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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A fun read, and some history too, August 23, 2001
The genius of Mark Twain is that his work is still enjoyable, and funny, to this day. This book, originally published in 1871, is Twain's account of his journey from Missouri to Hawaii (called the Sandwich Islands in his day). He tells story after story of his adventures along the way, starting with the stagecoach ride on the Overland Stage Line to Carson City, Nevada, around 1861, and then telling of his stay in Nevada, then California, then his visit to Hawaii. The stories are informative, humorous, and all-around entertaining. He lampoons everybody he can--nobody is safe--including miners, pioneers (emigrants), politicians, Mormons, Blacks, American Indians, Chinese, newspaper reporters, "desperados", even himself on more than one occasion. Sometimes his stories are so outrageous that you wonder how much is true and how much is embellishment, or just outright fiction. Even he understands this by telling the reader on occasion that he has not made up a particular story, to demonstrate that truth is often stranger than fiction, but also to imply that he has taken liberties in other places in the book. (I wonder if the Mormon Church has ever banned this book for the things he says about them.) Even while he is being irreverent, however, he often demonstrates a sensitivity toward people, with an awareness of the situation of others that seems to me to be ahead of his time. For example, he has a chapter on the immigrant Chinese population in the West, and while he pokes fun at them in some respects, he spends the time detailing their lives and culture, as much as he could understand it, with a respect that was uncommon in his day. I bought a copy of this book years ago because I am a native Californian, and knew that there was some material in here about California in the early days (my copy is an old hardcover published by Grosset and Dunlap). As Twain states in his Prefatory: "...There is quite a good deal of information in this book. I regret this very much, but really it could not be helped." I enjoyed reading about the "old West" from an eye-witness, although most of it deals with Nevada, not California. While some of it sounded familiar, like something from any Western-genre movie, other things were like nothing I had ever heard of before, describing the "Wild West" from an original point of view. In that respect, this book is a great resource. This book falls short of five stars due to some minor flaws. He often digresses with text that is not only marginal to the point, but not even written by him, reprinting someone else's text. I skipped over some of that. He would also spend pages detailing coversations between other people that he could not have possibly remembered verbatim. While I understand that it was a common writing style of his day, it sounds like bad jounalism today. Those complaints aside, this is some great writing by Twain and some valuable American history.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thank Goodness!, December 9, 2002
Twain is a storyteller in the old-fashioned sense of the word. He spins his tales, weaves his lies, and draws us in with the skill of a magician. Dividing fact from fiction is not always easy in a work such as this. "Roughing It" has moments of obvious hyperbole, grounded by stories of true difficulty. Yet throughout, Twain finds a way to make us smile, even laugh out loud. We are amused by the eccentric characters and turns of events which he describe, and find that we are not so far different as we might like to think. The story follows Twain's journey as he travels west by stagecoach, train, wagon, horse, and ship. He meets surly frontiersmen, murderers, thieves, fortune-hunters, and men of ill-repute. Even here, he finds the good beneath the dirt. I especially enjoyed his anecdote of Scotty Briggs, a man trying to hire a minister to attend over his friend's funeral. Hilarious stuff! And so true to human nature. Throughout his account, Twain makes a habit of degrading his own work ethic, nudging us in the ribs as he highlights his aversion to labor. With this in mind, the title seems to be a tongue-in-cheek affair. In fact, I found his accounts much less rustic and more modern than expected. Sure, we can travel across the U.S. quicker these days, but the politics and economics of Twain's age parallel our own. Will we never learn? Isn't this the point of history, to avoid repeating our errors? Although criticized in his day for using coarse language and a working-class, Twain held to his guns and gave us some magnificent humor with which to swallow his pointed barbs. He was a master satirist, and even in a travelogue such as this, his views shine through. And thank goodness! A century and a half later, I'm thankful for his insights.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Frontier life through the eyes of Americas greatest satirist, June 18, 2003
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of travel logs, journals, reports, diaries, etc. that tell about the American West in the mid-nineteenth century. This book by Mark Twain, however, is both unique and one of the best. This is travel writing as it should be. Twain, traveling across the plains from Missouri to Nevada in the early 1860's, and spending seven years loafing about Nevada, California, and Hawaii, collected and compiled his experiences into this extraordinary book. One of the best things about Twain, of course, is his unique view on things. This tale is told in Twain's wry, humorous style, and is very enjoyable. This book is not quite as pessimistic as Twain's other great travel writing, `The Innocents Abroad,' but it does include some interesting and unorthodox views which often prove hilarious. Twain spends time as a gold and silver seeker, a speculator, a journalist, and a vagabond (as he himself puts it), and puts a unique spin on each of these occupations. As far as travel writing goes, this book is indispensable, and it also proves quite valuable (odd as it may seem) in any thorough study of frontier life in the American West.
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