The Impossible Contradictions of Mark Twain

In 1857, Sam stumbled into the occupation that would signifier his identity. Aboard a southbound steamboat—part of immoderate half-baked strategy involving the Amazon River and coca—he met a aviator who offered to thatch him, for a fee, the “wonderful science” of stream navigation. Sam signed on, and betwixt steering and spinning yarns with his fellow-rivermen helium expanded his speechmaking acold beyond the boyhood canon of “Robin Hood,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and “The Arabian Nights.” Now it was John Milton, Thomas Paine, Sir Walter Scott, and Shakespeare. His journals amusement him collecting worldly similar a magpie—speech, scenes, characters. During this time, helium besides picked up his pen name: “mark twain,” riverboat slang for a extent of 12 feet, meaning safe, navigable water.

Then came the Civil War, which sank the steamboat commercialized and divided the Clemens household down the middle. Twain’s warfare grounds was little capable to acceptable connected a cocktail napkin: helium joined the Missouri State Guard for 2 weeks, past bailed. (“I knew much astir retreating than the antheral who invented retreating,” helium wrote later.) Rather than combat implicit slavery, helium headed West, to a antithetic benignant of chaos—a earthy frontier afloat of men who, similar him, were “smitten with the metallic fever.”

In Virginia City, Nevada, Sam Clemens recovered his groove arsenic a newspaperman; calling him a “journalist,” though, mightiness beryllium a stretch. The papers typically had a casual narration with facts, and Sam delighted successful investigating however acold helium could propulsion things. One of his archetypal pieces for the Territorial Enterprise, dated October 1, 1862, included a implicit fabrication: a wagon enactment “through an Indian combat that to this time has nary parallel successful history,” arsenic helium aboriginal recalled successful “Roughing It” (1872). Reading it successful people the adjacent morning, helium had an epiphany: “I felt that I had recovered my morganatic concern astatine last.”

By twenty-six, Sam was afloat formed—auburn hair, a mustache, and a wardrobe permanently nether siege from smoke, whiskey, and the grime of vagabond living. He covered everything, including crime, theatre (“got the merest passing glimpse of play and opera, and with that for a substance we ‘wrote up’ those plays and operas,” helium aboriginal recounted), politicians (“dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum”), and the mistreatment of Chinese immigrants. His restlessness, his distaste for corrupt and abusive authorities, and his knack for provoking rival journalists had yet made Virginia City excessively blistery to clasp him. In 1864, helium relocated to San Francisco, wherever helium placed enactment successful the Golden Era and the Californian—high-toned publications that raised him beyond the class of paper hack and toward thing recognizably literary.

The West gave him what helium needed, but staying longer mightiness person killed him—if not by immoderate of the countless ways the frontier could, past possibly by his ain hand, during 1 of the depressive spells that sometimes took hold. When Sam acceptable sail for New York from San Francisco, connected December 15, 1866, he’d been Mark Twain for much than 3 years—on the leafage and, increasingly, successful person. He was already angling for a spot successful New York’s literate scene, aided by friendships with established humorists similar Bret Harte and Artemus Ward, who helped store his enactment to Eastern editors.

But Twain was outgrowing his mentors. That fall, he’d barnstormed done gold-rush towns, delivering what were loosely called lectures—essentially, standup sets astir his travels. Twain was a cautious writer posing arsenic a casual talker. The lad who had erstwhile listened to enslaved storytellers had go a virtuoso yarn-spinner. Comic monologues paid amended than journalism, “and determination was little enactment connected with it,” helium aboriginal observed. Besides, laughter “was a heavenly dependable to me,” helium wrote.

The East promised that trifecta writers crave but seldom sanction outright: money, renown, and prestige, successful shifting proportion. New York was nary taste superior erstwhile Twain arrived successful 1867, and that suited his hustle. As a lecturer, helium recovered a spot successful the city’s nationalist life; arsenic a analogous helium filed dispatches for assorted high-profile newspapers. A publication was the adjacent step. That year, helium published a postulation anchored by his communicative “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” and though the publication was politely received, its income were modest—a occurrence helium recovered vaguely humiliating. The breakthrough came soon after, with a roving duty aboard the Quaker City, a steamship bound for Palestine. Twain chronicled excursions inland from the Mediterranean to Paris and Rome. Gimlet-eyed astir the world’s expected wonders—Parisians and ineffable sites alike—his letters recovered their signifier successful a 2nd book, which appeared successful 1869, titled “The Innocents Abroad, or, The New Pilgrim’s Progress.” It was a best-seller, a sensation, and the infinitesimal Twain’s dependable became not conscionable recognizable but indispensable.

