Collected Nonfiction Volume 2: Selections from the Memoirs and Travel Writings

Richard Russo

ISBN 10: 1841593761 / ISBN 13: 9781841593760

Published by EVERYMAN S LIBRARY, 2016

About this Item

In.

Seller Inventory # ria9781841593760_new

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Collected Nonfiction Volume 2: Selections from the Memoirs and Travel Writings
• Publisher: EVERYMAN S LIBRARY
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1841593761
• ISBN 13: 9781841593760
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Twain's playful exuberance and remarkable storytelling gifts are on full display as he regales readers with his real-life adventures, some of them so outrageous they cannot be true - or can they?

As Richard Russo says in his fascinating introduction, Twain was an 'inspired, indeed, unparalleled, bullshitter' who himself cheerfully relates how as a cub reporter out West he had elevated a routine Indian attack on a wagon full of immigrants to a battle that 'to this day has no parallel in history' - once he knew he could get away with it.

There is drama as well as comedy in his account of life on the Mississippi, and great sadness too when his younger brother Henry is killed in a steamboat explosion - all the more poignant for the restraint with which he describes it. In The Innocents Abroad Twain the gleeful iconoclast is a passenger on a cruise ship to Europe and the Holy Land, poking fun at European snobbery and pretension and refusing to be overawed by all that History - but fully prepared to aim his satirical barbs at his fellow-tourists and indeed, squarely at himself.

He also proves to be a deeply compassionate writer, as fierce in his condemnation of injustice as he is skilful in mining the humour of human folly. He brought to literature a new, distinctly American voice - and he harboured as rich and fertile a blend of contradictions as the dynamic nation he came to embody and define.

About the Author

Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born in Missouri in 1835. He was a typesetter, a river-boat pilot on the Mississippi and a gold prospector before achieving enormous fame as a writer and public speaker.

On his death in 1910 President William Howard Taft said of him:
"Mark Twain gave pleasure – real intellectual enjoyment – to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come... His humour was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of American literature.”