REVIEW
Mark Twain: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Edited By Eric J. Sundquist. (New Century Views.)
Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice-Hall,
1994.
Pp. vi, 204. Paper. $12.95. ISBN 0-13-564170-5.
The following review appeared 10 August 1994 on the Mark Twain Forum.
Copyright © Mark Twain Forum, 1994
Reviewed by:
Joseph A. Alvarez <jalvarez@char.vnet.net>
C
entral Piedmont Community College
Commissions are donated to the Mark Twain Project
One of the first volumes of the Prentice-Hall New Century Views
Series, Eric J. Sundquist's
new collection of essays and book excerpts from the 1980s augments (but
does not
entirely supersede) Henry Nash Smith's Mark Twain: A Collection of
Critical Essays
(1963), the "Twentieth Century Views" series analog predecessor
from the same publisher.
Both belong in any library (college, high school, public) to which
students go for
either research in or comprehension of Mark Twain and his works.
Researchers can
compare these two volumes for a simplified view of trends in Twain
scholarship over
the last thirty years.
For example, a quick comparison of the older Twentieth Century Views
collection to
the New Century Views under consideration shows Smith's collection
emphasizes Roughing It
over Sundquist's emphasis on Innocents Abroad.
They compare almost exactly on the quantity of general material (Twain as
"classic"
writer) and on Tom Sawyer
and Life on the Mississippi,
each of the latter two having one essay in each collection. They both
treat Huckleberry Finn
quantitatively equally with three selections, but Sundquist's collection
emphasizes
both Connecticut Yankee
(three essays) and Pudd'nhead Wilson
(two essays) over the coverage of those two works in Smith's volume (one
essay each).
Bernard DeVoto's essay in Smith on the "Late Twain" is
biographical, as is, to some
extent, Forrest Robinson's analogous selection in Sundquist.
As editor, Sundquist not only chose well-known Twain scholars (e.g., Louis
J. Budd
and James M. Cox), but also included other well-known scholars (e.g.,
African-American
biographer Arnold Rampersad). The New Century Views series (as was its
predecessor)
appears to be aimed at undergraduates and advanced high school students;
however, some
of the selections in this volume may cast their gaze--or rather, their
vocabulary--slightly
above that level. In other words, the selections do pique interest and do
provide relatively "new views," but students and public library
patrons will have to work
a bit harder than graduate students or academics at comprehension with some
of the
essays. These works do not plumb the depths of postmodern theoretical
critical density, although some of that discourse, which does appear, may
be new to some of these
readers. As one example stated to suggest positive use of those theories,
consider
James Cox's concluding remarks about the present generation of critics and
their
"problematics, their presences-become-absences, and their
aporias."
Nonetheless, college or high school Mark Twain teachers who have not been
keeping
up with the "Mark Twain Industry," which hums along more reliably
than either the
Paige typesetter or Hank Morgan's man factories, would do well to acquire
this collection
to enhance their knowledge and to supplement their teaching. Those who
have followed
Twain research could also find this volume useful.
One of Sundquist's noticeable strengths is his comprehensive introductory
essay, in
which he (re)constructs Twain in an ironic way. For example, Sundquist
notes Twain's
"rhetorical puncturing of Old World artistic or intellectual sublimity" in Innocents Abroad.
Sundquist also remarks that Twain "characteristically declared the
lessons of the
'old masters' bankrupt" while pointing out the irony that Twain
himself has become
for many contemporary readers one of the (new?) "old masters."
Sundquist's introduction
contextualizes the remaining essays, and conflates ideas in Twain's work
and in Twain
himself with insightful comments such as the following:
Grounded in theories of Anglo-Saxon manifest destiny and
popularized in the real life
of Theodore Roosevelt, as well as the fictive hero's lives drawn by Owen
Wister,
Richard Harding Davis, and numerous dime novelists, imperial adventure,
Twain maintained, was analogous to slavery in the moral burden that it
imposed upon the nation and
the sacrifice of humanity it made under the banner of American freedom.
