BOOK REVIEW

_Mark Twain: Critical Insights_. Edited by R. Kent Rasmussen. Salem Press,
2010. Pp. 350. Hardcover. $85.00. ISBN 978-1-58765-689-7.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Kevin Mac Donnell

Copyright (c) 2010 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.

Some stately shelf sagging with sempiternal assemblages of sagacious essays
on Sam Clemens might be the single scene more suggestive of silent repose
than a solitary esophagus sleeping in a somniferous sky. Arranged around the
promising themes of travel, religion, social issues, literary genres, and
individual works, many of these critical anthologies offer hope of a utility
that never quite materializes. Many a Twain scholar, teacher, or reader has
glanced through such a book and placed it on the shelf among its brethren
with perfect faith that it will soon wear out from frequent consultations.
Meanwhile the earth's orb advances through countless seasons, old nations
fall and new ones arise, and the culture shifts under our feet until the
next collection of essays arrives, full of promise that invite a hopeful
perusal before it too is entombed with its forgotten forbearers in that
dusty bibliomausoleum.

No such fate awaits Kent Rasmussen's _Mark Twain: Critical Insights_. This
gathering of essays comes as close to a "page-turner" as any previous
collection of critical essays on Twain. Rasmussen explains why in the first
sentence of his introduction: "The essays in this volume offer a cross
section of provocative interpretations of Mark Twain's writings that have
been selected to encourage readers to adopt new perspectives on one of
America's greatest writers" (p. vii). Reading these essays will lead to the
collapse of some comfortable assumptions and the dawning of some startling
insights, with many pleasant provocations along the way. This book is not
for intellectual sissies, and after reading it you may never feel quite the
same about Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Joan of Arc, Ambrose Bierce, Hank Morgan,
or Mark Twain.

_Mark Twain: Critical Insights_ is arranged like the other forty volumes
issued so far in this popular series. The Salem Press Critical Insights
series has offered collections of important criticism on authors as diverse
as Emily Dickinson and Stephen King, James Baldwin and John Steinbeck, or
Charles Dickens and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Four of the dozen essays in this
volume are previously unpublished, written especially for this volume by
renowned Twain scholars Lawrence Berkove, Alan Gribben, Hilton Obenzinger,
and Stephen Railton. The other eight essays, some of them taken from sources
no longer readily accessible, include thought-provoking writings about Twain
as a science fiction author or his nightmare vision of American boyhood in
_The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_. They also offer fresh foot-prints that
suggest new paths to explore over the familiar turf of Twain as a travel
writer, literary realism in _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_, racial
discourse, hoaxing, the frame-narrative, metaphors, and his depiction of
domesticity. Dating as far back as 1980, some of these essays don't reflect
more recent discoveries in Twain's biography and some of their
bibliographies are a bit dated, but none suffer for it. Following the
essays, a chronology of Twain's life, a list of Twain's works by genre (his
poetry and interviews are not included), a selective bibliography, and an
index complete the package.

Rasmussen fulfills his role as editor with an introduction to the themes and
issues that are addressed in the essays to follow. Next follows his
biography of Twain that presents familiar facts in fresh ways, and
introduces some new ones along with some shrewd observations.

Following Rasmussen's ample introduction is "The Paris Review Perspective,"
a puzzlingly brief (3pp.) perspective by Sasha Weiss of Twain as "a creature
of the Mississippi River" and her conventional summaries of the jumping frog
story and Huck Finn. But the four new essays that come next go to the heart
of the matter.

Stephen Railton's "Mark Twain and His Times" examines Mark Twain as a media
phenomena, his international persona, his roles as both a writer and a
cultural icon, and directly links the events of Twain's life and current
events with his writings. He makes a strong case that nearly all of Mark
Twain's writings are actually travel writings in various guises (time
travel, exotic settings, etc.). Railton concludes that Mark Twain, having
witnessed a period of profound cultural change from a front-row seat, can
tell us more about American culture and the times in which he lived than any
other writer.

