The following book review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Martin
Zehr.

~~~~~

BOOK REVIEW


_Mark Twain and Europe_. By Takeshi Omiya. Osaka Kyoiku Tosho, 2015. Pp.
417. Hardcover. $58.00. ISBN 978-4-271-21040-5.


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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Martin Zehr


Copyright (c) 2017 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.


For Mark Twain scholars, the subject and title, _Mark Twain and Europe_,
will not conjure any reaction resembling surprise. After all, Twain spent a
significant portion of his adult life visiting and living in Europe. From
the beginning of his rise to celebrity status, European countries would be
the inspiration for travelogues and fiction, including _The Innocents
Abroad_ (1867), _A Tramp Abroad_ (1880), _The Prince and The Pauper_
(1882), _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ (1889) and _Personal
Recollections of Joan of Arc_ (1896). Several studies have been published
with a focus on particular venues in Twain's European sojourns including
Howard Baetzhold's _Mark Twain & John Bull: The British Connection_ (1970);
Carl Dolmetsch's _Our Famous Guest: Mark Twain in Vienna_ (1992); Andreas
Austilat's _Mark Twain in Berlin: Newly Discovered Stories_ (2013); and the
most recent addition to this genre, _Mark Twain and France: The Making of a
New American Identity_, by Paula Harrington and Ronald Jenn (2017). Twain's
travels in other more-or-less circumscribed regions of the globe have also
attracted focused energies like Miriam Jones Shillingsburg's _At Home
Abroad: Mark Twain in Australasia_ (1988).


In _Mark Twain and Europe_ Takeshi Omiya, an independent Mark Twain scholar
from Fukuoka City, Japan, with M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Hiroshima
University "aims to examine the influence that Europe, at that time, had on
Mark Twain and his works, that is, the significance of Europe to Twain" (p.
2). The book is divided into two major sections with the first devoted to
Darwin's influence on Twain.  The second section discusses the interactions
and influences of Robert Louis Stevenson, Matthew Arnold and Shakespeare on
Twain and his writings, particularly _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court_ and _The Innocents Abroad_. This selection of topics and subjects
hardly justifies the book's wide-ranging title, a misnomer that could have
been rectified by the more apt or more accurate, _Mark Twain and the Four
Englishmen_. Further compounding this misnomer are discussions,
well-researched and interesting, but tangential, such as the exposition of
imperialism, China, and Twain's "The Fable of the Yellow Terror" (1904-05)
and _Ah Sin_ (1876). Such digressions are not without merit, of course, but
serve to underscore the conclusion that this book would have benefited from
a more appropriate title to underscore its actual focus. Another criticism
is the pronounced didactic approach taken by Omiya, with the phrase "First,
I will show . . ." cropping up with a regularity that begs a rejoinder of
the writer's creed, "Show, don't tell."


The discussion of Twain's developing determinism and its Darwinian roots
has been the subject of numerous studies such as Tom Quirk's classic _Mark
Twain and Human Nature_ (2007). Omiya's expressed intention is "to provide
a thorough examination of this subject," asserting that prior attempts have
not been "comprehensive" (p. 2). His book does include a more than adequate
introduction to Darwinism and social Darwinism as a predicate to analyzing
the impact of their ideas and conclusions on many of Twain's writings,
especially during the latter years of his career. Omiya traces Twain's
determinism through his notebook entries and many of his published
writings, including _The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson_, _The Man That
Corrupted Hadleyburg_, "The Turning Point of My Life," _What Is Man?_,
"Corn-Pone Opinions," "The Victims," and "Three Thousand Years Among the
Microbes." Omiya asserts that "Twain maintains a duality inconsistent with
determinism" (p. 79) because Twain considers "each human being to have an
important, unchangeable, stable part within himself or herself that is
never influenced by heredity and circumstances . . ." (p. 79). He seems to
suggest that Twain's concept of determinism, sufficiently broad to include
the Lamarckian idea of inherited characteristics, such as morals, allows
Twain to maintain a belief in God and Darwinism simultaneously. However,
Omiya's arguments in service of this thesis are not entirely convincing.
Nonetheless, this discussion is undoubtedly one of the most extensive
tracings of Darwin's influences in Twain's thought and writings and well
worth the consideration of scholars who have long ago jettisoned the idea
of Twain as a "mere humorist."


Omiya's chapter on Robert Louis Stevenson focuses on ideas relevant to
psychology in the latter half of the nineteenth century which he traces to
the duality theme of _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_. Omiya
attempts to make the case that Twain, who read and enjoyed Stevenson's
book, shared Stevenson's fascination with the notion of "double
personality" (p. 173) and the influence of dreams on writing. Omiya
discusses a short piece by Twain titled "The Art of Authorship" (1890) as
an example of Twain's thinking with respect to the role of the unconscious
in his writing (p. 175) and cites examples in works such as _A Connecticut
Yankee in the Court of King Arthur_. He also notes the limitations of the
idea that Stevenson influenced Twain, particularly with respect to the role
of the conscience, which, according to Omiya's analysis did not constitute
"another distinct self" (p. 178). This chapter includes subsections devoted
to the work of Jean Martin Charcot, Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud, and Mark
Twain's friend, William James. According to Omiya, Twain "obtained the idea
of unconsciousness" from Charcot and Janet (p. 179). Twain's friendship
with William James and their mutual interests in psychical research and,
later, in the anti-imperialist movement in the United States, is cited by
Omiya for James's influence on Twain's writing on dreams, including "No.