Not that
Twain himself stood outside responsibility for that sacrifice: nothing is
more clear
than his recognition of authorial complicity in virtually every crime and
frailty his essays
and books condemn.
In other words, Twain tried to have it both ways, as we can readily see by
the apparent
paradoxical personal (especially financial) behavior versus his authorial
voice.
One need only think of how much Twain relied on Henry Rogers (and
indirectly the
Standard Oil Company) to clear the path through the complicated financial
aftermath of
his personal and corporate bankruptcy toward the end of the Gilded Age.
About the
time Twain emerged from the bankruptcy, he condemned American imperialism
in Following the Equator
(1897) and, later, in more strident attacks on America's Pacific and
Caribbean territorial
acquisitions. Is Twain hypocritical like the rest of the "damned
human race," to
which he also claimed membership? In a word, and to some extent, yes.
Sundquist
aptly likens Twain's personal case to the nation's economy with
"cycles of debt, prosperity,
inflation, and collapse." Twain's desire to live an upper-middle
class, if not an
American aristocratic, life is well known to anyone who reads into Twain's
biographies, even his autobiographies.
The table of contents reveals the range of the essays: from Innocents
Abroad
to "Late Twain." Noticeably missing, however, is much
discussion of the tales, sketches,
speeches, and essays before the so-called "late" (dark?) Twain
period (prior to the
1890s). And while Forrest Robinson's concluding essay does help link the
late writings to some of the earlier ones, again, the collection would have
fared better
had it included more on pre-Pudd'nhead Wilson
short works and post-Pudd'nhead Wilson
works like Following the Equator
and The Mysterious Stranger.
The later works, as most Twainians know, have become the object of
intense scholarship
over the last few years. Publication of the two-volume Library of America's
Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays
(1992), edited by Louis Budd, has also helped spur scholarly interest in
those shorter
works--early and late. Granted, it is most likely that teaching Twain's
work centers
on the "big books" more than on the lesser well-known ones and on
the shorter works; and this collection reflects that probable scenario.
However, most of the American
Literature anthologies commonly used in college courses include such famous
short
pieces as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,"
"The Whittier Birthday
Speech," and "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." It is
difficult to assert as indisputable
fact that most college and high school teachers focus on canonical texts
like Huck Finn
and Connecticut Yankee,
but that certainly is my sense of it.
Let us now turn to a tour through some of the essays themselves. Review
space limits
the commentary here, but I will emphasize the important features of several of the
essays in order to characterize the value of the whole collection.
In "A Hero with Changing Faces" (from his 1983 book Our
Mark Twain: The Making of His Public Personality
), Louis J. Budd explores the related concepts of Twain as hero and
celebrity, grounding
his discussion in theories of humor and popular culture. Budd enunciates
four problems
in judging the authority of "alleged culture-heroes" upon which
he bases much of his discussion, the last of which I will elucidate.
"The fourth problem is unique
to Twain . . . because a sizable part of his late constituency had read
little, if
any, of his writing," and had never heard his lectures or speeches.
From these problems, Budd proceeds to show that Twain bridged high and low
culture to the point that he
was hero-celebrity in both cultural spheres. Budd's amusing opening
anecdotes prefigure
this part of his discussion by exemplifying just that sense of celebrity
across "cultures." Budd dwells on what he calls Twain's
"dominant quality": irreverence, which
Budd claims "worked through comedy and gained privileges of frankness
from it."
As Budd concludes, however, he states that "the most important social
fact about Twain
was not humor but Twain as humorist, a likable personality who expanded
into a comic
hero." Twain accomplished "herohood," Budd asserts,
essentially by working at it
with "shrewdness, courage, toughness, and perseverance."
