(Don't shoot me. I'm just forwarding the message. Larry) Lionel Rolfe wrote: > From [log in to unmask] Thu Jun 20 22:50:47 1996 > Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 19:51:30 -0800 > From: Lionel Rolfe <[log in to unmask]> > Subject: for your consideration and comment... > X-Url: http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/forum/twainweb.html > > CALIFORNIA CLASSICS BOOKS > 213/413-8400 > > For Twain Scholars: > > > June 20, 1996 > > SERIOUS CHARGES AGAINST > UC BERKELEY MARK TWAIN PAPERS PROJECT > > Contact: Lionel Rolfe, (213) 413-8400, Fax (213) 483-3524 or e-mail, > [log in to unmask] > > California Classic's author Nigey Lennon (we just published her BEING > FRANK: My Time with Frank Zappa) charges the Mark Twain Papers at UC > Berkeley with some serious and even scandalous charges in this article just > published in today's The Metro (San Jose). Nigey is the author of THE > SAGEBRUSH BOHEMIAN: Mark Twain in California (Marlowe and Co. > ).This article is available for your comment, or can be reprinted for an > appropriate reprint fee. > > > Mark Twain: The American Autodidact versus the Academic Axes; or, > Roughing It > at the Mark Twain Papers > > By Nigey Lennon > > When it appeared in 1872, Mark Twain's Roughing It shocked East Coast > readers with its crude but engaging firsthand description of life on the > American frontier. And now, 124 years after its publication, it is still > creating > similar alarms in the genteel world of academia, as my own experience > indicates. > The saga began in 1981, when I received a contract from Chronicle Books of > San Francisco to write a book about Mark Twain in California. I was then, as > I am now, what Oakland author Ishmael Reed has referred to as a > "freelance pallbearer," an independent writer with an interest in Western > American history and literature, among other things. > I have been more or less earning a living by scribbling since I was 16, after > being expelled from high school in Manhattan Beach, California for > smoking on campus. As was the case with Mark Twain, the world of > literature was my university, and I discovered Twain's writing, via "The > Innocents Abroad," when I was living in London in 1973. > Twain arrived in the Nevada Territory with his brother Orion Clemens, > who had just been appointed secretary to Territorial Governor James Nye, > in 1861. In the intervening decade, Twain would call the Western frontier > his home, from the mining camps of Aurora, Angels Camp and Virginia > City to the Barbary Coast of San Francisco. > During this decade, he would struggle up the ladder of occupations, going > from hardscrabble miner to mining speculator, from newspaper reporter to > contributor to literary journals to travel correspondent, from public speaker > to the role of "Moralist of the Main" (this tongue-in-cheek designation > having been bestowed on Twain by his fellow bohemian scribblers at San > Francisco's Golden Era literary newspaper-a half-serious jab at Twain's > struggle to combine humor and morality in his comical essays). > When he arrived in the West, Twain was a 26-year-old drifter whose > lucrative profession of steamboat pilot had evaporated due to the blockade > of the Mississippi River by Union forces at the start of the Civil War. When > he left the West for good, nine years later, he was a writer with a > burgeoning > national reputation and a writing style that would change little in the > ensuing years. > The West had taken a greenling from Missouri and in 10 years of hard > usage had reforged him in its image, giving him a vigorous > vernacular-ideologically as well as linguistically-and a world of new ideas > that he would explore for the rest of his life. > Clearly, Mark Twain would never have become the man or the writer he > became if he had been born into a moneyed family and sent to an Eastern > university. And in fact Twain acknowledged his populist stance in the > preface to Roughing It (his third book, after The Celebrated Jumping Frog of > Calaveras County and Other Sketches and The Innocents Abroad, > respectively): "This book is merely a personal narrative, not a pretentious > history or a philosophical dissertation." > In researching my book, I drew heavily on Roughing It and on the sections > of Twain's Autobiography that touched on his Western years. But when I > turned to secondary sources, I noticed something which at first I didn't > understand: the fact that no one seemed to have seen fit to describe Twain's > Western decade as formative. > Several authors had written books on the subject, and there were > numerous articles, monographs, theses and papers on various details of > that period of Twain's life, but nowhere was there any suggestion that > Twain's Western sojourn had been anything but a relatively unimportant > prelude to his "real" life