Started in late August but just finished. A ponderous biography, "Mark Twain" by Ron Chernow. I felt like I was wading through a corn maze trying to keep up with all of Twain's travels, friends, relatives, and idiosyncracies. Chernow researched the hell out of his subject (pages and pages of footnotes), and I did come away with knowing a lot more about one of our greatest authors. Here is a particularly cutting review from the NY Times in May of this year.
"Ron Chernow’s new biography of Mark Twain is enormous, bland and remote — it squats over Twain’s career like a McMansion. Chernow, who has previously written lives of financial titans, war heroes and founding fathers, misses the man William Faulkner called “the father of American literature” almost entirely. He demonstrates little feeling for the deeper and least domesticated regions of Twain’s art, or for the literary context of his era. His book is an endurance test, one that skimps on the things that formed Twain and made him the most lucid, profound, unpredictable and irascibly witty American of his time. Hardy will be the souls who tour this air-conditioned edifice all the way through and glimpse the exit sign."
Guess I'm a hardy soul!
Posted by irishchieftain (Member # 1473) on :
The reviewer is Dwight Garner, a co-founder of Salon.com, JFTR. Given his viewpoint, I’m taking it that the book is the opposite of what he claims it to be. Thanks for the recommendation.
Posted by George Harris (Member # 2077) on :
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were near required reading when I was old enough to do it. Come on parents, don't throw me in the briar patch. Think I read both at least twice.
Posted by Ocala Mike (Member # 4657) on :
George, one of the things I came away with from this "tour" was that Twain was in search of youthful innocence all his life. In his 70's he surrounded himself with "angelfish," pre-teen and teen girls that he obsessed over (non-sexually, supposedly) who looked up to him as a father figure. He never trusted adult white men who he felt screwed him throughout his business life.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
Of course, there was "another side" to Mark Twain, which was simply ordinary thought and phrases back in the 50's when books like Tom Sawyer were on my reading lists:
There are many examples in the book of Twain's progressive and anti-imperialist views on things like civil rights for blacks, women, and oppressed peoples of the world. His views on Native Americans never advanced beyond those of his contemporaries.
Posted by George Harris (Member # 2077) on :
Sheeeesh. I read his books for entertainment. I did not then, nor now, have any interest in his sociological perspectives.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
Captain Mike, SIR.
Here's the "whole deal" from The Times that you noted when opening this topic.
Posted by George Harris (Member # 2077) on :
quote:Originally posted by Gilbert B Norman: Captain Mike, SIR.
Here's the "whole deal" from The Times that you noted when opening this topic.
Just read the Times article. Definitely killed any interest I might have had in reading the book. As to the NYT article itself, I would hardly call 150 pages "blowing through" the first years of his life. You can say a lot in 150 pages unless you love going at things in a convoluted manner.
Posted by Ocala Mike (Member # 4657) on :
"Convoluted" is right, which is why I used the "corn maze" metaphor. Definitely not light reading, but this English Lit. major with a special interest in Twain made it through the weeds.