Susan Gillman's "The Writer's Secret Life: Twain and the Art of
Authorship" (from
her 1989 Dark Twins: Imposture and Identity in Mark Twain's America
) examines Twain's differing claims about his "authorial
control." Twain likened
himself as author to a "passive amanuensis/ unconscious plagiarist [on
the grounds
that 'all ideas are second-hand']/ . . .unwilling midwife/ proprietor/
father, and
finally as the unconscious." Gillman's excerpt touches on most of the
Twain oeuvre and asserts
that he seemed to settle for an authorial persona that reflects the
author's self
in the book, but is itself an "alien other, . . . including
self-knowledge of which
even the self is unconscious."
She proceeds to note Twain's long-term interest in dream analysis, taking
"My Platonic
Sweetheart" for her text to "[confirm] Twain's habit of
articulating perception in
binary terms." Gillman applies that notion of duality to assert that
"Twain's inquiry into identity. . . [moved] toward the. . .
metaphysical. . . and speculative. That
is. . .the double conceived as a character gives way to a structural
conception of
narrative doubling." Discussion of a January 1898 dream Twain
recorded in his notebook
involving "a negro wench" who propositions (?) the author and
vanishes before he can
respond with other than a rising stomach concludes Gillman's analysis of
identity
and authorial control. The entry and Twain's "hierarchy of
selves" are "so confused
and confusing" that they question epistemological order and
"leave open the question posed
by the title of one of [his fictional dream tales], 'Which Was the Dream?'.
. ."
John Seelye (who wrote the 1970 novel The True Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn) designates Tom Sawyer as "a subliminal projection of Sam
Clemens" in the role of
the Lord of Misrule. Seelye also describes Tom as a Puck-ish character who
plays
off the Thomas Aldrich Bailey character of the bad boy (The Story of
the Bad Boy,
1869) to become the "Good Bad Boy. . .[who] may thenceforth become a
Playboy, which
is indeed what he does." Seelye's essay in this collection,
originally published
in Sewanee Review,
"What's in a Name: Sounding the Depths of Tom Sawyer
" (1982), has also served as the introduction to the Penguin Classics Tom Sawyer.
As such, it covers the territory from St. Petersburg to McDougal's Cave,
while
pointing out that the sequel to the book outshines the original; but (like
the book)
Tom, "bears careful consideration. Like Hamlet he deserves
studying."
Seelye notes that the novel acts like a drama: "of all Mark Twain's
books for children
[it] most resembles a play." The anomaly, of course, lies in the
strict control
of action in dramatic form while celebrating "boyhood's free
spirit." Seelye identifies as one of the several ironies of both
Tom Sawyer
and Huck Finn
their use of "episodes clearly derived from the adventures concocted
by those masters
of the historical romance" (Cooper and Scott) whose "literary
offenses" Twain recorded
in a rather harsh comic castigation.
James Cox's "Life on the Mississippi
Revisited" (1984) reinforces Louis Budd's comments about Twain as
celebrity by asserting
that "It is rather a book in which the life of Samuel Clemens is both
converted and
enlarged into the myth of Mark Twain." Cox's essay, reprinted from a
collection
of essays titled The Mythologizing of Mark Twain,
develops that assertion by first noting how both the popular audience and
the academic
or literary audience have celebrated "Twain as a native literary
genius." Cox sees
this division of audience as an "initial; or 'master' division,"
the "index to a
host of divisions Mark Twain has both represented and excited." Cox
suggests the pen
name serves as entry point into the divisions and states the books
"were made to
enlarge
him precisely because they could not contain him."
One of Cox's interesting points relates to the alleged "safety"
signified by the call
"Mark Twain" when used on the steamboats. Far from being only
the safe water level,
Cox points out the equivalent of the "half-full, half-empty
glass": the call could
indicate entry into shallower water or passage into deeper water. Cox
relates how master
pilot Horace Bixby arranged a lesson in humility for the apprentice pilot
Sam Clemens
in which the call "Mark Twain" rings out in water Clemens thought
safe. His reaction causes "a gale of humiliating laughter" to
peel forth from Bixby and other witnesses.
