Review: "Mark Twain," Ron Chernow

By Paul Carrier

You might believe that you cannot possibly have enough interest in Mark Twain to read a 1,000-page biography of him. Until, that is, you have read a 1,000-page biography of him.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was such a fascinating blend of brilliance, bravado and balderdash that a biographer as skilled as Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, etc.) should be able to craft a mesmerizing chronicle of such an engrossing character. Sure enough, Chernow delivers.                                

Mark Twain seemingly documents every facet of its subject’s life, including his literary genius, biting wit, luxurious tastes, mercurial nature and pigheaded foolishness. Not surprisingly, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, two of Twain’s most memorable creations, bear a startling resemblance to the young Clemens. As one chapter heading in Mark Twain puts it, Clemens was “a wild and mischievous boy” who, in his own words, retained his “appetite for notice and notoriety” into adulthood.

Best known for his literary output, Twain is perhaps underappreciated for other aspects of  his multifarious life. He briefly served as a soldier of sorts in a rebel militia unit at the start of the Civil War,  worked in print shops, and was a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi (which Twain later recalled as his “darling existence”). He held various newspaper jobs as a reporter whose articles often read like satire rather than news. He even tried his hand at prospecting in Nevada. (It didn’t go well.)

Twain made an early name for himself as a traveler, humorist and successful author who “fairly invented our celebrity culture,” according to Chernow. Notoriety followed the publication, in the 1860s, of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (a short story) and The Innocents Abroad, an antic, book-length chronicle of Twain’s voyage through Europe and the Holy Land. Subsequent novels, notably The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), made an even more lasting impression.

Chernow is nuanced in examining Twain’s use of the N-word in Huckleberry Finn and that novel’s characterization of the runaway slave Jim. Chernow notes that while the upstanding residents of Hannibal, Missouri, Twain’s hometown, held sway in Tom Sawyer, that hierarchy is upended in Huckleberry Finn. There, it is the outcasts, Huck and Jim, who emerge as the principled characters.

Twain was an unpredictable fellow, to say the least. He was charming and genial when it suited him, especially on the lecture circuit. But Chernow explains that Twain was “an iconoclast to the core.” He could be irascible, acerbic, volatile, highly critical and prone to fits of anger. Overly trusting of others, he became vengeful when wronged. Yet he was a doting father to his three daughters when they were children and a devoted husband to his wife, Livy (Olivia Langdon), whom he adored.

The greatest comic of his day combined laugh-out-loud jocularity with a caustic outlook and unorthodox views. Twain, who was no fan of Christianity, described Jesus as the only true Christian in human history. He poked fun at the concept of Noah’s Ark, writing that Noah would have had to collect 146,000 birds, beasts and fish and 2 million insects requiring ”a fleet of Arks,” and the stench aboard the boats would have been unbearable. Twain quipped that when one deceased human arrived in heaven, a confused clerk there had to consult an enormous map to pinpoint the location of Earth (known in heaven as the wart), because our planet is completely  inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

A man with contradictory impulses, Twain strongly supported women’s suffrage but had a lukewarm attitude toward Reconstruction. He grew up in poverty and had a lifelong fear of sinking back into it, which fueled an unfortunate knack for making notoriously bad investments to get rich. Twain was a master of wishful thinking in such cases. He heavily funded an experimental typesetting machine that was supposed to revolutionize printing. It didn’t work as promised. The venture collapsed and Twain lost a fortune.

Branching out into publishing, Twain took yet another wrong turn. His success in persuading Ulysses S. Grant to let him publish his memoirs was a boon for Twain because the memoirs sold so well they lifted Twain out of debt. But he interpreted that win as proof that he had what Chernow calls “a magnificent head for publishing,” which wasn’t remotely true. Twain the publisher turned his back on writing for quite some time, eventually filing for bankruptcy and heading back to both his writing table and the lecture circuit, to pay off substantial debts. He might never have regained his financial footing without the help of Henry H. Rogers, a sympathetic oil baron.

Over the years, Twain and his family became globe-trotters who dabbled in foreign languages and traveled in elite circles, thanks to Twain’s international celebrity. Later still, back home in America, Twain emerged as a highly vocal critic of what he decried as American imperialism in Cuba and the Philippines. He vigorously condemned autocratic rulers and became a vocal critic of racism and anti-Semitism. 

Chernow's biography is exhaustive but far from exhausting. Twain and his family lived lives that ranged from the gloriously serene to the unbearably tragic. A son died in infancy. The oldest of his three daughters died at 24. His middle daughter had sporadic psychological problems and his youngest daughter developed epilepsy. His wife, a profoundly stabilizing influence in Twain's life, was frail and sickly for years until she died at 58.

Mark Twain makes for difficult reading as its subject stumbles into his 70s because of Twain’s behavior. He developed a creepy (but seemingly non-sexual) obsession with young girls and took a hands-off approach to the needs of his adult daughters. Twain gave his overworked secretary and a scheming business associate far too much control over his affairs, with unfortunate results. He seemed oblivious to power grabs and personality clashes within his inner circle.

Chernow writes that Twain became increasingly nostalgic as he aged. “The paradox of Twain’s life was that the older and more famous he became and the grander his horizons, the more he pined for the vanished paradise of his early years.” As Chernow illustrates in Mark Twain, that wild kid from Hannibal left a remarkable legacy for biographers over the course of his 74 years.