in the East. In Roughing It, however, Twain > himself had credited the West with giving him both his lifelong > occupations: writer and public lecturer. He had even adopted his famous > moniker in Virginia City, Nev. So why was there such a universal blind > spot in recognizing the West as the birthplace of Mark Twain, literally and > figuratively? > Initially I attributed this oversight to regional bias, since a large percentage > of the authors writing about Twain were East Coast-based. As a > California writer, I had learned early on the futility of proposing any book > with a West Coast theme, however slight or general, to an Eastern > publisher; > such topics were usually rejected by the mainline New York publishing > houses as being too "regional," even though the same publishers had no > doubts about the universality of, say, detailed histories of New York's > Lower East Side. > But I soon realized that this theory did not explain the reticence of Western > researchers to claim Twain as one of "us." Writers such as Ivan Benson, a > UCLA professor who had written a small book on Twain in the West in the > 1930s, and Effie Mona Mack, a Nevada writer whose Mark Twain in > Nevada was published by Scribner's in 1946, seemed to have no overview > of the significance of Twain's Western years. Later Western writers were no > better. > Only Franklin Walker, author of San Francisco's Literary Frontier, a > landmark survey of California literary history, seemed able to discern the > parallels between Twain's development as a writer with his life in > California and Nevada, but even Walker stopped short of making a > conclusive statement that Twain was a Western writer. > I developed a clearer understanding of the politics of the situation when I > attempted to gain access to the large collection of Twain manuscripts, > letters and documents at UC-Berkeley's Bancroft Library. I assumed that a > person with a book contract on the subject in question merely had to call > the > Mark Twain Papers project office and politely request an appointment to > inspect the archive. I was summarily enlightened. > My initial call was taken by an underling who claimed my request would > be forwarded to the appropriate authority. When there was no response > after two weeks, I called again. This time I evidently reached a slightly > higher level clerk, who inquired into my academic background. I told the > truth and said that I had no university encumbrances. The clerk, with an > audible smile in his voice, quickly informed me that I probably wouldn't be > allowed access to the collection unless I could provide a "legitimate" letter > of reference from someone who did have academic connections. It was > obvious that he thought he'd never hear from me again. > I had no trouble getting a good friend who was head of the special > collections department at the Cal State Long Beach library to write me a > recommendation. Having a more seasoned view of the situation than I > had, he sent his letter, not to the Mark Twain Papers, but to a > special-collections > librarian in UC-Berkeley's Californiana department who evidently had > seniority over the toilers at the Mark Twain Papers project. The difference > in reception was dramatic. Within two days, I received a letter from a fellow > named Robert Pack Browning at the MTP, granting me official leave to > conduct research at the collection. > I spent a week in Berkeley, working from 8:30am to 5pm in a rather > cramped little back room at the Mark Twain Papers offices. There were > other, more spacious, places in that section of the library where I could have > worked > just as well, but I suppose I was viewed with some condescension by the > staff, who probably weren't used to 26-year-old freelance pallbearers > examining the holy relics with their battered cowboy boots propped up on > the > table. > Still, I behaved myself, and addressed everyone politely, and didn't > complain when the clerks confiscated my fountain pen because it had a > sharp nib, or even when they insisted on inspecting my pockets for the > family silverware every time I left the premises. > Following an additional two weeks of research at the Mark Twain Papers > just before the book was published, Mark Twain in California appeared in > 1982 and went out of print a couple of years later, for the usual reasons. I > took my original research and amplified it into an expanded book, The > Sagebrush Bohemian, which was published by Paragon House in 1991 and > is still in print today. > All this pleasant reminiscing is to lead up to the fact that I recently > received a copy of the Mark Twain Papers' latest publication, an annotated > edition of Roughing It. The MTP previously published an academic > hardcover edition in 1993, but the present paperback is intended for a more > general audience. > I