I must have been 8 or 9 years old when I stumbled across a book with cover art I found intriguing and a title that sounded fun. That book was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and being the adventurous sort even at that age, I read it. Then I went back to my folks’ library – they had an extensive one – and found the next book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and read that, too. I enjoyed them both, back in those days when everything rural didn’t provoke shouts of racism.
The author of those books, of course, was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by the pen name Mark Twain, one of my literary heroes. Since those long-ago days, I’ve gobbled up everything Mr. Clemens wrote, and I enjoy them as much today as I did then.
His Humble Origins
Samuel Clemens was born in 1835 and raised in Hannibal, Missouri, in those antebellum days, an inviting place for a young fellow seeking adventure. Hannibal inspired the setting for both Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn’s stories, but before he got into storytelling, Mr. Clemens tried several occupations, including riverboat pilot, typesetter, and reporter for his brother Orion’s newspaper, and later as a miner, although his lack of success at mining prompted a move to Virginia City and a job as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in 1865.
That got him started writing, and once he was started, there was no stopping him.
His Multi-Faceted Career
The pen name Mark Twain was almost certainly a throwback to Clemens’ riverboat days, as the term in riverboat sailing meant an observed safe depth of two fathoms, or 12 feet, which would prompt the deckhands to shout, “Mark twain,” “Mark” meaning “marking the depth, and “twain” being an archaic term for “two.”
The problem with compiling a list of Clemens’ work is that Mark Twain wasn’t the only pen name he used. He went by such nom de plumes as “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass,” “Sieur Louis de Conte”, and “John Snook,” although there may have been others.
But here’s what we know: Clemens’ first commercial success in writing came with a story titled “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” which was published in the New York Saturday Press in November of 1865. A touch of rough country humor went over well in a nation still recovering from four years of bloody civil war, and Clemens’ career was off. After sandwiching in (hah) a trip to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Clemens started producing literary works and speaking, being about as reticent with his opinions as he was with his pen; he wrote a series of letters about his visit to Hawaii and his experiences there, including works like The Innocents Abroad. In 1872, he produced the travel book Roughing It, followed in 1873 by his first novel, The Gilded Age, A Tale of Today, and in 1883 by Life on the Mississippi. And, in 1885, he reportedly aided the ailing former President Ulysses Grant to compile and write his memoirs, which Clemens published in his own ill-fated publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Company. Clemens co-owned the company with his nephew, but couldn’t make a go of it; he was, it seems, a better writer than a businessman. Grant’s memoirs were, however, a success, and, as Grant intended, provided an income for his wife after the former president’s death from throat cancer.
But his best-known works hit the market in 1876 and 1885.
His Claim to Fame
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written as they were in language that was accepted as routine in the 1880s, get a lot of unfair press in today’s rather hypersensitive world. Even in my school years in the mid to late 1970s, some parents were agitating to get those books removed from the school library, along with other great pieces of American literature like John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Their complaints were about language and terms common then but unacceptable now, like a certain word that begins with “N.”
Most of my friends and I enjoyed the books anyway. They were tales of boys who were smart, tough, capable, endowed with brains and quick wits, always with their eyes on the main chance, always ready to depart on some new, independent adventure.
His Legacy
Samuel Clemens is still regarded today as one of America’s greatest writers and humorists. He wasn’t afraid to turn his acerbic wit on any target, but he earned acclaim all the same, with William Faulker calling him “the father of American literature.” Ernest Hemingway wrote of Clemens in his own novel, Green Hills of Africa, “All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”
He maintains his place among America’s great historic figures, a man who, you might say, was fond of looking at his audience and telling them exactly what he thought.
That’s something I can understand, and that’s for sure and for certain.
