Customer Reviews

Roughing It (Signet Classics)

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I became acquainted with ROUGHING IT as a high school sophomore. An otherwise fatally boring textbook on "World Geography", began the chapter on America's Rocky Mountain West, with an italicized excerpt from Chapter 43 of ROUGHING IT. That excerpt was Mark Twain's description of Virginia City and the Comstock Lode during the "Flush Times". At that time in the early 1970's, "Bonanza" was a popular TV western. I was surprised to discover that the Virginia City of Twain's experience, made "Bonanza's" Virginia City seem dull! I was hooked, and soon found a tattered old copy of ROUGHING IT at the public library to read. And I have re-read ROUGHING IT many times since, finding it one of those rare books revealing fresh nuggets with every prospecting trip.

ROUGHING IT is captivating in many ways, and on many levels. It's a journey into the real "Old West" on the Overland Stage, a journey on the road from youth to maturity, a journey to a time of wild, crazy events with colorful characters to match, and a journey of young Sam Clemens becoming Mark Twain, all written with the young , enthusiastic Twain's incomparable style and eye for detail and humor.

Twain's peerless storytelling is reason enough to read ROUGHING IT. The discerning reader will soon note one of ROUGHING IT's many levels, the level of being a historic gem. The Western Frontier's early mining era comes vividly to life in all its colorful and fascinating glory. The first 20 chapters are probably the best first-hand account of travel on the Overland Stage in existence. Walking the streets of early 1860's Virginia City, guided by Sam Clemens, and meeting, for example, the "Long-tailed heroes of the revolver" as he described the frock-coated pistoleers of that day, is of priceless historic value. For those with a morbid dread of history, rest assured that with Professor Twain instructing, the subject emerges with a fresh, new perspective that is irresistible.

ROUGHING IT leaves a reader wondering why Hollywood continues to focus on the Western Frontier's "cowboy era". The early mining era of the Western Frontier seems so much more colorful and interesting. Hopefully, someone will drop ROUGHING IT on a studio executive's head , before he commits "Legally Blond 15", "Terminator 25", or "Spiderman 10".

This classic book is often overlooked. That is difficult to understand, because ROUGHING IT reads as freshly as if written yesterday. ROUGHING IT is history properly taught, and the book belongs at the top of any classic book list. Incredibly enough however, ROUGHING IT would also belong at the top of a list of books which are fun to read. Although the terms "Fun to read", and "Classic", almost never describe the same book, ROUGHING IT is the exception, and is well worth the reader's effort.

A long-time fan of Mark Twain, I had still managed to make it past my fortieth birthday never having read this book. But recently, when I needed something to read (you know the kind of days I am talking about), I stumbled across this book and set to laughing.

The story-telling is magnificent. Few writers can take the small things of daily life and make them breathe -- but Twain possessed that gift, and uses it well. How many others went West the same time he did, and never saw the gold dust, sunsets, and taverns the way he wrote them into our consciousness?

And yet, and yet... As much as I loved the stories he told, I see "Roughing It" as important in a different manner. Even when the truth is slightly embellished to make us, his readers (of whom he is always very much aware), laugh out loud, it still truly presents the era and place he put down in black and white. We can be so bombarded with romanticized movies about the gold rush and settlers heading West, that we lose sight of them as genuine people with the same faults and virtues we know in 2001.

But with Mark Twain's keen eye, our history -- our American history -- comes to life. And suddenly, we "get it", we comprehend that all that stuff we had to learn in high school was done by people, not daguerrotypes.

This is Mark Twain's semi-autobiographical narrative about a trip he and his brother took to the Far West soon after the Civil War began, first to the mining camps in Nevada, then San Francisco, and finally to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). He describes in very broad strokes unusual characters (all kinds of people from bandits to Brigham Young), tall tales heard along his journey, what life was like in the gold fields, and what it looked like everywhere he went.

The book came about after the great success of his INNOCENTS ABROAD in 1869. In books like these Twain established himself as a master of satirical (and self-deprecating) humor. The book is enormously entertaining and is one of the most representative books Twain wrote about himself and what he was about in literature: the Western frontier humorist who delighted in understated overexaggeration. It's a great book and a joy to read.

