[N.B. This review was written by Alan Gribben, on whose behalf I am merely
posting it. --T.R.]

BOOK REVIEW

     Philip W. Leon.  _Mark Twain and West Point: America's Favorite
     Storyteller at the United States Military Academy_.  Toronto: ECW
     Press, 1996.  Preface by Louis J. Budd.  Pp. 276.  Includes
     bibliographical references and index.  Paper, 6" x 9".  $15.95.  ISBN
     1-55022-277-5.

     Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:

          Alan Gribben <[log in to unmask]>
          Auburn University at Montgomery

     Copyright (c) 1997 Mark Twain Forum.  This review may not be
     published or redistributed in any medium without permission.

Literary studies of major American authors have reached such a state of
specialization that hardly anyone can predict what ingenious topic might
be explored next, or foresee the rewarding results of this keenly focused
research.  When Philip W. Leon brings an intense spotlight to bear upon
Mark Twain's relationship with the United States Military Academy, only
the most knowledgeable scholars would recall that Twain occasionally
lectured at the institution, and even they are unlikely to realize that
within a fifteen-year span beginning in 1876 he mingled with the cadets at
least ten times, watching their drills and parades, sitting in their
classrooms, regaling them with his jokes and tales.

Twain's free performances obtained for him a close view of an elite corps
in which fewer than half the entering cadets completed their studies and
graduated.  Within the ranks of the instructors and administrators he
encountered men who had seen extensive action in the Civil War and in the
campaigns against the Plains Indians.  "All I know about military matters
I got from the gentlemen at West Point, and to them belongs the credit,"
Mark Twain acknowledged in 1881.  Out of these repeated visits came a
cordial and reciprocal correspondence; _Mark Twain and West Point_
collects and publishes dozens of letters that Twain exchanged with cadets
and officers whom he came to know at the academy.  Moreover, Leon
helpfully reprints the lectures and readings with which Twain entertained
the assembled cadets, and also reproduces the risque text of the sixty-
copy private edition of _1601_ that Lieutenant Charles Erskine Wood
daringly published on the West Point printing press in 1882.

More revealingly, Leon reviews and analyzes the various uses Twain made of
West Point as literary material in a wide range of his writings.  For
example, Judge Thatcher vows to send Tom Sawyer to West Point in _The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ (1876), and Hank Morgan establishes his own
version of this celebrated military academy in _A Connecticut Yankee in
King Arthur's Court_ (1889).  In chapter 38 of the latter work, Twain
introduces the anachronism of knights mounted on bicycles to rescue Hank
Morgan and King Arthur; Leon reminds readers that the United States army
was undertaking serious experiments with bicycles for infantrymen at the
time Twain was writing his novel.  A contemporary photograph of army
troops bicycling near Fort Missoula, Montana (p. 93) makes Twain's
imagined scene of wheeling knighthood seem less far-fetched.  Even the
grisly ending of _A Connecticut Yankee_ probably owed a debt to
battlefield spectacles recounted by Twain's friend Major General Nelson A.
Miles and other veteran officers whom Twain encountered at the academy.
The narrative of Twain's "Which Was the Dream?" (1967), written in 1897,
disturbingly connects West Point with troubling domestic memories.

Not all aspects of West Point life earned Mark Twain's admiration.  During
a national controversy in 1900 and 1901 over the severity of several
hazing cases at the school (one of which had allegedly caused the death of
a cadet), Twain publicly denounced the upperclassmen involved as "bullies
and cowards."  Leon's book concludes with a look at Mark Twain's anti-
imperialist views and his reluctant position on the American policy in the
Philippines that put him at odds with academy graduates serving in the
field.

_Mark Twain and West Point_ documents a sanctioned series of carefree
escapes that Mark Twain engineered from his genteel Hartford household in
order to frolic with the "boys" at an all-male academy.  Libraries
collecting significant secondary sources about Twain and his era assuredly
should acquire Leon's informative and suggestive study.