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Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years

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I'm the type of reader who loves a good story. I read fiction 90% of the time. I often find biographies to fall short of my desire to get engrossed in the lives of the characters. In order to cover all the important points of the subject's life, the author has to resort to summarizing. Not in this book! Michael Shelden has written a truly good story - and the great thing about his book is that it's a well-researched story about a fascinating character in American history which reads almost like a novel. I don't think I've ever said "I couldn't put it down" when I've attempted to read the best-selling biographies on the market. While reading this fabulous book, I ignored all sorts of responsibilities to finish it. Mark Twain was quite a character and Mr. Shelden does an excellent job telling the story of the last few years of his life.

Without the burden of explaining Twain's early years on the river and the immortal characters of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the biography begins with the donning of his infamous white suit and details the adventures of what turns out to be the last 4 years of his life. Were any of us to know how much time we had left, if nothing else, the biography serves as an example of how to live fully to the very end. We know Twain was a character but to know that much of his persona he invented was much like going behind the curtain in the 'Wizard of Oz'. Shelden is astute in every detail and weaves the facts into such a tale as to make you forget this is non-fiction. Entertaining, yes! Poignant, yes! You won't want to miss the ending, so ironic you couldn't make this stuff up. And yet, when you ponder it for a while, it was so Mark Twain. Kudos to the author for capturing the bigger than life reality that surrounded this figure the likes of which we may never see again. The pictures are worth the price of the book but the story is something you will be discussing with fellow readers for a long time.

Okay, I of course realize that Twain died nearly a hundred years ago, but Shelden's biography is so engaging that I seem to have lived the last few days with Twain. I could not put the book down, and could not stop sharing details I'd read with friends and coworkers. Thank you, Michael Shelden for sharing Twain's last years so vividly.

The test for any biographer of Mark Twain is whether or not the author has been able to bring the magnificent life and wit and sorrow and wisdom of Twain to life. Michael Shelden has done this and more. I can smell nothing but Twain's cigar as I brush away the ashes.

Shelden tells a wonderful story of a lunch between Twain and George Bernard Shaw. After the lunch reporters questioned Shaw about his take on Twain. Even though they had just recently met Shaw answered that he felt he and Twain had known each other all their lives because of Twain's "complete gift of intimacy." Michael Shelden's pen has a similar gift.

This well researched book provides an affectionate look at our most beloved humorist in the last years of his remarkable life. Mark Twain's sometimes troubled relationships with family and close associates, his foibles and self-love are leisurely explored on a background of an American society that seems so different but often not so different from ours, 100 years later, and Mark Twain usually comes out on the side of the angels and good sense. The best of the book remains the skepticism and wit of Mark Twain himself, a man of humble beginnings, a self-made man who had "roughed it", but in his last years donned a white suit and, a little like a chaste Hugh Heffner, became the angel of an Aquarium of young women called Angelfish whom he loved and who loved him. At the very end the author touchingly elevates Mark Twain to visionary status when Twain predicted, almost to the day, the return of Halley's comet as a herald of his death--as it had, 75 years earlier, of his birth.

From the first chapters, Dr. Shelden's book sparkles and snaps just like Mark Twain did even in his final years. This biography covers the last three years of Clemen's life from his appearance in what is to be his iconic "white suit" in Congress to support copyright extension legislation to his final days in Bermuda and Redding, CT. Twain positively bursts from the pages of this book, delighting in verbal sparring with the press, enjoying flirtations with Broadway actresses, teaching his "Angelfish" how to play pool and cards and dictating his autobiography which was full of things it was not politic to publish while still alive.

While the typical view of Twain's later years was one of depression and gloom, the author argues Twain had periods of despair throughout his life and surrounded himself with people to combat the darkness. He delighted in new technology, unfortunately investing in a movable press that almost did him in financially. However, his friend Henry Rogers, an executive with Standard Oil, bailed him out of that bump and helped keep him afloat time after time when Twain made bad financial decisions.