Mark Twain has been my favorite author since I read Huckleberry Finn in sixth grade. I've tried extremely hard to read every single word he's written (besides, I assume, personal letters)...including, of course, the complete short stories (I love The Diaries of Adam and Eve, by the way)...but I digress.

Roughing It is one of my top three books of all time (the other two, in case anyone was wondering, are Les Miserables and Into Thin Air [didn't say it was from a literary standpoint, just my personal opinion]). This is mostly because of the remarkably sharp prose. I love that this stuff (or most of it) actually happened to him, that he doesn't mind putting himself down and doesn't even make a big deal out of it...and...of course...The Book of Mormon. Who in their right mind wouldn't immediately fall in love with Mr. Twain after reading his dissection of The Book of Mormon?

Other reviewers have mentioned the digressions that they feel take away from the overall book. The entire book, my friends, is a digression. That is the point of the book. Those years of his life had ABSOLUTELY NO POINT. He was digressing from his life. That's what makes it hilarious. He just jumps from place to place (the first part is all about his travels in a stagecoach to become the undersecretary, a position he desperately wanted, or at least sarcastically-desperately...and then when he finally gets to Carson he gets bored in about a chapter and leaves, and never goes back). I love how there's something quotably hilarious about every other paragraph, and the understatement of the humour just makes it more hilarious!

I've read this book three times in about four years, and I recommend it to about anyone interested in an extremely funny...diversion.

It wasn't Horace Greeley calling Mark Twain to "Go west young man, go west". Rather, in 1861, after Twain had had his fill of the civil war, he responded to his brother's (Orion) urging to go out west to the Nevada territory with him. "Roughing It" is a personal, and mostly factual, account of Twain's adventures into the wild west from 1861 up until 1867, when he began his pleasure excursion to the Holy Lands, and which is the subject of his first travelogue, "The Innocents Abroad".

During this time, Twain was a gold and silver prospector - and made the claim that for a day he was a millionaire. He also dabbled in mining stocks and timber, and gives us an exacting account of how gold and silver was assayed. His most prominent, and infamous, role of course was that of newspaper man. For it was writing and reporting where he crafted and fine tuned this trade which ultimately made him famous. It was also during this time he wrote his first story, "The Celebrated Frog of Calevaras County".
The west may have been wild and untamed in the era Twain lived in it; and indeed, Twain himself was wild and untamed. But he learned to use humor to through his writings, sketches, and reports to breathe a little levity into the lives of the people who, for the most part, were suffering in this climate; all of which is chronicled in "Roughing It". Included is Twain's account of his first attempt at lecturing, and how terrified he was.
I highly recommend "Roughing It" not merely for its humor and satire; but also because this is where Mark Twain the writer originated. He entered it as Samuel Clemens, and came out it Mark Twain. One might say the west gave birth to Mark Twain; and that, years later, after he left the west, it took the courage and conviction of his wife, Livy, to raise this wild orphan. It you want to learn more about Mark Twain than you ever dreamed, read this incredible travelogue, "Roughing It".

I am a seventeen year old male, and I can say that I found this book to be very cool! When I first started reading it I figured it probably would be very dated and probably not hold my interest but I was wrong, I found it to be very engrossing. I did read Huckelberry finn, and though it is considered the great american novel it did not hold my interest like roughing it did. The book covers Twains adventures out west during the late 1800's. lots of adventure and humor.

Mark Twain achieves a remarkable feat in this book, he manages to write a travel book even funnier than 'Innocents Abroad', which I wouldn't have thought possible. His riveting account of his travels west across the country is packed with fascinating and amusing incidents and anecdotes. I was almost in hysterics when I read about Twain and a group of friends beimng held at bay by a boxful of escaped Tarantulas, and again reading about his bizarre encounters with the preposterous Mormons in Utah. As in Innocents Abroad, humour is woven in with serious observations on the places he visits and their inhabitants. His account of his visit to Hawaii is particularly fascinating, but the whole book is unforgettable.