Dear Ron,

I may be misunderstanding what you're saying here, and forgive me if I am,
but I would like to invite you to take another look at "A True Story."
While Twain portrays "Misto C" as a naive idiot, he clearly *portrays* the
character as a naive idiot.  And while this story might be his own scathing
assessment of his youthful naivete, it remains a scathing assessment, rather
than a "true story" of his own feelings.

Twain, like Huck, tells the truth with "some stretchers."  While the
evidence is clear that Twain tried to replicate Cord's story as she told it,
I would suggest that the set-up for her story is a frame that attempts to
force readers to face the very point you raise, that most Americans  "failed
to see the bleakness of slavery, and many still do."  The narrator and the
author are distinct from one another, here, and yet, part of why Twain's
works remain compelling is because he does not take a moral high ground.  We
know Mark Twain is also Mr. Clemens, and that he once held such opinions and
still had to struggle against some of them.  He's the first to admit that he
can be an idiot and a jerk, and I think it is one of the reasons we listen.

There can be no doubt that as a youth, Clemens accepted the society he was
born into and that his early world view was founded on white supremacy and
class disdain, in spite of, or perhaps because of his family's increasingly
humble conditions.  And yet, by the time he wrote "A True Story,"
Twain/Clemens was fully aware of what a young idiot he had been, and what an
idiot he often still was.  No one was harder on Sam Clemens than Mark Twain.

As a youth in New York, in 1853 I think it was, Sam had characterized the
ethnic mix of children around him as "trundle-bed trash" and "vermin."  The
man who he grew up to be, who was devastated by the loss of his beloved
younger brother in 1858 and his own son in 1872, simply did not and could
not have the same attitudes toward human life in 1874, when he published "A
True Story."  Her story of loss must have thrilled his nerves and filled him
with self-loathing for his former life and self.

To me, the piece presents a conscious and deliberately scathing indictment
of "Misto C--."

I am not saying that Twain did not make naive assumptions or that he was
free of racist feelings or class prejudices.  But he was conscious of many
of the prejudices and ruthless about exposing himself.  In doing so, he
looked ahead, grew up and tried to drag white America along with him.

I'd enjoy hearing what you and others on the Forum think.

Best,
Sharon McCoy