Mark Twain in Calif

by Nigey Lennon

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0877011982
• ISBN13: 9780877011989
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (CA)
• Length: 127 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

An excellent book; highly enjoyable

In 1861, Samuel Clemens -- he would begin writing under the name Mark Twain in 1866 -- abandoned the Missouri militia to strike out for Carson City, Nevada, where his brother Orion had been appointed secretary to the governor of the Nevada territory. The young man was 26 years old. By the time Twain left California in 1866, he was a celebrated writer and lecturer. This very enjoyable book traces Mark Twain's literary development during the Civil War years. It gives a vivid picture of frontier journalism in Nevada and California, if indeed "journalism" is the right word to describe the invective that the writers engaged in. Twain, it appears, had no literary ambitions when he arrived in Nevada. He took up journalism as a last resort after his mining ventures failed. The book tells how Twain had to flee Carson City ahead of a duel and how, three years later, after a stint as a journalist with San Francisco newspapers, he had to flee San Francisco because his investigations into police corruption had made him an enemy of the police. Throughout this book you will find descriptions of the San Francisco bohemia and the authors who poplulated it, including Bret Harte, California's other famous frontier writer. How much did frontier literature and the openness of the American west influence Mark Twain's writing? The author presents all the facts and lets you draw a conclusion. (I think the freewheeling west and the colloquialness of frontier literature were powerful influences.) All by itself, this book would be a wonderful history of Civil War-era California, but it has another thing going for it -- its subject. Mark Twain was a very skilled and original humorist. The author gives many examples of Twain at his humorous best. For example, after a trip to Hawaii (then called the Sandwich Islands), Twain gave a series of lectures in Northern California describing his travels to Hawaii. The book describes one of these lectures: "In San Jose...he offered, from the platform, to demonstrate cannibalism 'as practiced in the Sandwich Islands.' However, he told his astonished audience, he needed a volunteer. If any mother in the audience would be good enough to bring her child to the platform, he would commence with the demonstration. Then he waited, with a perfectly straight face, as if he he expected a volunteer to step forward any minute." This book is delightful. It left me wanted to learn more about San Francisco in the Civil War era and some of the people that the book mentions in passing.