Dangerous Water: A Biography Of The Boy Who Became Mark Twain [Paperback]

Ron Powers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 16, 2001

While Mark Twain remains one of our most quintessentially American writers, the actual boyhood experiences that fueled his most enduring literature remained largely unexplored—until now. Twain's early years were a decidedly un-innocent time, marked by deaths of friends and family and his father's bankruptcy. Twain dealt with those personal tragedies through humor and the tall tale. From the time that a ten-year-old Samuel Clemens lit out on his own and boarded his first Mississippi steamer to his first encounter with a traveling "mesmerizer" (which ignited his lifelong penchant for acting and spectacle), from the brooding sense of guilt and fear of eternal damnation inculcated into him at church to the superstitions and stories of witchcraft he learned from the blacks on his farm, Powers unforgettably shows how Mark Twain was shaped by the distinctly American landscape, culture, and people of Hannibal, Missouri. Jay Parini, the celebrated biographer of Robert Frost, called Dangerous Water "a long-needed evocation of the boyhood of the man who invented boyhood for all time. . . . An immensely shrewd and deeply engaging book, a great gift to all of us who love Twain."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow," opined Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain). Here, Powers (The Cruel Radiance) follows Twain's genius to its source, illuminating both the sorrow and the exhilaration of a boyhood that provided a lifetime of inspiration. The saga, framed by two anecdotes from Twain's old age, begins with the westward journeys of his grandparents and parents and the arrival of the Clemens family in Missouri just before his birth in 1835 ("I do not remember just when, for I was not then born and cared nothing for such things," remarked Twain). It ends with the death of his brother Henry in 1858. Young Sam's life was a m?lange of horrors, pleasures and difficulties. He was haunted, among other things, by a distant father who moved ever closer to bankruptcy while pursuing dreams of wealth, and by images of the self-immolation of a drunk to whom he had supplied matches. He found great solace in smoking a good cigarAhe began at age sevenAand in the tales and songs he heard around the fire in the slave quarters. Powers regularly draws convincing links between Twain's early life and events and characters in his fiction, locating Twain's greatness as a humorist in the dynamics of his family, the tragedies that surrounded him, the literary currents of the time and a lifelong love for the varieties of spoken language. At times, Powers strains for significance, for instance marking the end of Twain's boyhood four disparate times. But he demonstrates convincingly that "the sunlit parts of [Twain's] childhood cast deep shadows... and in those shadows lay the dark artifacts that would torment and compel him to his masterpieces..-- childhood cast deep shadows... and in those shadows lay the dark artifacts that would torment and compel him to his masterpieces."
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

An eloquent portrait of the American Renaissances greatest writer as a young man. Powers is the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of eight books. His expertise in popular culture, mass media, history, and the American small town is in evidence here as in Far from Home: Life and Loss in Two American Towns (1991). Powers, who also grew up in Hannibal, Mo., sees Mark Twain as Americas first popular, media-fed superstar who knew how to dress for the photo op. Powers exposes Clemenss mirth for the flip side of the mans many tragedies. ``Sammy'' was a premature baby and sickly toddler who grew up into the barefoot boy who showed off for the girl wed know as Becky Thatcher. Far from a protected and fanciful Tom Sawyer, Clemens, as a three-year-old sleepwalker, tugged at his sisters blanket a few days before she died. She was one of several siblings Sam would lose. Unsuccessful but not evil like Huck Finns papy, Samuels father was relatively bland, passing on only his tendency toward bad debts and investments. Powers shows that young Sam was fascinated by the spoken word (whether of preachers or slaves) and by books, from the Bible (despite his famous heresy) to Cooper, because his reality was so painful. The biographer notes an inner conflict that is the key to Clemenss appeal: ``the Connecticut literary gent contending with the western roughneck.'' After adolescence, itching to light out for the territories, young Clemens ``made the break from his landlocked life'' and talked himself to the captains wheel on riverboats. Powers feels the Mark Twain pseudonym helped free Clemens to become the ages most celebrated humorist, traveler, lecturer and novelist. There are 20 pages of chapter notes, but this biography is too good to be confused with literary criticism. Powers calls out ``mark twain'' and leads us on Samuel Clemenss dangerous, poignant, and delightful voyage against the current. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (October 16, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306810867
• ISBN-13: 978-0306810862
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,001,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sam Clemens Through the Eyes of Ron Powers-Dangerous Water, December 6, 1999