picked it up and began leafing through the front matter. Something about > Harriet Elinor Smith's foreword seemed strangely familiar: "It was in the > West that Clemens found and eventually accepted his vocation as a > humorist." > Well, that was mincing words slightly, but the idea was the same. > Then I turned to the back and started going over the annotations. A > surprising amount of the background detail pertaining to Twain's years in > San Francisco could only have come from my books. I was especially struck > by the details of Twain's "Wide West Mine" story as recounted in the > annotations. I had spent the two weeks just prior to the publication of my > the original book, in 1981, going over every document I could find > pertaining to the facts surrounding Twain's supposed claim, with his friend > Calvin Higbie, on an outcropping of the Wide West mine in Aurora. > After a fortnight's work, it seemed evident that the story, as recounted by > Twain in Roughing It, was greatly distorted. There was no record indicating > that Twain, or Higbie either, for that matter, had ever filed a claim on any > spur or extension of the Wide West. I wrote up my findings and left them > with the Mark Twain Papers, in case someone might be able to use them > someday. > Well, someone was able to use them all right, only in the intervening > years, they'd evidently forgotten where they came from. All my research > was intact in the annotations to Roughing It, but my name or publications > were nowhere to be found in the bibliography. > When I asked some "recovering academic" friends of mine why they > thought this omission had occurred, the consensus (consensus is extremely > important in academia) was something like this ("And this is definitely off > the record!"): because I was a "civilian," I was considered fair game. Had I > been doing graduate or post-graduate work at the Mark Twain Papers, I > would have received slightly more credit for my contributions; but since I > am merely a published writer and not an academic, I was viewed as a > barbarian by the > gatekeepers, hence their lack of courtesy in identifying my work. > I suppose I shouldn't complain when Twain himself has received even > shabbier treatment at the hands of his academic keepers. Mark Twain has > never been understood by the academic world, primarily because he was an > autodidact. He was also outspoken against much of the genteel literary > tradition with which many academics identify. This quality certainly had its > roots in his origins as a Western writer-origins which, for complex > historical reasons, the academic world have often found distasteful. > In 1911, the philosopher George Santayana, speaking before the > Philosophical Union of the University of California on "The Genteel > Tradition in American Philosophy," made the following observation about > the polarization of American intellectual life: "One half of the American > mind, that not occupied intensely in practical affairs, has remained ... > slightly becalmed," while meanwhile "the other half of the mind was > leaping down a sort of Niagara Rapids." > He concluded, "The one is the sphere of the American man; the other, at > least predominantly, of the American woman. The one is all aggressive > enterprise; the other is all genteel tradition." Santayana then posed the > question: "Have there been ... any successful efforts to express something > worth expressing behind its back? ... I might mention the humorists, of > whom you here in California have had your share." > Santayana could very well have been summing up the East/West schism > in the academic viewpoint, substituting only "Western" for the male > component and "Eastern" for the female opposite. "Humorists" were > Western, like Josh Billings and Artemus Ward-alkali dust-covered yarn > spinners with coarse vocabularies and ephemeral popularity but certainly > no lasting merit in the literary pantheon. Mark Twain, "the Bohemian > from the sagebrush," as he was known in the 1860s, fit this image neatly in > the eyes of the terminally genteel. After all, he had acquired his craft in the > cubbyholes of frontier newspapers rather than in Ivy League universities or > New England literary salons. > At a time when "polite" literature required legs to be referred to as > "limbs," Twain's writing exhibited what Bret Harte described, with an > exquisite shudder, as a "rather broad and Panurge-like" style of expression. > This style derived from the vigorous vernacular of mining camps, stage > stations and the Barbary Coast-the language of the frontier. > It might seem absurd to state that Santayana's Victorian > philosophical-literary schizophrenia is still prevalent today in intellectual > circles, yet all one need do is consider the ongoing controversy surrounding > The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (recently