Editorial Content for Mark Twain
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Reviewer (text)
Esteemed biographer Ron Chernow offers an extensive, intensive and sensitive view of Mark Twain, whose writings --- both fictional and factual --- comprise true American literature.
Born Samuel Clemens, Twain’s life can be seen in simple terms. A hard-working, determined man who lived through the Civil War and its aftermath, Twain wrote frankly about what he saw and what was implied in the politics and personalities he encountered. Through Chernow’s deep mining of thousands of Twain’s written materials, including letters and unpublished manuscripts, readers will come to know him and understand why he has been so lauded.
"[Chernow's] penchant for detail is apparent in this extensive work that introduces Mark Twain to a new generation and may encourage aspiring writers to break out of conventional molds, as he did, in style and subject matter."
Twain’s travels began when, after learning the craft of typesetting, he secured a job as a steamboat pilot, a position he had often dreamed of from his childhood home in Hannibal, Missouri. The river, and his gradually evolving rejection of the slavery of Blacks that was so visible all around him, became a force and a forum for novels about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. They revealed to his growing audience a persistent message as presented by Chernow: “middle-class moralists are hypocrites, and outcasts are people of true value.”
Either alone or with his beloved wife, Olivia (known as Livy), Twain traversed the globe, being welcomed by royals and once writing a speech entirely in German. He also reported on the denigration of enslaved and impoverished peoples in countries like Fiji, Sri Lanka and South Africa. Following financial calamities, he took his family to Europe, where they lived for nearly a decade. The loss of Livy marred his final years; he pursued the company of young women and began to speculate, even dream, about death and the beyond. His passing inspired a surge of praise for his talents, which demonstrated “the best and the worst of America, all rolled into one.”
Ron Chernow is an award-winning biographer whose WASHINGTON: A LIFE garnered a Pulitzer Prize. Other works brought him such recognitions as the National Humanities Medal and the Gold Medal for Biography of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His penchant for detail is apparent in this extensive work that introduces Mark Twain to a new generation and may encourage aspiring writers to break out of conventional molds, as he did, in style and subject matter.
Perhaps Twain’s greatest accomplishment was his wish to be applauded and rewarded as purely himself, an admirable quality that anyone would seek to emulate.
Teaser
Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper. It wasn’t long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize. In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care.
Promo
Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper. It wasn’t long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize. In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care.
About the Book
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain.
Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper, writing dispatches that attracted attention for their brashness and humor. It wasn’t long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize.
In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care. After establishing himself as a journalist, satirist and lecturer, he eventually settled in Hartford with his wife and three daughters, where he went on to write THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER and ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. He threw himself into the hurly-burly of American culture, and emerged as the nation’s most notable political pundit. At the same time, his madcap business ventures eventually bankrupted him; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play.
Drawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures the man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialization and foreign wars, and who was the most important white author of his generation to grapple so fully with the legacy of slavery. Today, more than 100 years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.
Audiobook available, read by Jason Culp