Alan Gribben's "Mark Twain's Critical Reception" provides an overview of
Twain's status as a great American writer. He begins by identifying five
issues that are repeatedly raised to challenge Twain's reputation: 1. Mark
Twain as a mere travel writer. 2. His business ventures. 3. His broad
popularity as a barrier to greatness. 4. His reputation as a mere humorist.
5. His sometimes flawed literary craftsmanship. All of these are ably
deconstructed. Gribben then reviews Twain's posthumous reputation, and the
current state of Twain scholarship, and names the four scholars whose works
have most influenced Twain's scholarly reputation: Walter Blair, Henry Nash
Smith, James M. Cox, and Louis J. Budd. His conclusion is that despite
shifting perspectives on Twain's works and the resulting controversies,
Twain's reputation remains durable and vital.

Hilton Obenzinger's "Pluck Enough to Lynch a Man" examines Mark Twain's
conception of manhood. Manhood as a social construct is examined in the
various ways it is presented in Twain's works, and several kinds of manhood
are identified (the frontier man, the plantation man, the entrepreneurial
man). Obenzinger's essay becomes quite entertaining as he looks for the
character in Twain's writings who represents the exemplary depiction of
"male character." A long list of possible candidates are discussed and
rejected: Colonel Sherburn, David Wilson, Hank Morgan, Tom Sawyer, Huck
Finn, Jim, Injun Joe, etc. Finally, as Rasmussen promises in his
introduction, his final choice may knock some readers out of their chairs.
Obenzinger's surprise choice would make O. Henry blush, but it's a good
choice, a real zinger.

Lawrence Berkove's "Kindred Rivals: Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce" studies
two writers whose biographies followed parallel arcs, whose views of the
world were often identical, and whose writing styles and choice of subject
matter were remarkably alike, but who never became friends, and seemed to
have little regard for each other, even though it is possible that Twain
borrowed from Bierce's writings. Only an expert on both Bierce and Twain
could suggest possible explanations for this odd state of affairs. Berkove
is that expert, and he concludes that what has long been dismissed as
hostility or indifference might have been mere rivalry, and that Bierce, who
was a moralist and literary artist whose best work matches Twain's, deserves
a closer reading.

The previously published essays that follow will be unfamiliar to everyone
but the most ardent Twain scholar who subscribes to a variety of journals
and makes an effort to track down new scholarship as it appears, even in
unlikely places. Larzer Ziff's presentation of Twain as a travel writer is
extracted from a collection of essays on great American travel writers, and
even though Ziff focuses on _The Innocents Abroad_ and _Roughing It_, it
quickly becomes apparent that more of Twain's writings fit this genre than
is generally acknowledged. As much as Twain insisted that he did not like
the genre he returned to it again and again.

Next Cynthia Wolff explores Mark Twain's nightmare vision of American
boyhood through _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_. She turns the conventional
view of this novel upside-down and convincingly paints a portrait of the
harsh and frightening world that constantly threatens Tom and his friends.
Twain's first novel, often viewed through rose-tinted spectacles as a
nostalgic backward glance at a carefree childhood, has much of the same grim
pessimism as his later works. She reminds us that this is the world where
Huck Finn spent his time before his own book, and concludes that by better
understanding this world we can better understand Huck.

Tom Quirk's "The Realism of Huck Finn" begins by tracing the separate
narrative perspectives of Mark Twain and Huck Finn, explicating the story as
it passes from one narrator to the other. He also explores the realism that
it shares with Melville's _Moby Dick_. Quirk brings in Henry James's _The
Art of Fiction_ toward the end of his essay and it will surprise some
readers that Twain's rendering of Huck Finn's story fulfills what James saw
as the essential requirements for a successful work of fiction. Twain
thought as little of Henry James as he did Walter Scott or Jane Austen, and
would have shuddered at the thought of a Jamesian nod of approval.

Everett Carter writes in his essay titled "Huckleberry Finn" that Twain, as
a professional writer, had to produce work that would "earn its and his way"
and for this reason his story both "delights and instructs" and therefore
conforms to "the oldest traditions of his craft" that date to the times of
the Roman writers who first established these basic tenets. Carter also
presents the sordidness and sadness of the story, but demonstrates how the
overtone of humor and satire provide a healing and affirmative mood that
makes this work "America's comic masterpiece."