published in a new, > expanded edition) to determine that Twain, the 19th-century author, > refuses to die-and neither does the hypocritical gentility handed down by > the thin-lipped New England bluestockings Santayana was referring to. > In an article in the January 1996 Harper's magazine titled "Say It Ain't So, > Huck," author Jane Smiley revealed herself to be a card-carrying member of > that club. Having just re-read Huck Finn, Smiley closes the book, stunned. > "Yes, stunned," she says. "Not, by any means, by the artistry of the book but > by the notion that this is the novel all American literature grows out of, > that this is a great novel, that this is even a serious novel." > Smiley-known for her bestselling humorous novel about academic life, > Moo-attributes the wide acceptance of Huck Finn to the cheerleading squad > of > what she calls "the Propaganda Era," 1948-1955: Lionel Trilling, Leslie > Fiedler, T.S. Eliot, Joseph Wood Krutch et al. It was, she infers, strictly a > boys' club, which explains why somebody like Hemingway would make his > comment that all American literature grows out of one book, or the first > two-thirds of it anyway. > These guys, Smiley fumes, were evidently too busy shooting Niagara Falls > in a barrel to notice that Huck Finn is sloppily written, morally ambiguous > and far less noteworthy than Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. > "There goes Uncle Tom's Cabin, there goes Edith Wharton, there goes > domestic life as a subject, there go almost all the best-selling novelists of the > 19th century and their readers, who were mostly women," she says bitterly > in castigating this male bastion of critics and their stranglehold on literary > opinion. (She couldn't fit Santayana's cliche more neatly if she'd lifted it > directly.) > While the sincerity of Uncle Tom's Cabin certainly cannot be denied, there > is of course a reason why it (and other books like it that fail to stand the > transition from one era to another) is not read today, while Huck Finn is. > Stowe's novel is a melodramatic tract. In it, there are no characters with > the moral shading of Huck or Jim, only "good guys" (the slaves) and "bad > guys" (their masters.) > In a sense, Uncle Tom's Cabin is ideologically much easier for present-day > politically correct readers to grasp, because it presents a (no pun intended) > black-and-white view of the moral issues facing Civil War-era society. By > contrast, Huck Finn's ethical dilemmas provide no neat solutions to that > era's complex sociopolitical conflicts. But the wooden, polemical style of > Uncle Tom's Cabin is so mired in Victorian convention that it may as well > be in another language; Huck Finn, on the other hand, because its narrator > is an illiterate, slangy, white-trash no-account, ironically remains clearly > understandable today. > > > Ideologically hidebound traditionalists have always had trouble with Mark > Twain, mistaking his idiomatic language for vulgarity and his depiction of > things as they are as morally reprehensible. Smiley dismisses Twain as an > unruly little boy, a complaint that peculiarly echoes the views of the > good-old-boys club she despises. > She concludes her essay: "If 'great' literature has any purpose, it is to > help us face up to our responsibilities instead of enabling us to avoid them > once again by lighting out for the territory." > Evidently, Smiley was unfamiliar with Twain's great moral and political > essays, such as "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" and "King Leopold's > Soliloquy"-or any of his writing after about 1895, for that matter. No writer > ever spent more time grappling with the moral bankruptcy of his age than > did Mark Twain in the last days of his life. > But then, it has always been easier for revisionist critics and commentators > to deal with Twain's universal and dangerous radicalism by dealing with > him piecemeal as a humorist, as a writer of children's books, as a > good-natured rustic describing long-gone days of steamboating on the > Mississippi or as a white-haired crank in a white suit on a Connecticut > verandah. > It probably comes as no surprise that Twain's worst enemies, in various > guises, have come from the halls of academia. More discerning minds than > Smiley have attacked Twain with the brickbats of revisionist biographies, > editorial butchery and politically motivated censorship. Two blatant > examples come immediately to mind; that of Charles Neider's version of > Twain's Autobiography, and Justin Kaplan's 1966 biography Mr. Clemens > and Mark Twain. > Twain's original Autobiography, published in two volumes in 1924, was a > rambling mass of anecdotes, dictated rather than written out by the author > in the final years of his life. In the course of imposing a pattern on the > formless work, Neider, in 