44, The Mysterious Stranger." Twain, according to Omiya's argument, "owes
much of his notion of 'the Dream Self' to James's notion of the subliminal
self" (p. 184). Citing Kent Rasmussen's _Mark Twain A to Z_ (1995), Omiya
repeats the unproven, and likely fake news, that Twain met Sigmund Freud in
1898, when no documentation exists from either party to support the claim,
but correctly notes evidence of the one-way influence based on the later
references to Twain in the writings of Freud.


Chapter 8 chronicles Mark Twain's interactions with English writer Matthew
Arnold, particularly following Arnold's criticism of ex-President Grant's
_Memoirs_ (1885) issued by Twain's publishing company. Arnold's description
of American civilization as based on "the Philistine middle class" (p. 204)
provoked Twain to note that the disrespectful and irreverent tone of
American journalism was an essential factor in guaranteeing the liberties
of the citizen. Omiya believes that Arnold's criticisms were partly
responsible for Twain's later attacks on the shams of English society
contained in _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ (1889) and _The
American Claimant_ (1892).


The final Englishman chosen by Omiya for his European perspective is
Shakespeare. This is hardly a surprise, given Twain's study of Elizabethan
English, relied on for _The Prince and the Pauper_, _A Connecticut Yankee
in King Arthur's Court_ and _1601: Conversation as It Was by the Social
Fireside in the Time of the Tudors_, and Twain's late discourse on the
Shakespeare authorship controversy, _Is Shakespeare Dead?_ (1909). Omiya
provides a historical perspective for Twain's interest in Shakespeare,
beginning with his apparent childhood reading of _Richard the Third_ and
traces, through Twain's notebooks, his reading and attendance of
performances of the plays in the repertoire. Omiya's discussion of Twain's
interest in Shakespeare includes an exploration of the Baconian thesis that
Francis Bacon was the actual author of Shakespeare's works, a long-standing
controversy at the time Twain wrote _Is Shakespeare Dead?_.  Omiya argues
that "circumstances led him [Twain] to adopt the Bacon-as-Shakespeare
theory" (p. 241), but, more importantly, asserts that _Is Shakespeare
Dead?_ is meant, in part, as a restatement of the determinism Twain seemed
to embrace in the last decade of his life. Omiya argues that the
determinism Twain espouses, based on examination of "our circumstances and
associations" (p. 239) is the mirror image of the deterministic philosophy
espoused in "Corn-Pone Opinions" (1901) and _What is Man?_ (1905). Tracing
Twain's interest in the Baconian theory of authorship as far back as the
1850s, based partly on Twain's readings on the subject of cryptography,
Omiya concludes that Twain was "playing intellectual games by demonstrating
himself to be a living specimen of determinism" (p. 241). Twain
nonetheless, as Omiya is careful to point out, holds a reverential attitude
toward Shakespeare's works, regardless of the solution to the authorship
controversy.


The final two chapters are devoted to separate discussions of _A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ and _The Innocents Abroad_ in
which Omiya theorizes that Twain's "great respect" for Christopher Columbus
(p. 249) is apparent. For example, a lunar eclipse relied on by Columbus in
1504 to instill fear and respect on the part of Native Americans is
transformed into the fortuitous solar eclipse used by Hank Morgan to save
himself from the mob intent on burning him at the stake. Columbus thus
becomes the first European tasked with the obligation of civilizing the
people inhabiting the Caribbean islands he "discovers," just as Hank Morgan
assumes responsibility for modernizing and reforming the inhabitants of
Arthurian England. In _The Innocents Abroad_, Omiya sees Twain as a
pioneer, not in the sense of Columbus's "discovery" of America (p. 272),
but as a traveler relying on his own senses rather than the secondhand
accounts of prior writers to provide a more realistic, less romantic and
less reverential perspective for viewing the Old World.


The Notes and Bibliography sections of this book, comprising one hundred
pages, indicate a serious and wide range of Twain-related scholarship and
contain nuggets of information only acquired through years of dedicated
study. Omiya notes, for example, that Twain's "Is He Dead?" joke, a
frequent comic trope in _The Innocents Abroad_, is borrowed from an Artemus
Ward sketch, and properly credits the work of David E.E. Sloane in this
regard (p. 286). He also recounts the story of Isaiah Sellers using "Mark
Twain" as a pseudonym and the "two drinks" hypotheses to discuss the
origins of Clemens's pen-name (p. 297), but fails to mention the work of
Kevin Mac Donnell establishing the most probable source, a piece titled
"The North Star," published in Artemus Ward's _Vanity Fair_ in 1861. Also
included is an Errata sheet with forty-three entries, consisting primarily
of simple word or grammar corrections.


Mark Twain scholars are well aware of the interest in Twain studies by
Japanese scholars, through such insightful, perspective-changing works as
Tsuyoshi Ishihara's _Mark Twain in Japan: The Cultural Reception of an
American Icon_ (2005); _Mark Twain Studies_, the journal of The Japan Mark
Twain Society; and the numerous scholars from Japan who present their work
at the quadrennial International Conference on Mark Twain Studies in
Elmira, New York. Omiya's book presents detailed, well-researched arguments
regarding the evolution of philosophy underlying Twain's writing, in a work
unmistakably written for the seasoned Twain scholar.

 _____


ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Martin Zehr is a psychologist in the Marion Bloch
Neuroscience Institute in Kansas City, Missouri. His novel, _The
Desplazados_, has just been published and was described by _Kirkus Reviews_
as "A journey of reawakening and self-acceptance, well worth the trip."