A best-seller wasn’t the lone happening that came of the Quaker City cruise. When a fellow-passenger, Charles Langdon, showed Twain a miniature representation of his twenty-one-year-old sister, Olivia, helium was smitten. “To labour to unafraid the world’s praise, oregon its blasted either,” helium aboriginal wrote, “seems stale, flat, & unprofitable compared with the happiness of achieving the praise oregon the maltreatment of truthful beloved a person arsenic a wife.” Livy, arsenic helium called her, came from a salient East Coast abolitionist family—cultured, affluent, religious, and wary of the brash humorist present vying for their daughter. Twain pressed his lawsuit and yet won their approval. The brace were joined successful February, 1870.

Within 2 years, Hartford, Connecticut—where Livy had connections—was his location and his basal of operations. The matrimony offered Twain not conscionable intimacy but infrastructure: Livy became his editor, his conscience, and his entrée into circles helium erstwhile mocked. Their thirty-four-year matrimony would nutrient 3 daughters and a son, who died successful infancy. Even arsenic Twain’s location beingness stabilized, his literate ambitions grew. In 1875, The Atlantic ran the archetypal installment of what became “Life connected the Mississippi” (1883). The portion impressed John Hay, Lincoln’s erstwhile caput and a aboriginal Secretary of State, who was reared conscionable upriver from Hannibal. “I knew each that, each connection of it,” Hay wrote to Twain. “But I could not person remembered 1 connection of it all. You person the 2 top gifts of the writer, representation and imagination.”

When the words were flowing, helium hardly noticed the effort—a definite motion they’d adust up eventually. “As agelong arsenic a publication would constitute itself,” helium admitted, “I was a faithful and funny amanuensis, and my manufacture did not flag; but the infinitesimal that the publication tried to displacement to my caput the labour of contriving its situations, inventing its adventures and conducting its conversations, I enactment it distant and dropped it retired of my mind.”

What Twain sought was thing similar automation. He wanted to enactment without working, a tendency hard to quadrate with different writerly particularities of his: helium was obsessive astir connection choice, particularly erstwhile rendering dialect. And yet helium often deferred to others—most often the women successful his life—when it came to editing, allowing them to onslaught what they would.

His penning benignant was inseparable from the signifier his books took, and his fictional instincts were much episodic than architectural. “A antheral who is not calved with the novel-writing acquisition has a troublesome clip of it erstwhile helium tries to physique a novel,” helium erstwhile observed. “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” was an illustration. Twain wrote overmuch of it successful the summertime of 1874, arsenic helium and his woman prepared to determination into a flamboyant Gothic mansion successful Hartford, on with 2 young daughters and a household staff. But the beingness benignant came with costs, and 1 mode to rise wealth was to advertise a publication to prospective subscribers, who would wage for it successful advance. Then you conscionable had to constitute it.

At 1 point, enactment connected the manuscript stalled completely. His tank, helium wrote, “was empty; the banal of materials successful it was exhausted; the communicative could not spell connected without materials; it could not beryllium wrought retired of nothing.” The frost came astir leafage 400—a reminder of the economics shaping Twain’s method. With subscription publishing, bulk helped warrant the price. As his biographer Justin Kaplan enactment it, “It forced the writer to constitute to acceptable and to fill . . . and it conditioned him to deliberation of his penning arsenic a measurable commodity, similar eggs and corn.”

Published successful 1876, “Tom Sawyer” was printed and distributed successful the U.S. by a task Twain partially owned. It sold respectably but not astatine the level he’d hoped. The Atlantic called it “a fantastic survey of the boy-mind”; others dismissed it arsenic a bid of sketches alternatively than a existent novel. Sardonic successful tone—its moralists are hypocrites, the religion oppressive, and lone the rebels are appealing—the publication inactive plays it safe: slavery is each but absent from this mentation of Hannibal.

Twain worked connected “Huckleberry Finn” that summer, astatine a retreat successful upstate New York. But the writing, again, proved fitful. He wrote a fewer 100 pages earlier pausing the task astir 1880, unsure however to proceed. He was besides engaged chasing fortune: steam pulleys, marine telegraphs, and the Paige Compositor—a typesetting instrumentality that promised riches and delivered bankruptcy. As Chernow notes, Twain “raged against plutocrats adjacent arsenic helium strove to go one.”