Harry L. Katz. Mark Twain’s America. Little Brown, 2014.
Mark Twain’s America is a pleasant introduction to one of America’s most famous writers. It draws from the massive collection of the Library of Congress for pictures, illustrations, photos, books, posters, ephemera, and so on.
The approach is suggested in the book’s title. Mark Twain’s America is an effective biography of Twain, but it connects his life with things going on in the country and in the world. Indeed, the book probably devotes more ink to Roughing It than any of Twain’s other works because that book really described what was happening in the decade or so after the Civil War, especially regarding western expansion—even to Hawaii.
The book also stresses that Twain at his heart was a humorist. Indeed, it seems to take a different view from Van Wyck Brooks who perhaps read more into Twain than what Twain ever had in mind. Because Twain wrote much, kept journals, spoke publicly often, and wrote an autobiography (admittedly, the last item was not available in Brooks’ day), Katz appears free to simply let Twain speak for himself. And a lot of what he wrote and said was funny. Let’s be grateful for that. If Twain had been more serious, he would be more of a subject for esoteric literary studies, not simply a good writer who tells entertaining stories.
Yes, we get a biography of Twain that parallels what is happening in the world, but it also introduces the reader to virtually all of Twain’s works, even those that are seldom read any more. For example, it briefly mentions King Leopold’s Soliloquy. That book brought up a serious issue of Twain’s day that is no longer an issue. Still, we recommend that book for anyone who is teaching or studying Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in any detail.
The pictures are great, even nostalgic. There are many engravings like those of Currier and Ives. Photography was developed and improved during Twain’s years, so we see many interesting photos. There are programs and publicity posters, handbills, newspaper headlines, and other visuals on virtually every page. Even someone who is just looking at the pictures would get something out of it.
We are reminded that Twain went west to avoid the Civil War. He or his co-author Charles Dudley Warner invented the term The Gilded Age in their book of the same name. So we see a lot, not just about the Mississippi River, but about the expansion of the American West, and the lifestyles of the Eastern Establishment.
Strikingly, the Eastern Establishment has not changed that much except that it now includes Hollywood and the so-called Left Coast. Twain not only showed us what we were but also has some insight into where we were going. A little over a century ago we had a president who came from the Establishment yet took it on. It seems we have the same situation now.
Mark Twain’s America is a good introduction to the man and to his country.