Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens [Hardcover]

Jerome Loving (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 2010

Mark Twain, who was often photographed with a cigar, once remarked that he came into the world looking for a light. In this new biography, published on the centennial of the writer's death, Jerome Loving focuses on Mark Twain, humorist and quipster, and sheds new light on the wit, pathos, and tragedy of the author of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In brisk and compelling fashion, Loving follows Twain from Hannibal to Hawaii to the Holy Land, showing how the southerner transformed himself into a westerner and finally a New Englander. This re-examination of Twain's life is informed by newly discovered archival materials that provide the most complex view of the man and writer to date.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the latest volume for the centennial of Twain's death, Loving (Walt Whitman: Song of Himself) serves up a balanced literary biography of a crowded life—to renew our acquaintance with this familiar stranger in our literature and culture. Many of the best chapters include sensitive appraisals of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the anonymously published Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer put in a different context as possibly the most overrated work of American fiction when considered as adult literature. In fact, this Mark Twain flows with the easy familiarity of a scholar who has spent a lifetime tracking 19th-century American literature. Of certain interest is the discussion, at various points, of Twain's complex views on blacks and slavery, Native Americans, the Chinese, and—particularly from the standpoint of his home in fin-de-siècle Vienna—on Jews. If this biography of Clemens's many adventures fails to delve psychologically into the writer's family and other relationships, it is a solid contribution to literary interpretation of the man who infused American literature with what has been called tragic laughter. 37 b&w photos. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Because he is surveying Twain’s entire career, Loving covers the same ground that Morris does. Yet he does so with a fresh interpretive perspective: readers see how Twain first finds his imaginative posture as a travel writer and then adapts that posture in all his later books. The restless eye of Innocents Abroad and Roughing It is still a roving witness—albeit a more artistically informed one—in Huckleberry Finn and The Gilded Age. Perceptive analysis clarifies why Twain resolves his perplexities—literary, familial, and financial—by uprooting himself and moving on, his mobile perspective ultimately reflecting the restive soul of a still-immature nation. Readers marvel both at how Twain’s ever-shifting imagination melds comedy with tragedy in potent synthesis and at how the author’s unpredictable trajectory puts him in association with diverse figures, including Union hero U. S. Grant and southern favorite Joel Chandler Harris. Though Loving offers a view of Twain’s last years much darker than Shelden’s, readers will value this portrait of a peripatetic genius traversing a wide swath of American culture. --Bryce Christensen

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 520 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (March 31, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520252578
• ISBN-13: 978-0520252578
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #999,483 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A very tedious book, May 17, 2010

By 

webwiz99 "DFR" (Chicago, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens (Hardcover)

It is so detailed in relating every little bit of Twain's life to some
character or incident in his writings that one cannot "get on" with the
narrative. Unless you recall every detail of Twain's writings, these
references mean little and the whole is like working your way through a
long recipe.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very well researched, but boring...., May 18, 2010

By 

Taylor (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens (Hardcover)

Exellent job of research, but boring to the point that I could not get into this without skipping around. Some wonderful passages but overall, I much preferred Lighting Out for the Territory....

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars something old,little new,much borrowed,nothing blue, May 25, 2010

By 

R. dantas "undecadimensional" (sao paulo sp Brazil) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens (Hardcover)

I think the title of my review is the review .Except for the pictures most of it is old stuff but as it is always a pleasure reading about Mr. Clemens the subject saves the book