Mark Twain

 

Mark Twain – Ron Chernow

I was greatly looking forward to this offering as I’ve really enjoyed the works of Ron Chernow and I thought Mark Twain would be a great subject for this author to tackle. After reading this book, I was overall very pleased. If I’m completely honest, though, this book could have been a tad better; mostly during the last 300 pages or so.

First the good stuff. This book was incredibly well presented and very easy to read, and Mark Twain’s life proved to be a joy to learn. Most are familiar with him as author, lecturer, and humorist. His wit can be biting at times, but most of his sentiments ring quite true even though he lived and died well over a century ago.  Author Ron Chernow doesn’t spare any part of the man’s life.  To be fair though, this book was so long (over 1,000 pages excluding endnotes, bibliography, etc.) that by the time I finished the book, I had already forgotten a lot of what was written about his early life which was covered during the first quarter of the book. It almost made me wish I had written two reviews – one after reading the first half of the book, and one after the second.    Part of the reason I write these reviews is that it’s easy for me to forget a lot of details, and having a written journal helps me tremendously when reflecting on how I felt about a particular reading experience.

As I recall, there wasn’t really that much here from Twain’s younger days as a steamboat captain when he piloted vessels up and down the Mississippi River.  Maybe there wasn’t that much to tell when reflecting on this portion of his life, but it is at least here for all to have a somewhat small knowledge.   He was also a prospector that lived out west during the gold rush days, but again, I seem to recall that this part of his life was skipped over a bit.

The main part of his life though, author and lecturer, is covered in quite a bit of detail. All of his major works are given a nice overview and summary, and like all good biographies, reading this one makes the reader want to learn more about the subject and the books he penned. It was also fun to read about many of Twain’s crass observations of the world around him. Most of these are recorded elsewhere and aren’t that difficult to uncover, but having everything all in one volume is rather nice.   Had I read this on an eReader, I’m sure I would have made a lot of yellow highlights since just about everything that came out of Twain’s mouth was pure gold.  It would have been wonderful to attend one of his lectures.

Author Chernow states early that Twain’s character, as true of many of his generation, could be flawed at times.  There are elements of racism throughout (we must remember he was born in the South before the U.S. Civil War) yet as he would progress, he would become more sympathetic to his fellow African-Americans.  The same cannot be said, though, about Indians. Twain seemed to abhor the entire race throughout his life, but again, he was a creature of his culture.

Another peculiarity about Twain was he seemed to have a fondness for young teen-aged girls. It must be said that his admiration never dealt with anything lewd, sinful, or illegal.  There is no record of Twain every behaving in such a fashion nor committing any grave actions of touching any of these girls in an inappropriate way.  However, his frequent talk and admiration and also companionship of such ingenues is still a cause for the modern reader to raise their eyebrows.  Some things are much different now, and most would argue mostly for the better.

So anyway – I got about halfway through this book (page 500 or 600 or so) and by then, Twain was already in his late 50s with most of his substantial work and achievements already discussed. (Including an awful lot of expensive inventions and business schemes that never prospered and almost took him to the poorhouse.) I made the comment to my wife at that point that I really wasn’t sure what else there was to read about, and I was surprised that there were still so many unread pages during my journey.  Well, sadly, there really wasn’t that much more, and getting through the last half of this book wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as the first.

My guess is that the author probably had something in the contract that specified a certain number of pages (over 1,000 remember) and when he ran out of things to write about, he padded the book somewhat.  “Somewhat” is a bit of an understatement.  Twain’s family life consisted of his wife and three young-adult (by this point) daughters.  And, oh boy, did we have to read a lot about them.  It seemed like every day of their lives was covered with mundane detail.   One daughter died fairly young, and another suffered from epilepsy and we had to constantly read about the family struggles day in and day out. After Twain becomes a widower, there’s a hired woman who comes and helps, and we read ad nauseum about those details of her life and interactions with Twain and family as well.  It really felt like such a letdown after the brilliance of the first half of the book.

Anyway, overall this was a great read and despite its shortcomings, the author never fails to bore his readers. In fact I couldn’t help but be amazed as to thinking about how much research one needs to do on a subject matter in order to craft a final detailed project such as this.  Chernow does justice to the man, and it really does make the reader wish they could have lived at the same time as Twain did, and share a cigar and a story or two.