reveals the least because evasion of painful guilt-ridden
topics was easy. Robinson argues that the most revealing truths, and darker
truths, are to be found in Clemens's travel books and his fiction.
Throughout _The Author-Cat_ Robinson identifies a number of incidents which
prompted guilty reactions and mood swings in Clemens when their memories
surfaced throughout his life.

An early guilt that Robinson identifies as tormenting Clemens was the role
he played in the death of a Hannibal tramp to whom he had given matches.
The tramp later set himself on fire in the Hannibal jail and died before he
could be rescued. Clemens wrote about the incident in chapter 56 of _Life
on the Mississippi_ and how his younger brother Henry had possible
knowledge of the role he had played in that death. The situation gave rise
to the dynamics of a resentment Clemens felt against his younger brother.
Henry later died from injuries received in an explosion on the Mississippi
steamboat _Pennyslvania_--a boat from which Sam Clemens was ejected shortly
before his brother's fatal trip. Robinson finds traces of Henry Clemens in
the tattle-tale character of Sid Sawyer in _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_
as well as the shabby two-foot dwarf conscience in "The Recent Carnival of
Crime in Connecticut." Robinson writes, "Only in _Tom Sawyer_ is his
punitive rage against Henry opened fully to view. Here, clearly on display,
is evidence of the murderous childhood wish that seemed fatally to
materialize in the _Pennsylvania_ explosion, that fuelled the pathological
mourning that followed" (p. 59).

Clemens's failure to fight in the Civil War also became a source of guilt.
According to Robinson, "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed" was
an evasive explanation that "failed utterly to satisfy its author. The
guilt repressed in that text returned constantly, to be told and untold in
various ways, and with equal futility, for the rest of Clemens's life...
Over and over again, he was driven to retell the story, but never succeeded
in shaping it to his own moral satisfaction ... a lie artfully designed to
win amused and sympathetic assent" (pp. 65, 66, 77). Robinson examines
Clemens's relationship with General Ulysses S. Grant and his attempts to
symbolically conquer and win Grant over. The story "Which Was the Dream?"
was an attempt by Clemens to merge his own life with that of Grant.
Robinson believes Grant clearly had an abundance of virtuous male qualities
which Clemens saw lacking in himself and Clemens's admiration for the
former general was a reflex of his own diminished self-regard. By the same
token, Clemens was drawn to write the story of Joan of Arc "because of what
he esteemed in her and what, correspondingly, he could not abide in
himself" (p. 73).

In a long list of "permanencies"--events which caused Clemens humiliation
throughout his life, Robinson adds another instance of cowardice--a flight
from Nevada in 1864 to avoid a duel. To support his argument, Robinson
offers a careful analysis of Appendix C of _Roughing It_. Appendix C,
titled "Concerning a Frightful Assassination That Was Never Executed," is a
stinging indictment of Nevada journalist Conrad Wiegand. Robinson finds
parallels between Clemens's contempt for Wiegand and his own guilt for
failing to rise to standards of honor and courage in his own journalistic
wars and a never-fought duel. Although Clemens  referred to the failed duel
in lectures and the tale "How I Escaped Being Killed in a Duel" (1873) and
elaborated on it in autobiographical dictation in 1906, Robinson concludes
that the conspicuous absence of the Virginia City duel from _Roughing It_
"testifies to a potent aversion" (p. 100).

The overpowering and predominant source of guilt in Clemens's life
identified by Robinson is race-slavery guilt. According to Robinson,
Clemens felt guilty about slavery because "it was his lot in life to have
been complicit, though quite against his best human instincts, in the
subjection of black people to conditions that he came in time to regard as
morally indefensible. To have looked the other way in the face of iniquity
of slavery was the unpardonable sin for which Clemens never forgave
himself" (p. 162). In support of his theory Robinson is indebted to Terrell
Dempsey's _Searching for Jim: Slavery in Sam Clemens's World_ (2003), which
documents the extent and horrors of slavery of Clemens's boyhood town of
Hannibal, Missouri. Robinson states that early "bad faith" denial of the
evils of slavery "is the surest sign that Clemens's memories of slavery so
challenged his moral self-regard that he could no more forget them than he
could bear to remember them" (p. 163). In his character Huckleberry Finn,
Clemens allowed himself to assume a first-person voice and Robinson finds a
sense of inevitable failure and personal remorse that permeates throughout
the novel in Huck's struggle between heart and conscience.

As a prologue to Clemens's late fiction, Robinson examines the obsession
with slavery in _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_. He also
presents well-thought-out discussions of slavery issues and conscience as
they surfaced in _American Claimant_, _Pudd'nhead Wilson_, "Tom Sawyer's
Conspiracy," the _Mysterious Stranger_ manuscripts, "Which Was It?" and
"What is Man?" Regarding his later and often incomplete writings, Robinson
writes "He obsessed about God and the devil, time and space, the origins
and status of knowledge, free will, determinism, and what he took to be the
inherent perversity of human nature. He approached these topics, I
emphasize, not with philosophical detachment, but as a man driven to find a
justifying explanation for the terrible thing he knew he was" (p. 186-187).
Robinson concludes that a resort to a belief in determinism--the view of
man as a machine not responsible for his actions--offered incomplete and
only brief respites from guilt that plagued Clemens.

Robinson is not the first scholar to undertake an armchair post-mortem
psychoanalysis of Samuel Clemens. In 1920 Van Wyck Brooks published one of
the first such studies in _The Ordeal of Mark Twain_ which also attempted
to define the source of Clemens's tortured conscience. Bernard DeVoto, in
his capacity as editor of Mark Twain's papers, also elaborated on Clemens's
"Symbols of Despair" in _Mark Twain at Work_ (1942). Robinson, however,
most often cites the work of scholars Justin Kaplan (_Mr. Clemens and Mark
Twain_, 1966); Hamlin Hill (_God's Fool_, 1973); and Henry Nash Smith,
another former editor of the Mark Twain Papers to bolster his arguments.
The more recent work of Terrell Dempsey and Leland Krauth also figure into
Robinson's theories. Robinson also recognizes the work of recent scholars
William R. Macnaughton, Bruce Michelson, and Karen Lystra who have
"objected that [Hamlin] Hill gives too little attention to Clemens's
resilient relish for life and to the energy and exuberance of his late
writing. These are important, often well argued perspectives. But while I
readily concede that Hill is at points too relentlessly dark and
unforgiving in his judgments, and that he tends to undervalue the late
writing, his portrait of a man engulfed by volatile, often destructive
emotions is thoroughly plausible and well grounded. To deny these realities
is to turn a blind eye to a virtual mountain of direct testimony to the
aging writer's contempt for human nature, hatred of God, anguished
self-loathing, and impatient longing for the oblivion of the grave" (p.
159). Robinson also finds flaws in Lystra's _Dangerous Intimacy_ (2004) and
points instead to work by Laura Skandera-Trombley and Jennifer L. Rafferty
which elaborate on sources of Clemens's guilt regarding his treatment of
his former secretary Isabel Lyon.

There is some overlapping of information and discussion among the chapters
included in Robinson's book. The presentation of material is not as concise
and precise as one would wish. For example, the second chapter titled "The
General and the Maid" devotes twenty-five pages to a discussion of
Clemens's relationship with his younger brother Henry prior to an awkward
transition into a shorter seventeen page discussion of Ulysses Grant and
Joan of Arc. This is only a minor quibble and does not detract from the
overall value of having a number of Robinson's essays together in one
volume.

In 1942 Bernard DeVoto cautioned Twain scholars that both psychology and
literary criticism are highly speculative fields. Robinson's professional
training is in English and he holds a position as a professor of American
Studies at University of California, Santa Cruz. Consequently, his
analyzing portrait of a guilt-ridden Clemens may not carry the weight of a
medical or psychological professional. However, as a literature
professional, Robinson is a master at "reading between the lines."
Robinson's arguments and theories are strong, well-defended and built
around Clemens's own words and/or absence of them. Overall, Robinson
succeeds in presenting a portrait of Samuel Clemens as a tortured soul who
never escaped guilt and who was an ineffectual "author-cat" at burying his
shame. The impact of Robinson's work is that Twain scholars will not
casually overlook the role guilt may have played in future studies of
Twain's writings. They will become more adept at seeking and finding the
possible truth "between the lines" of Clemens's words.