Tag Archives: Mark Twain

FIVE WISE LINES [September 2025]

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The aim of introduction is to conceal a person’s identity.

George Mikes, How To Be an Alien

From the beginning our philosophers have tried to teach us how to die,
and our poets have taught us that to contemplate death
is to learn to live.

Jonathan weiner, Long for this world

Nothing is harder to see into than people’s natures.

Zhuge liang [a.k.a. Kongming], The WAy of the General

To know how to eat is to know how to live.

Auguste Escoffier

Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.

Mark twain

BOOK: “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain

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The Adventures of Tom SawyerThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Available Online – Project Gutenberg

This is Twain’s best-known and probably most beloved work — though arguably neither his best nor most impactful piece. It tells the tale of a mischievous but warmhearted boy, Tom Sawyer, and a series of formative events in Sawyer’s youth from learning how to trick other kids into doing his chores to being trapped deep in a cave with his sweetheart. While there is a plot throughline involving the closest thing the novel has to a villain, Injun Joe, for the most part the story is episodic. That’s for the best because if too much weight were placed on that throughline, it’s resolution would feel flat. As it is, we see Sawyer and his friends, particularly Huck Finn, subjected to trials and challenges (often of their own making) that present moral dilemmas and the need to steel themselves for the occasion.

It’s often been said that this book isn’t as powerful or influential as its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which this book sets up nicely I should point out. It is probably true that Huck Finn is more profound. That said, Tom Sawyer could be said to be a cleaner read in that Huck Finn gets a bit muddled, particularly toward its end.

I’d highly recommend this book for all readers.

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BOOKS: “A Horse’s Tale” by Mark Twain

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A Horse's TaleA Horse’s Tale by Mark Twain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Project Gutenberg Page

Among the lesser-known works of Twain, A Horse’s Tale mixes an epistolary by a military officer at a remote outpost with dialogues between animals of the post (principally the protagonist, a horse called Soldier Boy.) The principal subject of the epistolary is a precocious girl who lives at the outpost and who is adored by all as the one soft, sweet creature in a world of warfighting men and their animals. The conversations between animals offer the most amusing portion of this book, largely for the fun being poked at humanity’s expense.

In its best moments, this novella is intensely touching or hilarious. However, it does suffer from inconsistency of pacing and tone.

If you enjoy Mark Twain’s humor and storytelling, this novella is well worth reading. If you’re primarily a reader of present-day genre / commercial fiction, it probably won’t be your thing.

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PROMPT: Nervous

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Daily writing prompt
What makes you nervous?
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All sorts of stuff — e.g. gabby strangers approaching me unexpectedly when I’m in a low mental energy state. But when I observe the sensation of that nervousness, without rumination or feeding of the feeling, it fades rapidly. As Twain [allegedly, but possibly never] said, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

PROMPT: Historical Figure

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If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?

Assuming no babel fish technology – i.e. that we’d need a common language – I’d say William Blake, Walt Whitman, or Mark Twain. The latter would probably be the most fun, the middle the most uplifting, and the first the most insightful (or perhaps most mystical.)

BOOKS: A Double-Barreled Detective Story by Mark Twain

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A Double Barrelled Detective StoryA Double Barrelled Detective Story by Mark Twain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

This novella is Mark Twain’s satirical jab at the whole Sherlock Holmes concept. In particular, it pokes fun at a detective who eschews everything supernatural in favor of cold rationality, but who produces results so impossible that they are themselves supernatural.

The story has two temporally disjointed parts that almost seem like independent stories until the very end when all is tied up. (Holmes only appears in the second part.) This works nicely for parody of Holmesian detective fiction as it’s an approach that was used by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on occasion — e.g. in A Study in Scarlet. The first part tells the tale of a woman who is treated foully by Jacob Fuller, the husband she eloped with but who harbored resentment towards her father, a man Fuller believed felt wasn’t good enough for his daughter. The woman makes her son, named Archy Stillman, promise that he will track down Fuller and make the man’s life a living hell.

The second part revolves around a murder that seems to be independent of the case described above, the killing of a man named Flint Buckner. Here Sherlock Holmes, who happens to be in town visiting his nephew – Fetlock Jones, “solves” the case only to be shown to be entirely and humiliatingly wrong by Archy Stillman using only a superior sense of smell and basic observation of the facts (with no elaborated inductions.)

While I never had anything against the Sherlock Holmes stories — in fact, I enjoyed them all — I did find Twain’s satire amusing and compelling as a story. [And it’s true that Arthur Conan Doyle did regularly strain credulity — that’s what made Holmes an intriguing character.]

Well worth reading.

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Rickety Gibberish [Free Verse]

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A long time ago,
 I listened to the audiobook of
    Kerouac's "On the Road."

In that format, 
   I became aware of how often
     Kerouac used the word
       "rickety." 