Thus, Cox claims, we
can begin to see the dimensions of the world Samuel Clemens was
inventing under the
signature of Mark Twain. It was a world where art was a guild of master
and apprentice
come into the industrial age of steam; it involved both experience and
memory (the
master artist and pilot, Bixby, had both to know the river and to remember
it); and
it was art as a performance before an audience--in other words, public art,
or at
least art performed in public.
Through a tour de force like this and others in this essay, the master
American literature
critic turns out a sensitive and sensible performance reifying the
importance of
Life on the Mississippi
on its own (not just as memory refresher for and precursor of Huck
Finn).
Of the three essays on Twain's masterpiece, Arnold Rampersad's
"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
and Afro-American Literature" (originally published in the Mark
Twain Journal
in 1984) most interestingly situates the novel within the context of
Ernest Hemingway's
famous praise for it in 1935. Rampersad takes the quote through the
"cheating" part
as well as the more often quoted "All modern American literature comes
from one book. . . ." He then inquires if the novel serves that
purpose for "black American
fiction." Rampersad identifies two ways in which Huck Finn
differs from "the bulk of black American fiction": the use of
the first-person narrator
and the "unbroken relationship. . .between autobiography and
dialect." He notes
that "countrified speech" liberates Huck's "poetic
sensibility" and that few black
writers have entrusted their narration "to members of the black folk
or the black masses."
Rampersad's essay surveys black fiction as much as it traces the influence
of Twain's
work. One of his observations about children not being legible in black
fiction
he relates to the "social reality" described therein as
restricting its writers from
depicting "young lives relatively free from pain." Another
aspect of both black and white
American fiction, male bonding, Rampersad declares as negative in
"most male black
fiction" because of its "antifeminine behavior and values."
A third observation
concerns comedy in a racial context, of which he notes the dearth in black
fiction until
Invisible Man.
In all these areas, he asserts, Huck Finn
"clearly anticipate[s] eventual trends in black fiction."
Its most important prediction of "later black fiction," Rampersad
concludes, "is in
Mark Twain's depiction of a moral dilemma, or moral inversion, as being at
the heart
of southern, and by inference American, society." He relates the
dilemma to W. E.
B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk,
constructing it as the fountainhead of black fiction analogous to the
place of Huck Finn
in Hemingway's appropriately brief and quixotic view of American literary
history.
But he also places Twain in Huck Finn
very near to Du Bois in their affinity, if not in direct influence.
I commend the selections on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court
and on the "late" writings (Forrest Robinson's "The Lie of
Silent Assertion: Late
Twain"), as well as the other essays in the collection. However, I
will conclude
the analysis of the individual selections with a close look at Carolyn
Porter's 1990
feminist reading of Pudd'nhead Wilson,
"Roxana's Plot," one of two intriguing essays on that book (the
second: Sundquist's
"Mark Twain and Homer Plessy").
Porter contends that traditional readings of Pudd'nhead Wilson
(such as James Cox's) have accounted for the patriarchal repression
embodied in Wilson's
discovery of the murderer and in his role thereby as restorer of the status
quo ante.
But they have failed to account for Roxy's role as creator of her own plot
and its eventual tragic (for her) reversal. Porter addresses Roxy's plot
through both
the reality and the trope of motherhood, especially slave maternity.
Acknowledging
the influence of the binary oppositions contained in southern black women's
stereotypical roles of "Jezebel" and "Mammy," and the
literary conventions contained within the
"tragic mulatt[o]" story, Porter nevertheless claims that Roxy
creates her own dynamic
in the form of her plot to reconstruct her own son as white and wealthy.
"In other
words," as Porter states, "Pudd'nhead Wilson
is the scene of conflict between a repressive paternal plot and a
subversive maternal
one."
Quoting Orlando Patterson's idea that slavery is a form of social death,
Porter shows
that Roxy "imitates the slaveholder's dominant position as commutator
of a death
sentence that he can always revoke" by switching babies. However,
Roxy does not
actually have the power to enforce the threat of exposing "Tom
Driscoll." Porter concludes
her essay by stating that Roxy's plot "drives in two directions at
once." One direction
subverts the white patriarchy (by erasing the name of the [white] father).