By 

Billy Gibbs (USA-Alabama) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dangerous Water: A Biography Of The Boy Who Became Mark Twain (Hardcover)

Dangerous Water A Biography by Sam Powers

Dangerous Waters by Ron Powers is a Biography of the boy who became Mark Twain. The book is an insight into the genealogy of Samuel Clemens. Powers tells how the Family finally came to settle in Hannibal, Missouri after living in various other places in the growing United States. The book also goes into great detail about some of the origins of the style with which Clemens wrote. There is no doubt that the time that young Clemens spent in the slave quarters at his fathers home shaped him in many ways. Hearing slave spirituals such as "Better Day A-Comin" and "You Gonna Reap Just What You Sow" played a big part in shaping the man who would write about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Fin. Powers goes on to write about how Clemens managed to go from being one of the literary elite in the 1800s to bankruptcy at the turn of the century. He tells of Clemens' life in a European society where he was welcomed but never really was at home. The book also covers Clemens' rise out of bankruptcy by traveling the world and giving lectured in places like Ceylon and South Africa and many other far off places that most Americans could only dream about. Even through this, the low point in his life, Clemens managed to catch the attention of the American society with a sort of neo-pioneer commitment to claw his way back to the life he had grown to love in his homeland. Overall I found the descriptions of the life of Samuel Clemens to be very exciting and a joy to learn. The vividness with which Powers tells the stories of Clemens' life as a young man in Hannibal made the tales interesting and captivating. However in some parts of the book, I found Powers to be somewhat wordy and hard to follow. At times, the author is crystal clear and I could actually imagine what the events he was describing must have been like to Clemens. On the other hand, some parts of the book felt extremely tedious to read. Ron Powers is a journalist, novelist and non fiction writer. Powers is the author of eight books and a Pulitzer Prize winner. He has been a columnist for The Chicago Sun Times and GQ magazine. He has been published in magazines such as the New York Times Book Review and Conde Nast Traveler. Powers, Like Clemens grew up in Hannibal, Missouri. I would have to say that this fact alone gives him a unique perspective on what it must have been like growing up to become Mark Twain. Powers is not the only author to study the life of Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain. There are many other authors who have taken on the task of writing about one of America's first super stars. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, A Biography by Justin Kaplan and Inventing Mark Twain, The Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens by Andrew Hoffman are among the most popular. I think this book is best suited for college students or adults who enjoyed reading any of Twain's work and ever found themselves wondering where Twain got his ideas for his early writings such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Dangerous Waters will also interest anyone who wants to learn more about authors of the American Renaissance. This book offers a great insight into the development of Sam Clemens as a writer. So I believe anyone who has ever heard the name Mark Twain will find this book interesting.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before there was Mark Twain there was Sam Clemens, December 21, 1999

By 

"matrixzine" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dangerous Water: A Biography Of The Boy Who Became Mark Twain (Hardcover)

Most biographies on Sam Clemens deal with him as the writer Mark Twain, but as Hannibal native Ron Powers points out there was the boy Sam Clemens who lived in Hannibal, Missouri and that is where the stories came from. The town of Hannibal on the banks of the Mississippi had an important impact on the making of the boy who would become a writer and it takes somebody who lived in Hannibal as a boy to understand the pull of the town and the river. Ron Powers paints a portrait of the boy, his family, the town, and the river and how he became the man the world knows. This biography will be an important part of the canon of Mark Twain as was the Justin Kaplan biography and all that followed.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that breathes life into a legend, April 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dangerous Water: A Biography Of The Boy Who Became Mark Twain (Hardcover)

I do not know of a writer who parses the American cultural landscape with as much intelligence and wisdom as Ron Powers. If you care about America's soul, and how it is faring as forces of modernity encroach upon it, you simply must become acquainted with Ron Powers's writing. This journey through the boyhood days of Sam Clemens is Powers at the height of his form.