The Diary of Adam and Eve (Hesperus Classics) (Paperback)

by Mark Twain (Author), John Updike (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

Review
I myself am no great Twain expert.. so I had that thrill of discovering an unknown Mark Twain -- John Updike

Product Description
In The Diary of Adam and Eve, master storyteller Mark Twain hilariously recreates the very first days of Creation. Adam, portrayed by Twain as something of a recluse, is a man ill–prepared for the arrival of Eve, a talkative, emotional, highly charged female. Yet, in time, and after many a conflict, they gradually learn to live together, realizing that men and women can, in fact, exist in harmony. It is presented here with six additional pieces creating a unique omnibus of Twain’s Adamic tales.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Hesperus Press (July 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1843910055
• ISBN-13: 978-1843910053
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #875,840 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 Warm Odysssey of Togetherness, January 11, 2000

By	Paul Tudor OPREA (Bucharest, Romania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Diary of Adam and Eve (Modern Library Minis) (Paperback)

Mark Twain creates a fascinating experience of a man and a woman discovering each other, learning to live together in the real world, growing up toward being a whole being.

Throughout the entire delicious epic of the story, the two characters grow from unaware children to mature humans, able to make a living together through all difficulties.

Adam, on one side, starts regarding Eve in a critical way that reminds the rigorousness of an engineer and ends warmly with the calm passion given by a lifetime of togetherness.

Eve, on the other, depicted here as the essential expression of the womanhood, appears as a living miracle of contradictions. She is so playful, sunny, innocent and wildly alive, that Adam finally realizes he's happy to be sentenced to love her forever. It is worth saying that even the Sin is reconsidered here rather as an abuse of Eve's ingenuity than an assumed trespassing...

The friendly, optimistic approach to life, the art of putting strong, fundamental feelings into everyday's words, the gentle humor far from cheap melodrama, the subtle metaphor of the joy of living arising from each chapter made me to consider this novel the most touchy love story ever written.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Twain demonstrates that he is the master of the light parody, November 6, 2007

By	Charles Ashbacher "([e-mail])" (Marion, Iowa United States([e-mail])) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Diary of Adam and Eve (Modern Library Minis) (Paperback)

Mark Twain was a master of many things and in this short essay, he shows that one of those things is the light parody. He recounts segments from the diaries of Adam and Eve, first from Adam's, then Eve's and then from Adam's again. He lightly touches on their ignorance of their surroundings and how they interact with each other within that ignorance. While it is a clear parody of some of the inconsistencies of the tale of the Garden of Eden, it is so gentle that at times it is easy to miss his handling of one of the inconsistencies. At the end of the story, they describe the love they had for each other, yet didn't quite realize that it existed.
In a caption written forty years after their departure from Eden, Eve says," But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; for he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is to me - life without him would not be life; how could I endure it?" The final caption appears in a section entitled "At Eve's Grave." "Adam: Wheresoever she was, there was Eden."
For this illustrates the true problem between the sexes, not the other situations such as "Men from Mars, Women from Venus." It is that a paired man and women do not truly understand the feelings that each has for the other, each believing that the feelings are disproportionate from one side to the other.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Warm Hodisssey of Togetherness, January 11, 2000

By	Paul Tudor OPREA (Bucharest, Romania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Diary of Adam and Eve (Modern Library Minis) (Paperback)

Mark Twain creates a fascinating experience of a man and a woman discovering each other, learning to live together in the real world, growing up toward being a whole being.

Throughout the entire delicious epic of the story, the two characters grow from unaware children to mature humans, able to make a living together through all difficulties.

Adam, on one side, starts regarding Eve in a critical way that reminds the rigorousness of an engineer and ends warmly with the calm passion given by a lifetime of togetherness.

Eve, on the other, depicted here as the essential expression of the womanhood, appears as a living miracle of contradictions. She is so playful, sunny, innocent and wildly alive, that Adam finally realizes he's happy to be sentenced to love her forever. It is worth saying that even the Sin is reconsidered here rather as an abuse of Eve's ingenuity than an assumed trespassing...

The friendly, optimistic approach to life, the art of putting strong, fundamental feelings into everyday's words, the gentle humor far from cheap melodrama, the subtle metaphor of the joy of living arising from each chapter made me to consider this novel the most touchy love story ever written.