The other direction "that makes Roxana a powerful weapon in Twain's
arsenal" involves the
reinscription of "matrilineal rule of descent. . .on the mulatto mother." Roxy's
plot, then both drives home the "moral idiocy" of slavery and
"exposes the similarity
in [the] fates" of the two sons.
An overall negative point of criticism about this collection applies
generally to
publication of academic research: no doubt because of the time between
conception
of the ideas and their "birth" into printed books, new research
blossoms. Indeed,
some of the most exciting scholarship about Twain has been published just
before, or nearly
coincident with, this collection. I refer most pointedly to Shelley Fisher
Fishkin's
contested groundbreaking ideas about the influence of African-American
voices in
American culture, particularly on Twain's composition of Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn
(in Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African American Voices,
1993). Victor Doyno's revision of his Writing Huck Finn
(1991) based on the rediscovered manuscript pages missing for about sixty
years will
come out later this year or early next year. The work of these scholars
merits attention
in any comprehensive collection of "new" views on Mark Twain.
True, Sundquist's introduction does praise Fishkin's work as a
"brilliant and innovative argument"
that "has raised a striking set of questions for Twain scholars."
And even though
both Fishkin's and Doyno's books are listed in the bibliography, one could
hope for
more than a taste of their views. Legal restrictions concerning
publication of the manuscript
excerpts and acquisition of rights from other publishers may have
influenced the
book's final shape in these two cases more than did the editor's judgment.
I would
also speculate that either the timing of the actual collecting of the
essays or the publisher's
apparent budget restrictions contribute more to these omissions than does
the editor.
A second, minor, complaint about the collection also pertains to the
publisher: the
lack of an index, a sin of omission rather than commission. Collections of
essays
like this one (including those from other publishers) frequently omit an
index, making
them rather difficult for researchers to find a specific reference with
ease. As a
teacher of the research process to students and also a researcher, I rely
heavily
on indices for helping to locate information efficiently. (Often errors in
the index
undermine their usefulness, but that varies from one book to the next.)
Other volumes in
this series (indeed, in the earlier Twentieth Century Views series as well)
lack
this valuable research tool. It is clearly the publisher's design, then.
Fortunately,
the titles of the essays in the Twain collection are not cloyingly
deceptive; they do
give us clear signals about content.
Despite these quibbles, Sundquist did select a number of fine essays that
will bring
"new views" into play for American Studies and Literature
teachers, especially for
those who are not Twain scholars, and for students. A reasonably short
collection
like this one compares favorably to the slightly broader On Mark
Twain: The Best from American Literature,
edited by Edwin Cady and Louis J. Budd (1987). Finally, I would recommend
the book
for all college libraries and for those high school and public libraries
with a need
for good, compact materials for students and others interested in Mark
Twain and
his works.
Contents
Introduction: Eric J. Sundquist
A Hero with Changing Faces: Louis J. Budd
The Writer's Secret Life: Twain and the Art of Authorship: Susan K. Gillman
Ants at the Picnic: The Innocents Abroad
: Richard Bridgman
What's in a Name: Sounding the Depths of Tom Sawyer
: John Seelye
Life on the Mississippi
Revisited: James M. Cox
A "Raft of Trouble": Word and Deed in Huckleberry Finn
: Lawrence B. Holland
Huck, Jim, and American Racial Discourse: David L. Smith
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
and Afro-American Literature: Arnold Rampersad
Mark Twain's Frontier, Hank Morgan's Last Stand: Richard Slotkin
Armies and Factories: A Connecticut Yankee
: Walter Benn Michaels
Hank Morgan and the Colonization of Utopia: David R. Sewell
Roxana's Plot: Carolyn Porter
Mark Twain and Homer Plessy: Eric J. Sundquist
The Lie of Silent Assertion: Late Twain: Forrest G. Robinson
Chronology of Important Dates
Notes on Contributors
Bibliography