Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography (Hardcover)

~ (Author), (Author), Dayton Duncan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is more than a lavishly illustrated companion book to the Mark Twain PBS series. National Book Critics Circle Award winner Geoffrey C. Ward, Dayton Duncan, and Ken Burns have produced a cogent, colorful portrait of the man who forged our national identity in the sentences he spun. Excellent though the brisk narrative may be, the book's greatest pleasures are the extensive Twain quotations; no one has topped his description of the Mississippi River, and he had a salty remark for every occasion (charged an outrageous fee for a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee, he cracked, "Do you wonder now that Christ walked?"). Passages from his correspondence reveal a man of deep feeling; letters to his wife Livy movingly express enduring marital love, and the grief-stricken note following his beloved daughter Susy's sudden death is almost unbearable to read. Excerpts from less well known works like "The War Prayer" highlight Twain's scathing contempt for imperialism and hypocrisy alike. Several freestanding pieces by various admirers (including novelist Russell Banks and actor Hal Holbrook) supplement the authors' text; most notable among them is critic Jocelyn Chadwick's persuasive defense of Twain's frequent use of "The Six-Letter Word" (n----r) in Huckleberry Finn as a necessary and still-shocking device to confront Americans with the moral horror of racism. Gracefully synthesizing current scholarship, this warmhearted biography provides the perfect introduction to Mark Twain. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

In 1867, after successfully marketing accounts of his Mideast travels to several newspapers, Mark Twain wrote to his mother, "Am pretty well known now. Intend to be better known." But he could hardly have anticipated the meteoric rise that would rapidly make him America's most prominent citizen. Next January, Twain will be subjected to that conclusive proof of American significance, the Ken Burns documentary. The inevitable cross-merchandising will include this illustrated biography, which, happily, stands on its own merits as a fascinating account of Twain's extraordinary career. All Burns productions center on a good story, and this is a plain, very human tale: rags, riches, and the rest. The authors (Ward and Duncan are frequent collaborators with Burns) thoroughly examine Twain's disastrous business sense, his horrid temper, his unlikely courtship of the heiress Olivia Langdon, his climb out of bankruptcy at the age of 60, the loss of three of his four children, his global celebrity. Even amid tragedy, Twain could make a stone laugh, but it was his rare frankness in confronting racism, and the publication of the controversial Huckleberry Finn, that would secure his fame beyond national borders and his own time. As one might expect, the Burns team has done magnificent archival detective work and unearthed a treasure trove of rare Twain photographs. This should appeal to a vast potential readership eager to learn more about this manic, profound, daft and provocative mad genius of American culture. (Nov. 20)Forecast: Shelve this with The Annotated Huckleberry Finn (Forecasts, Sept. 10) and sales should soar during the holidays, even before the TV documentary airs.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (November 13, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375405615
• ISBN-13: 978-0375405617
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #278,619 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book For Twain Fans, January 14, 2002

By	William Peschel (Hershey, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Like the comet that heralded his arrival and, 74 years later, signaled his passing, Mark Twain was a man in nearly constant motion. Either his pen was racing across the page, or he was racing across the world, gathering the raw material of experience for his stories, es­says, letters, novels, invest­ments and inventions. He was a writing machine, turning out so much copy that we haven't yet found the bottom to this gold mine.

Part of Twain's greatness is that he was a man of enormous talent and en­ergy who was in the right places at the right times. It was the perfect combination that made him a uniquely American artist. Talent without energy would not have given him the ability to write so much. Ener­gy without talent would not have made him, as Russel Banks' words, a wise guy who was wise. American letters is full of humorists who are now footnotes. In Twain's time, there is P.V. Nasby, and Josh Billings, Bret Harte and Arte­mus Ward. What makes Twain so different?

First, Twain saw himself as more than a humorist. He was a moralist. He was perfect­ly capable of writing funny without a point, whether it be about a trick played with a jumping frog, or the stories about Tom Sawyer. But he also used Huck Finn to rage against slavery. He berated Commo­dore Vanderbilt for not using his millions to help the poor (he later hob­nobbed with the rich, one of those contradictions that en­riches his character). Later in life, embittered by the death of his children, he abandoned hu­mor to rail against imperial­ism, lynching and even God.

