Customer Reviews

Mark Twain: The Mysterious Stranger and Other Curious Tales

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When I was a young teenager (and that was many years ago) I read Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger" and it had a most dramatic affect on my life. It was the summation of what my youthful mind had been trying to figure out. Let me preface my further comments by saying that I am a devoted (I hope) Christian and have been for over 15 years. However, there was a long stretch when I was a confirmed atheist and, if I was to point to a Bible for that point of view, for me it was this book. In this short novel, Twain tells his story through the experiences of some young boys who encounter a "mysterious stranger'. The stranger points out many of the inconsistencies of Christianity and the world around us. Essentially the issue is the question many people have asked over the years; Why do bad things happen to good people? Twain delves deeply into this issue and the numerous examples lead the young narrator to conclude that the rantings of the stranger are, indeed, the truth. I am comfortable today re-reading this fascinating story because it is such an excellently crafted expalantion of Twain's theology in his later years. As a student of Twain, I became exasperated by the many scholars who tended to dismiss his later writings as the ramblings of a grieving man. It is true that Twain suffered many personal losses and I am sure that it influenced his perspective. However, much of his later work was brilliant. The reviewers I read often dismissed these later body of writing. It seemed to me that most of them had the opinion that, if it didn't make you laugh or give you insight to life on the Mississippi, then it wasn't important. I heartily disagree and "The Mysterious Stranger" is an excellent example of the brilliance of his later works.

I looked over the table of contents of this collection and I noticed a lot of other good stories among them. Two that came to mind were "Captain Stormfield" and "The Man who Corrupted Hadleyburg". This strikes me as a great introduction to the Mark Twain beyond "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn".

Highly presumptuous of me to review as I have not read the entire novella. However I am essaying this review to note how powerful I find Mark Twain's posthumously published thesis. The implications are truly demonic and deserve careful thought. Ironically the current film TRUMAN has a similar theme. Yesterday at a special UC Berkeley collection of Mark Twain's papers and works I saw this little book prominently displayed as number 44 in UC press's massive series on the great author. I will be interested to read the reactions of others---presuming, unlike Twain, that there are such ;!