Almost as aware as I became
   of how often Twain uses
      the N-word in Huck Finn
      when I unwisely listened to 
      that audiobook while driving
      through downtown Atlanta
      with my windows rolled down. 

I'm now reading Hunter Thompson's
   "Kingdom of Fear," and I've become
      aware that Thompson had a love
      of the word "gibberish" almost on par
      with Kerouac's love of "rickety."

And I think about how much beautiful
   rickety gibberish I've read from those
      authors, and what a fine 
      thing it is if one can write 
      rickety gibberish that stands up 
      under its own weight.

BOOK REVIEW: Twain Illustrated: Three Stories by Mark Twain by Mark Twain [Ed. by Jerome Tiller]

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Twain Illustrated: Three Stories by Mark TwainTwain Illustrated: Three Stories by Mark Twain by Mark Twain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

This collection gathers three pieces of Twain’s short fiction and presents them in an edited and illustrated volume. The stories are edited from the original published editions. My understanding is that the editing was confined to making the volume more readable to a present-day audience (and probably to younger readers, specifically.) As far as I can tell, that’s the case.

The three stories have in common that Twain, himself, features as a character. [This is less explicit for the second story than for the first and third, it being merely written in first person while the others reference Twain by name.] The first story, “Emerson, Holmes, and Longfellow,” is essentially a roast of those three important 19th century American poets. The story is written as though Twain is traveling on walkabout and happens upon a miner’s household where, as luck would have it, the three titular poets had stopped in previously. Supposedly, this was first a speech given in Boston at a celebration for another poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, and it went down like a lead balloon.

The middle story, “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut,” is about a mysterious visitor who comes calling who seems to know about all the narrator’s misdeeds. It turns out that said visitor is the narrator’s conscience. This personification of conscience is a clever plot device and makes for a hilarious story.

The final story is entitled “Running for Governor,” and it shows that fake news is far from a new phenomenon in American politics. It imagines Twain running for governor of New York and the one news story after the next presenting outlandish, contrived claims that begin to stick as Twain ignores them. This reminded me of the Twain essay that disabused me of the popular notion that we are [at any given time] in uniquely contentiously partisan times for American politics.

I enjoyed this collection. I would probably have preferred an unedited text, but it’s readable, engaging, and humorous as is. The illustrations are line-drawn, and many are cartoonishly jocular while others are more realistic caricatures. It’s certainly an entertaining read.


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Clerihew of American Literary Greats

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I
Edgar Allan Poe
always lacked for dough.
Still, he always strived
to not be buried alive.


II
Emily Dickinson
lived a bit like a nun,
but her verse was insightful —
even sans an earthly eyeful.


III
Samuel Clemens, or Mark Twain,
wrote personas known to speak plain.
His nom de plume
means “fathoms, two!”


IV
The poet Walt Whitman
had a startled milkman.
Never one to be subdued,
if you just dropped by, he might be nude

BOOK REVIEW: Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain

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Tom Sawyer, DetectiveTom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon page

 

The adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn continue in this novella as the duo travels to visit Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas in Arkansas. On the riverboat, they meet an old acquaintance who they didn’t know was still alive, the twin of a man who still lives near Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas. He tells them how he’s in a bind because he conspired in a diamond theft with two partners, and subsequently swindled the two by making off with the diamonds. The reason he’s headed home is because he figures he can hide out there as long as he makes himself look like his twin, as long as no one sees the two twins together, he can play like he’s his brother. While Tom and Huck agree to be helpful, the last time they see this man, he’s jumped ship and is being followed by the two men, and Tom and Huck assume he’s a goner.

In time Tom and Huck arrive at Aunt Sally’s. Shortly thereafter a man goes missing, the twin of the diamond thief. Eventually, evidence mounts that the murderer is none other than Uncle Silas. Despite the fact that Silas has been a little off, Tom doesn’t believe his kind uncle, a pastor, is capable of such a feat. However, Silas confesses, having thwacked the man on the head, he believes that the man must have died from it. Testimony convinces Silas that he must have gone out to bury the man in an act of incredible somnambulism, and while he has no recollection of it, he believes it must be true.

When it comes to the trial, Tom sits in with the incompetent public defender, committed to proving Silas’s innocence — despite his Uncle’s vociferous admissions. At the last second, Tom does figure it out, and explains what really happened. He’s furthermore able to substantiate his claims using no more than the individuals in the courtroom. By the times he’s finished, even Uncle Silas acknowledges that he didn’t commit a murder.

This is a fine little mystery story, but what makes it really enjoyable is the first-person narration by Huck Finn. While Tom Sawyer does the brainwork to solve the crime, Huck offers a telling that is humorous and whimsical.

If you like “Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “Adventures of Huck Finn” don’t miss this follow-up.

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