Written by Burns' collabora­tors Dayton Duncan and Geof­frey C. Ward, "Mark Twain" is crammed full of stories that show us the man behind the penname. Twain boiled with mirth, resentment, anger and passion, both on and off the page. When a button was found missing from one of his freshly-laundered shirts, he cursed and threw the whole stack out of the window of his home. On the lecture circuit, he gloried in leaving his audiences helpless with laughter.

But his sorrow was equally powerful. When he lost the love of his life, his wife, Livy, he wrote, "There is no God and no universe; . . . there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And . . . I am that thought."

But as Twain helped define the nation with his writings, the nation also defined him. He planted him­self deep into the rich soil of the South, the West and the East, and drew upon all those sources for his work. He grew up in Hannibal, Mis­souri, on the stories told by whites and blacks. His became a riverboat pilot, intimately aware of the power and beauty of the Mississippi River. He avoided fighting in the Civil War - for which he was never chastised, partly because he was so willing to make fun of himself over it - and worked as a newspaperman and failed silver miner in Nevada and San Francisco. Seeking success as a writer, he went East where the publishers were, and settled in Hartford, Conn. As his fame grew and he traveled world­wide, he brought home more tales to tell, but they all had a source in common: humanity in all its rich glories and taw­dry foibles.

"Mark Twain" briskly charts Twain's incredible life, and in­cludes essays by writers like Banks and Jocelyn Chadwick and an interview with Twain impersonator Hal Holbrook that are entertaining and illu­minating. Interwoven in the text are Twain's own words, so many that he should have re­ceived co-author credit.

But the book's crowning glory are in its photo­graphs, many of them never published. This is the strongest rea­son any Twain fan should look at the book. It's an incredible selection. Here he is at the breakfast table during his round-the-world lecture tour he took at age 60, looking like he just got out of bed (which he did). There, he's on the stage, "lending tone" to a lecture by Booker T. Washington.

And one of the saddest ap­proaches art. It was taken in 1900, and after several deaths (a son in infancy, one daughter four years before), and the family is down to his daughters Jean, Clara and his wife, Livy. Jean was away, so the picture only shows Twain, Livy and Clara. They're there, but they're not part of the picture; they look in different directions as if they can't bear to be there. He's looking at the camera, in soft focus, unable to stand still for a moment. As if their grief had a physical presence, the glass photo is cracked. It is a portrait of a family slowly colliding with tragedy.

By the end of his life, Twain had had enough. He was ready to go out with the return of Ha­ley's Comet in 1910. At his fu­neral, his unique stature in lit­erature was recognized by his good friend, Joe Twitchell, who called him, "the Lincoln of our literature."

"I am not an American, I am the American," Twain said, and "Mark Twain" shows how he became our most American writer.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Defining the American Fiction Writer, December 3, 2001

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

If you only read one biography in the next year, I suggest that you make it this one.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) was “torn between fame and family, between humor and bitterness, bottomless hunger for success and haunting fears of failure.”

His own writing makes this volume sparkle. “I am only human -- although I regret it.” “Aw well, I am a great and sublime fool.” “The secret source of humor itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.” “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” His ability to capture the American vernacular on paper has never been equaled.

Much of his best-known writing was based on Hannibal, Missouri where he lived from age 4 to 17, and visited only 5 times thereafter. The benefit of an illustrated biography for Mark Twain is that you can see the people and places he was describing, which adds to your enjoyment of those works and to a greater understanding of his craft. Tom Blankenship was a model for Huck Finn and Laura Hawkes inspired Becky Thatcher. Constantly on the move, Twain wrote about the places he visited to earn his living and you will learn a great deal from seeing contemporary photographs and illustrations of these sights from the western United States and Hawaii through to Europe and the Middle East. He also did a world-wide lecture tour in 1895 that is captured here.

“Livy” (Olivia Langdon) was the great love of his life, and you will be enchanted and touched by their letters. You will also enjoy learning about her role as editor (helping him avoid expressions that would offend almost everyone) and as muse (he wanted her to be proud of him).