1959, reduced the two volumes to one, cutting > the > original by more than half. > It is interesting to contemplate the nature of the material cut. In the > original, Twain alternates straightforward biographical detail with what in > essence are speeches about the volatile political scene in 1906-7, when he > was dictating his memoirs. These random observations include scathing > commentaries on imperialism, expressions of sympathy for the Russian > revolution of 1905, his horror at the emergence of large-scale conglomerates > like Standard Oil, his recognition of the necessity for labor unions (one of > the best chapters in his Life on the Mississippi was about the Pilots > Benevolent Association), and numerous other subjects deemed unfit for > popular consumption in the "I Like Ike" era. > The Neiderized Twain Autobiography, by contrast, could have been the > memoir of almost any late 19th-century popular author. It's an orderly > procession of reminiscences about "old times on the Mississippi," good old > days in Hannibal, the decorous life of a New England man of letters in > Hartford, family life, quaint amusements and eccentric pastimes-and not a > shred of radical sentiment beyond the "liberty, equality, and Fourth of July" > variety. > You can't make a dead man lie, maybe, but you can certainly make him > misrepresent the truth, if you're slick enough. > Kaplan's literary offenses were worse. In Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, he > turned a masterful writing style to the task of deconstructing Twain in a > manner Smiley would have approved of-presenting him as an immature > and self-centered gold-digger who sniffed out pay dirt in the literary circles > of Connecticut, and who lay siege to his future wife Olivia Langdon in > order to gain entry into that charmed circle. > In actuality, Twain harbored no illusions about the Eastern literary > establishment or what it represented; he merely recognized the simple fact > that, if he wished to establish any lasting reputation as an author, he > needed to be where the publishers were. Is it possible it be that Kaplan, > with his background as an East Coast academic, was projecting his own > obsessions onto Twain? > One might smile at the thought that Kaplan was, however unconsciously, > imputing the sophisticated guile of a professorial seeker after tenure to a > man who never completed the third grade. Kaplan (although his > psychological dissection of his subject showed more elegant execution than > had the crude Freudianism of his predecessors such as Van Wyck Brooks or > Bernard DeVoto), however, was merely the most artful of a long line of > academic axemen for whom Twain's autodidactism represented a most > annoying intellectual carbuncle. > The significance of Kaplan's moral-critical approach to Twain and his > writing was that, in reducing him to a mess of neuroses, it provided three > successive decades of biographers with a blueprint for their character > assassinations. > The fact that the man who was one of the greatest writers who ever lived > had never experienced any involvement in academic matters, nor any > desire to do so, nor yet any respect for such institutions, presented these > upholders of the genteel tradition with an agonizing moral quandary. To > give him his due would be to deny all they stood for (and in some notable > cases, to endanger their tenure track); yet since everyone knew Twain was a > great writer even though they may not have read any of his work besides > Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer, it would not reflect well on their intellectual > perspicacity (or their standing in the academic hierarchy) if they were to > dismiss him too precipitously. > But to this end, some of the greatest academic minds of our time (not to > mention the others) have devoted their sabbaticals to ripping apart Mark > Twain. His barbarian Westernness has been sandpapered and polished until > he has become a socially acceptable object, an eccentric old gent in a > white suit on a Connecticut verandah. > His youthful virility has been replaced with the caricature of a dotty (some > insinuate an impotent) old pedophile. His political incisiveness has been > reduced to the homespun "philosophizin' "of a former steamboat pilot. > His insight into the human condition has been boiled and retorted and > spewed back out as the milk-and-mush nostalgia of a ninth-rate children's > writer. > Yet despite the onslaught of academic axes, the damned old buzzard refuses > to die-much, one senses, to the annoyance of his institutional keepers. > # > Nigey Lennon is the author of two books on Mark Twain, the most recent > of > which is The Sagebrush Bohemian: Mark Twain in California (Marlowe > and Co.). Her current book is Being Frank: My Time With Frank Zappa > (California > Classics Books).