Mark Twain

I finally got around to another biography, this time Mark Twain, who was always one of America’s most beloved authors but is rarely read by children now because some of his books have a liberal (which is an appropriate adjective given how racist that group is) use of a certain pejorative word for African-Americans.  I remember reading almost all his books as a boy, and being enchanted by his descriptions of boyhood along the Mississippi River.  The biography was the recent one by Ron Chernow, which is very long and very thorough and probably fairly balanced.  What people write as an author may not always be reflective of how they lived their lives, and this is certainly the case with Twain.

The big picture that you come away with is that Twain was able to outgrow the racism endemic in the area of Missouri he grew up in, and while perhaps never entirely shedding some stereotypical views of African-Americans, he was a strong and forceful voice for equality and painted a full picture of the horrors of slavery and discrimination.  He also defended other minorities, including Jews and eventually Native Americans.  He was well-traveled and horrified at the treatment he saw in many countries, South Africa for example, of certain races or ethnic groups.  Twain was mortified by imperialism and its consequences and despite its affect on his popularity, railed against the US doing what European countries had done as imperialists, particularly when we took over the Phillipines from Spain and failed to give those islands their independence as we had promised.

Twain was not just a great author, he was an outstanding speaker, entertaining audiences with humor and intelligence.  His spontaneous and written wit was well-known and he was recognized and celebrated around the world.  To say he enjoyed the attention would be an understatement.  Twain hobnobbed with royalty and celebrities of all types, but was equally comfortable with the common people.  While he could be a loyal and steadfast friend, he was volatile and when crossed or disappointed, used his pen and tongue to heap virulent abuse on those he believed had betrayed him.

And there were more than a few of those people because Twain was unable to recognize the limits of his talents, especially in regard to his belief in his financial acumen, which was essentially non-existent.  The pursuit of futile inventions and investments caused serious financial troubles for him during most of his life, despite the success of his books and lecture tours.  His finances became so insecure that he and his family lived outside the US for many years, in Europe, because it was less expensive there.  For someone who contributed many adages to the lexicon, Twain apparently was unaware of the danger of throwing good money after bad.

These money worries contributed to the other major disappointment in his life–the health issues of his wife and children and himself, which resulted in the early death of the spouse he so adored and two of his daughters.  Twain’s conduct was deplorable, essentially refusing to deal with a daughter with epilepsy and another with other major health issues.  He avoided these tasks by referring to it as women’s work.  His avoidance of family members when ill contributed to the difficulties they faced in life.  No doubt he loved them, but until it was too late, he displayed little self-awareness of the effects of his conduct.

Perhaps because of some of his own behavior and certainly because of what he observed during his travels, Twain became quite the pessimist, referring, probably correctly, to humans as a horrifically cruel and barbaric race.  Many of his most pessimistic, negative and damning writings were withheld from the public until after his death, and some were not released, by his request, until 100 years after his death, in 2010.  While long, the bio is a fairly easy read, certainly entertaining.