You will come away with many new impressions of Mark Twain. Perhaps no one in the 19th century changed and expanded his views as much as Twain did. Born in slave-holding Missouri, he quickly developed an appreciation for the fine qualities of the slaves he knew and wrote about them with sympathy as fellow human beings (Huck Finn and Pudd’n Head Wilson). He mastered three different and difficult careers (river pilot on the Mississippi, novelist, and lecturer). Married into a teetotaling, Abolitionist family, he learned to operate in genteel, Eastern social circles (with lots of clues from his adoring wife). Inspired by the potential of technology, he bankrupted himself investing in an improved way to set type that never became commercially feasible. Later in life, he was toasted by great writers and royalty throughout Europe, lived in enormous luxury, and found himself scrambling to earn a living to pay the mounting debts of his business failures. Perhaps no greater irony can come than having been the publisher for Grant’s memoirs.

His own life was filled with enormous happiness and sadness. His wife and all but one of his children died before him. Ill health dogged his wife and children.

I was fascinated to learn that Halley’s comet was blazing in the evening skies both when he was born and when he died. That seems like an appropriate symbol for this most unique man who characterized himself as follows, “I am the American.”

The book contains many excerpts from his writing, letters, newspaper texts of his lectures, and letters to him (especially from his wife). The narrative in the book is often watery by comparison. The book does feature a number of essays that I found enjoyable. One was Ms. Jocelyn Chadwick’s thoughts on “The Six-Letter Word” that begins with “n” and is used by some to derogate African-Americans. She points out that although Twain often used the word in his writing, he was “not sanctioning the use of the slur.” To the opposite, he used the word to show the moral and social backwardness of those who did, such as Huck’s father in Huckleberry Finn. Hal Holbrook describes his one-man show, and I was surprised to learn that “Mark Twain Tonight” is quite different from the lectures that Mark Twain actually gave. Those were usually readings, rather than one-liners, and were frequently rewritten since newspapers often reported on what had been said in these lectures. He also wore a dark suit, and did not smoke on stage.

I came away from this book with a strong desire to read more of Mark Twain’s writing, and to see the PBS series for which this book is a companion. I am sure you will, too!

Turn your sadness and setbacks into fertile soil for imagination and humor! Listen to all those around you, and share their lessons with the world!

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A rich & rewarding biography, January 30, 2002

By	Roy E. Perry "amateur philosopher" (Nolensville, Tennessee) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Finally! A "coffee table" book that has top-quality photos and an excellent text.

MARK TWAIN: AN ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHY is a companion to a two-part, four-hour documentary film, directed by Ken Burns, on the life and work of Samuel Langhorne Clemens and his "famously, irrepressibly rambunctious alter ego Mark Twain."

Ernest Hemingway once said that Twain is "the headwater of American fiction" and called THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN "the best book we've ever had. There was nothing before. There's been nothing as good since."

George Bernard Shaw referred to Twain as "America's Voltaire."

William Dean Howells described Twain as "incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature."

Susy Clemens once wrote of her father: "He is known to the public as a humorist, but he has much more in him that is earnest than that is humorous. He is as much of a Philosopher as anything, I think."

In this reviewer's considered judgment, Twain is the greatest literary genius America has produced, a thinker of remarkable depth and substance.

Twain's life was filled with many travels, adventures ... and tragedies. Born in 1835, when Halley's comet made its appearance, he lived for 75 years, until 1910, when Halley's comet returned. He survived, and suffered, the death of his beloved wife "Livy" (Olivia Louise Langdon), and three of their children: Langdon, who died in infancy; Susy, who died of spinal meningitis at age 24; and Jean, who died of a heart attack evidently brought on by an epileptic seizure.

"The secret source of humor itself," wrote Twain, "is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven. ... [Our] race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon--laughter. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

Laughter and sorrow: Twain was well acquainted with both. Known superficially to many admirers as merely a humorist or funny man, Twain was essentially, as he described himself, "a moralist in disguise" who preached sermons to "the damned human race."

Twain's literary corpus abounds with excoriating criticisms of racism, anti-Semitism, religious hypocrisy, governmental arrogance and imperialism, petty tyrants, and Philistine culture. His often deadpan humor bristles with barbed satire and withering sarcasm.

In addition to its narrative text, this volume includes five bonus essays: "Hannibal's Sam Clemens," by Ron Powers; "Hartford's Mark Twain," by John Boyer; "The Six-Letter Word," by Jocelyn Chadwick; "Out at the Edges," by Russell Banks; and an interview with Hal Holbrook, "Aren't We Funny Animals?"

MARK TWAIN: AN ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHY is a rich and rewarding book.