riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (11/05/83)
My favorite works by Twain are his travelogues and similar writings -- "Life on the Mississippi," "Roughing It," "Innocents Abroad" and so on. I read everything I could find of this sort by Twain when I was in high school, and it's probably high time for a re-read by now. Reading Twain's views of America and Americans of the nineteenth century, it's really remarkable how little we have changed.
pector@ihuxw.UUCP (11/07/83)
For myself, I never find myself getting bored in any of Twain's novels;
but, I can see where other people might. Twain really had problems
finding good endings for his books. As a result, he did one of two things.
First, he sometimes ended very, very abruptly as in "Tom Sawyer Abroad"
where it ends something like Jim went back to Missouri in the balloon,
Aunt Polly sent his companion (the Frenchman) back to Tom and Huck to tell
them to come home, and they moaned and went home. This particular ending
took (if I remember correctly) a couple paragraphs. Second, he would
try ride out the story, leading to a very long, tedious, "nothing to do
with the previous 2/3 of the book" ending. A good example of this is
in "Huckleberry Finn" where the last 1/3 of the book (involving the
Dauphin and his compatriot) is OK but a letdown compared to the first 2/3
of the book. Twain was great at short stories. My favorite books as far
as far as them being well-done throughout by Twain: "The Prince and the
Pauper," "Tom Sawyer," "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."
All three of these books leave the reader feeling that the end came at
the right time.
As far as his travel writings are concerned, I think they're great! Twain
had a real knack for picking up the dialects of various regions of the
country as well as the many tales and stories told out West. He also
had a good eye for the absurd.
Twain also was a good writer about politics, governments, and social and
religious customs. If you get the opportunity, it is well worth reading
some of his writings from the 1890-1908 time period. Lastly, he was great
at literary criticism (or at least very entertaining). The man did not
mince words. His comments on James Fenimore Cooper (some of them are
reprinted in "Letters From The Earth") are hilarious and timeless.
A dedicated Twainophile,
Scott Pector
P. S. I've been to Hannibal, MO twice, Hartford, CT once (where Twain lived
for twenty years with his family and had the most interesting looking
house I've ever seen), Virginia City, NV once (where Twain wrote
for a newspaper for 2 years before going to San Francisco in the
mid-1860s), and Gold Rush Country once (where he mined and got the
"Jumping Frog" story at Jackass Hill that catapulted him into national
prominence). I'm not too crazy; almost all of these were side trips
made along the way on vacations. On one trip to SF, we traveled much
of the route described in "Roughing It."