The author does a commendable job of describing the tone and details of the early 1900's, Twain's family relationships and incessant travel, his delight in being in the public eye and the center of attention. Enjoy this tale and share it with a friend!

Shelden has a great time writing about Twain's last years as a literary lion. The tone seems in keeping with Twain's own public image: the book is subtitled "The Grand Adventure of His Final Years" -- Twain was up to mischief almost until the end, making trips to Bermuda, smoking against doctors orders ("I don't care for death, and I do care for smoking," he quipped), and still writing furiously. He reveled in the chance to enjoy life while he was able, in public and, as much as he could, in his private life.

Twain enjoyed his reputation as a traveler and a tale-spinner (the public image was a part of Clemens's fiction until the man and his creation were indistinguishable.) He worried that his fame might be passing. "Mark Twain: Man in White" shows he did everything in his power to ensure his continued recognition -- constantly writing for posthumous publication, even badgering the newspapers at one point to print his obituary so he himself could read it. (One paper went along; "Here it is," the headline read.) Mr. Clemens and Mr. Twain will undoubtedly enjoy the commotion his final manuscript stirs, should it ever see print -- most likely in the 25th century.

Mark Twain is easily among the most quoted writers of all time. He had a gift for matching his languid homespun observations with all manner of human folly. He was followed by reporters like a modern-day celebrity. But no modern-day celebrity could match Twain for his acerbic wit.

This book takes up the life of Twain shortly after the untimely death of his first-born daughter, Susy, and his wife, Livy. He enters the narrative in his much-heralded white outfit as he struts into a Senate hearing on a bill about copyrights. And what a life he had! Schmoozing with the scholastic, literary and political lions of his age. Receiving an honorary doctorate at Oxford with all due deference from his admirer Rudyard Kipling. Sailing choppy seas with industrial magnates. Dining with heads of state on both sides of the Atlantic.

But rubbing elbows with movers-and-shakers isn't what endeared me to The Master. Twain was especially fond of his Angelfish, that is, the young girls he courted as his own daughters:

"Walking along the beach one day with the girl, Twain picked up a small shell and gently separated the two halves. Giving her one, he said that if they met again at some distant time in the future, and she looked so different that he couldn't recognize her, she only had to produce her half of the shell to prove her identity. . . . The next morning, when he saw her in the hotel dining room, he went up to her with a sad face and pretended not to recognize her. . . As he turned to walk away, she cried out for him to stop and triumphantly produced her half of the shell. Twain beamed with pleasure, taking satisfaction from the scene because it was spontaneous on her part and cleverly theatrical on his."

I especially enjoyed the bookend of Twain's life provided by astronomers at Harvard. Mark Twain himself had commented, "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty said, no doubt, `Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'"

I kept this short because I could never do justice to a book of this majesty. If you're a Twainiac like me, beg, borrow, check out or steal this book.

The book focuses on the last 4 years in the life of Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens where he recovers from the death of his wife, puts on the white suit that we know him by, enters a second (or maybe third) childhood, and puts some serious thought into his legacy. Despite tragedy, scandal, and the usual complains of old age (ill health, death of old friends), he is a completely unrepentant irrepressible irascible old man writing things he fully intended to be published after his death and beyond the opinions of polite society.

It was a fabulously interesting book. I hope to have that kind of fun when I'm 70-something. I gained new appreciation for how funny and smart he was. How I would have liked to sit down with him for an hour or two and argued about copyright and literature! And apparently I could have sold him a bridge or two for a tidy profit.

This book is really great. It is filled with very well researched information about Mark Twain that I haven't seen in any other biography of the great man. Inherent in it is the humor, of course. I don't remember reading about these humorous moments in any other books. For me, the essence of Twain as a man was the end of his life. It was filled with sadness that pretty much uncovered his character glimpsed throughout his earlier years. Amazingly though, Mark Twain kept his great sense of irony and humor. This fact alone as evidenced throughout this wonderful book is enough to put the final stamp of greatness on Twain