Literary Giant: Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Criticism is a queer thing. If I print 'She was stark naked' - & then proceeded to describe her person in detail, what critic would not howl? - who would venture to leave the book on a parlor table, - but the artist does this & all ages gather around & look & talk & point. I can't say, 'They cut his head off, or stabbed him, ' & describe the blood & the agony in his face."

Mark Twain - Notebook #18, Feb. - Sept. 1879

Mark Twain - A Brief Assessment

As one of America's first and foremost realists a humorists, Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens usually wrote about his own personal experiences and and things he  knew about from firsthand experience. His life spanned the two Americas, the frontier America that produced so much of national mythology and the emerging urban, industrial giant of the 20th century. At the heart of Twain's achievement is his  creation of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, who embody the mythic America, midway between the wilderness and the model state.

The Gilded Age, came in 1873. It was one of the first novels, which tried to describe the new morality (or immorality) of post-Civil War America. One of the new elements of this novel is that it creates a picture of the entire nation, rather than of just one region. Although it has a number of Twain's typically humorous characters, the real theme is America's loss of its old idealism. The book describes how a group of young people is morally destroyed by the dream of becoming rich.

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