In "Huck, Jim, and American Racial Discourse" David L. Smith describes
racism in America beginning with the words of Thomas Jefferson. He presents
race as a social construct that is used to denote superiority of one group
in society over another, and shows how this defines both attitudes and
language. Smith writes "Most obviously, Twain uses 'nigger' throughout the
book as a synonym for 'slave'" (p. 216) and shows how this word has misled
some modern readers to charge Twain's novel with racism. Modern readers
would be wise to remember that Twain was not merely using this word to be
authentic, nor to shock or offend, but instead to "demystify" the concept of
race, to present an American civilization where "real individual freedom, in
this land of the free, cannot be found" (p. 230).

Lawrence Berkove makes a second appearance and pleads a case for _A
Connecticut Yankee_ as Twain's other masterpiece. He confronts the
difficulty in teaching this novel, and deals head-on with the "problem" of
the abrupt shift in tone from humor to tragedy that has troubled so many
readers, viewing it as part of Twain's deliberate hoaxing of the reader
through the use of an unreliable narrator (Hank Morgan). He explains the
three layers of narration (Twain, Clarence, and Hank Morgan), and reminds us
that while Morgan is never ironic, Twain most certainly is (a narrative
structure that parallels Twain's other masterpiece). He also reminds us that
Twain saw God as a tyrant and trickster, and that just as man is the victim
of God's hoax, the reader of this book is the victim of Twain's hoax in this
anti-Calvinist novel. As with the story of Huck Finn, this novel is a
"denial of the possibility of human freedom."

David Ketterer presents "Mark Twain as a Science Fiction Writer" and places
him high in the pantheon of such writers like Sir Thomas More, Jonathan
Swift, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells. This
essay originally appeared as an introduction to a 1984 collection of Twain's
science fiction writings, and the essay includes unedited references to
those texts in an appendix, which of course is not included here. Aside from
this minor glitch, Ketterer's argument is well-informed, cogent, and well
written, and the number of Twain's writings that can be correctly viewed as
science fiction is truly astonishing. Twain's use of time-travel, dreams
within dreams, new and imagined technologies, and microscopic worlds places
Twain among the major science fiction writers. Twain was also the first
writer to make use of the "generation starship" genre, in which people
survive through time and space in an enclosed space where myths arise to
explain their world, a world that is debunked when the people finally escape
into the larger world outside their own. He concludes by admitting that
Wells and Verne, as contemporaries of Twain, have greater reputations as
science fiction writers, but that _A Connecticut Yankee_ is a landmark
science fiction work that establishes Twain at the zenith of the time-travel
genre.

Finally, Michael Kiskis's essay examines the ways Mark Twain makes use of
the tradition of domesticity in American literature, in particular, how
Twain defines "the home," explores the "boundaries of home" and writes about
the "freedom to be gained by belonging." He explores the domestic literary
tradition (as described by Gillian Brown in _Domestic Individualism:
Imagining Self in Nineteenth Century America) in three of Twain's works:
_Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_, "The Death of Jean," and the
_Autobiography_, but he also cites works in which domestic ills arise for
some of Twain's best-known characters: Tom Sawyer, Hank Morgan, Adam and
Eve, Joan of Arc, Roxy, the McWilliamses, and the people of Hadleyburg. He
concludes with the observation that the traditions of the old Southwest were
not the only influences and sources of Twain's humor, but that some of his
most successful humor and best writing sprung from the domestic literary
tradition.

These essays suggest new paths in Twain scholarship and may provoke scholars
to stray from heavily trodden familiar ground. Teachers of Twain's works
will find this volume a trustworthy map when guiding students to see more
than what shimmers on the surface of Mark Twain's narratives, and casual
readers will find these writings to be a reliable compass that inspires
re-readings of some works with a new sense of direction.

The well-chosen combination of these essays in this single volume multiplies
their total effect, so that they provoke new insights even more than they
might individually. Anyone who holds this volume in their hand for any
length of time will find themselves flipping pages back and forth, jotting
down notes as their perspectives on Mark Twain broaden every moment. It's a
page-turner.