I love his writing and have a facebook note (embarrasingly sloppy, a nascent attempt at summary) on his attempt to put a seductive face on evil in his Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts which I wish hed finished. I was drawn to this article to find out whether it goes in the direction the title leads me to suspect it would. It went more or less where Id expected and some, but not all, points resonate. One could almost feel ok with slavery which WAS, as suggested, unserious treatment. But a broader look at his style, the breadth of his writing and the noteworthy observation by others of his deference to status quo and power... demonstrating in my mind a humanitarian unafraid of doling out bits of wisdom in hardball black and white, inasmuch as he could still get folks of his day and age to read it. He had financial ups and downs which possibly affected his style and objects of satire but I suspect it was more out of his desire to reach an audience. Distinctly different from the comedy of our day which takes potshots at power given that the same for the weak and defenseless fall flat, Twain did cultivate a remarkably advanced comedic technique of taking the audience along for the ride while gently getting them to laugh at the human objects of satire, with gently being pivotal inasmuch as something more overt would have led people to eschew self-examination. Only when one opens up to laughter can they recognize themselves in a joke and also forgive themselves. Thats a remarkable quality for a writer. Is it the audience being subtely laughed at or laughed with? How firmly was Twains tongue affixed to cheek and which of his references were intentional or coincidental? I remain open on that. From my note: A discussion of this book with a friend led to a recommendation of another book Evil : An Investigation by Time magazine essayist Lance Morrow. Morrow observes that depictions of evil are a staple of Twain’s writing. There is Huck Finn’s n’er do well father who attempts to take Huck’s life. Most memorable is one casually interjected vignette of earlier American life when Tom Sawyer gets off a steamboat downriver and reports that there had been an accident in the form of a boiler explosion. A woman asks, “Anyone hurt?” Tom answers “No Ma’am. A couple of niggers killed.” The woman replied “Oh thank heavens, because you know, sometimes people do get hurt.” There is also A Dogs Tale a careful depiction of pedestrian anthropocentric inhumanity so as not to directly offend. Yet mothers of young children are aghast that such a beloved figure would write such a thing and hide the book from their children. Methinks Twain was far more clever than most of us think. Thats just to say that I think Twain, particularly towards the end of his life, struggled with how far to go with his satire, which seemed to grow more biting and wasnt inclined to the political as, for example, an H.L. Mencken was.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 19:21:12 +0000
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