MARK TWAIN

(1835-1910)

PART 2

Wealth and fame gave him the

armature for his major works.

Lived through three larger than life

American presidencies:

• Andrew Jackson
• Abraham Lincoln
• Theodore Roosevelt

publicity

• Drew on elements of public style and

self-promotion, knew how to grab
publicity and turn it to good use for
the business

• The first modern literary politician,

the first newspaper and media
personality, the first cartoon figure

• ‘Mark Twain, Incorporated’

The pen name “Mark Twain” is more like a

brand name in a commercial world of

celebrities, advertisements and products

such as Ivory Soap, Coca Cola,

McDonald’s, or Levi’s.

It was an enterprise that included:
• popular travel writing
• coast-to-coast lecturing
• door-to-door subscription sales of his

books

• a publishing house
• speculations in various inventions.

His name was a trademark stabilized

by a fixed and eccentric appearance.

His Hartford mansion (recalling a Mississippi

River steamboat) was a form of corporate

headquarters.

• designed by Edward

Tuckerman Potter

• known for its apparent

whimsy and stylistic

idiosyncrasy, but also

praised as an inspired and

sophisticated expression of

modernity

• defined mostly by the variety

and unpredictability of its

elements (no two elevations

are alike; generally

symmetrical gables are,

upon closer inspection,

subtly different in their

decorative treatments)

• employed new technologies,

such as a gravity flow heat

system and flush toilets

(Now the Mark Twain House &

Museum

351 Farmington Avenue

Hartford, CT 06105)

Library

Mahogany
Room

Billiard Room

Dining Room

Conservatory

Paige Compositor

Three features of American

culture were vital to
Clemens’s work:

• the newspaper
• the lecture platform
• the new national market made

possible by the door-to-door salesman
and the Sears, Roebuck Catalog

Twain was aware of his audience and positioned

his books in a calculated way. He followed

every move of the best seller market:

• The Prince and the Pauper (1882) and A

Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

(1889) exploited the popularity of children’s

books and romance fantasies

• Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896)

followed Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur and Henryk

Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis?

• Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) picked up the

detective story fad in the wake of Arthur

Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes

• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn responded to

the craze started by Uncle Remus stories

Twain followed Charles Dickens: a novel

of the speaking voice, the novel as a

gallery of voices.

travel

The experience of travel gives

an essential form to much of
Twain’s work.

• The inward travel of memory

and recollection: Huck and
Tom Sawyer – travel back to
a childhood that must be
protected.

• Travel in time: A Connecticut

Yankee, The Prince and the
Pauper, Personal
Recollections of
Joan of Arc.

• The exploration and

settlement of the American

West coincided with the great

European exploration of the

Nile, Africa and the Arctic.

• The invasion of another

culture, the outsider’s

disturbing presence and his

destructive impact. Twain was

the first Western writer aware

of the nihilism latent in the

crossing of cultural borders.

Hank Morgan’s visit to the world of King Arthur.
A contrast between progress and backwardness,

superstition and modern technology turn into
argument, battle, warfare and end in
cataclysmic slaughter. “The truly portable
knowledge that one civilization brings to
another is the knowledge of killing. … All
cultural competitions come down to the
machine gun versus the crossbow. A parable of
colonialization, a parable of cultural arrogance
and its naivete alongside Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness.