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Product Details
Series: Mark Twain Papers (Book 11)
Hardcover: 776 pages
Publisher: University of California Press; 1st edition (October 5, 2013)
As with the first volume that was published three years ago, this autobiography is an oversize hardbook which means it may not fit into a bookshelf with other more traditional hardbooks. Also this edition is a rambling text with no chronological sequence. Mark Twain told stories as he remembered them as they came to him.
The good news is that there is more narrative of Twain's memories (450+ pages) and that all of the scholarly information (280+ pages) is at the end, unlike Volume 1. The only complaint is that half of the end-notes should have been brief footnotes to explain the context of the events and persons. The reader will need to shuttle back and forth now. What the reader has here is Mark Twain's true speaking voice --he is doing a monologue in your presence, going wherever his memory takes him. And it is pretty funny as he comments on the events of his times and settles literary scores -- see his savage critique on Bret Harte (page 119), as an example. If the reader read Volume 1, this volume is even better.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
The fact that Mark Twain could have best-sellers in 3 successive centuries says something about him, and something about us. His preferred method of composition, at the end of his life, was dictation which gives the text a liveliness that is quite enchanting. Some may be put off by the wealth of annotation, but a job worth doing is worth doing right, so a grateful tip of the hat to the editors.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
The simpliest way to review this wonderful book is to say it is as though I was sitting on his lap and he was telling me these great stories as my Grandfather. His humanity pores off each page. No one does it better. What a gift to the world he was and is.
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After finishing the second half of Twain's biograpy, I debated about giving it four stars instead of five, principally because of its rather surprising "abrupt" ending, but decided that the collective work is so remarkable in its format (so "Twain") that it deserves five. I actually have both volumes on my Kindle -- as well as in hard copies -- since their large size makes them cumbersome to hold -- much less read. But Twain's decision to dictate his words -- exactly as his thoughts emerged -- with no attention to either chronology or order of priority, makes this unique autobiography all the more interesting to read. It is as if you were spending time with him -- perhaps over a mint julip -- while he is recalling incidents, expressing opinions, and sharing his innermost private thoughts. HIs decision to not have the work published until 100 years after his death meant that his opinions could be freely expressed without risk of offending living individuals, or their family members. As a result, this is an ecclectic mix of a tell-all book and an intimate self-portrait, laced throughout with the expected humorous anecdotes typical of this beloved American author.
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Those who enjoy Mark Twain's writings and who have an interest in the era in which he lived should buy and read this book along with its earlier issued companion volume.
While this is a true product of this great author, with many bright flashes of wit, it must be said that a good editor at the time of its original writing would have carved out a number of unnecessary words and pages, such as those spilled copying contemporary news clippings of disasters at sea.
I give high praise to the editorial staff at the Mark Twain Project and the University of California Press for their dedicated scholarly efforts and the detailed and interesting explanatory material provided.
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Throughout high school and college and for years after I heard about the quest for the great American novel. Only later in life did I understand that long before Vonnegut, Fitsgerald, and Hemingway that Twain had already written it and then repeated the performance.
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If you only know Mark Twain from a vague memory of having read "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" or "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" when you were in school, you don't know Mark Twain.
Author, critic and playwright William Dean Howells--and Twain's friend for more than four decades--referred to Twain as "the Lincoln of our literature." But that was only one facet of Twain's life. He was a journeyman printer, steamboat pilot, newspaper reporter, prospector, world traveler, platform lecturer, inventor, businessman, family man, and at the time of his death he was the most recognizable man on the planet.
For almost forty years, I taught "Huck Finn" to my high school students and read everything about Mark Twain that I could find, including the original edition of his autobiography as well as published collections of his letters and biographies by Justin Kaplan ("Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain) Ron Powers ("Mark Twain: A Life").
Just when you think you have learned everything about Twain, the University of California Press comes out with the definitive version of his autobiography. Vol. 1, which came out four years ago during the centennial year of Twain's death, shined a light in corners of Twain's life that had not yet been exposed. This second volume does more of the same.
This is not for the casual fan. (The would better be served by Powers' excellent biography mentioned earlier.) But if you want to know Twain on an intimate level, you will want nothing less than each installment of this sprawling autobiography. Much of this may be seen as ephemera, like Twain's commentary on a passage from Susy's Biography regarding how numerous the houseflies were at the Hartford home.Read more ›
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This item: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition (Mark Twain Papers)
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