*From The "HistoMat" Blog- Mark Twain's Tribute To The Great French Revolution Of 1789

Click on the headline to link to a "HistoMat" blog entry on the great 19th century American novelist (who died one hundred years ago), Mark Twain, as he pays tribute to the power of the great French revolution of 1789.

Markin comment:

I have written previously on Mark Twain as the avatar of American literature in the 19th century. This post is just the frosting on the cake.

***Books To While Away The Class Struggle By- The Short Stories Of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the 19th century American writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne.


Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin

Book Review

Hawthorne’s Short Stories, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Vintage Books, New York, 1946

The old social democratic literary critic and editor of “Dissent”, Irving Howe, once noted that Mark Twain, and his post-Civil War works represented a dramatic break from the Euro-centric ante bellum literary establishment. And on this question I agree with him. As I do on his choice of Nathaniel Hawthorne as an exemplar of that tradition. Certainly his most famous work, “The Scarlet Letter”, reflects that European influence, as do the collected short stories under review here.

As the reader, perhaps, knows Hawthorne made his living writing short stories for the women reader-oriented literary magazines of the day long before he wrote “The Scarlet Letter” and some of these have turned out to be classics of the early American Republic. Moreover, and this is one of his attractions for me, I know virtually every place where the action of the short stories takes place from the Merrymount May Day pole to the granite mountains of New Hampshire and beyond. More importantly, I know the weight, the dead weight of that grinding Puritan foundation that drove much of the early American experience here in New England. Hawthorne, in short, knows where the WASP-ish bodies are buried and is here to tell one and all the tales. Sometimes with pathos, sometimes with gothic effects, but always with a sense of some underlying moral purpose. You see Hawthorne too is smitten and bitten by that same Puritan ethos and that is the secret to the power of his writing.

As is usually the case with compilations, literary or otherwise, not all the work here is top-shelf. The best, and most representative to my mind, are the high Puritan “The Minister’s Black Veil, the chilling “The White Old Maid’, the swamp Yankee classic “Peter Goldthwaite’s Treasure”, the prophetic “The Birthmark”, the Gothic classic “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, and another high Puritan classic “The Maypole of Merrymount.

***Writer’s Corner- The Avatar Of American Letter, Mark Twain

Click On Title To Link To PBS's Web Page For Ken Burns' "Mark Twain" documentary.

DVD Review

Mark Twain, a film documentary directed by Ken Burns, PBS, Florentine Productions, 2000

No, this will not be a paean to the `transformative' nature of reading Samuel Clemens' (hereafter Mark Twain) seminal works, "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" in childhood. I spend no long nights reading his works under a blanket, flashlight at the ready, until I fell asleep exhausted. (I did do that form of reading but not for Mr. Twain's work.) I, frankly, could not relate to the characters and the dialogue that seemed rather stilted (although I would not have known enough to call it that then). I do admit to having built a raft to try to `escape', along with my brothers, from some unfair sentence imposed my parents for some childhood transgression. But that can hardly be lain at Mr. Twain's door.


Nor will this review be a homage to Twain's treasure chest of humor and witty sayings that are sprinkled through out this documentary, and that have become part of the common language (and were, in the old days, very quotable newspaper filler). This film only reinforced the notion, other than the famous ditty about his response to the premature announcement of his death and his comment about San Francisco in August, that I did not find his humor funny. That said, after viewing this fine almost four hour Ken Burns PBS documentary I will admit to an on-going curiosity about this, arguably, first great modern American writer. Hey, I said Mark Twain didn't "speak" to me. I know that he is a great writer, and I think I sensed that notion even as a kid.

Ken Burns is probably the latter day master of the educational film documentary, most famously, and justly so, from the time of his ten-part PBS "Civil War" epic that I can still take in with my mind's eye. To a lesser degree, but with the same close attention to detail, a fine eye for selecting just the right photograph to make his point and appropriate musical scores in the background (including many variations of Stephan Foster songs that give a feel to the "gilded age" in which Twain lived and to which he added his own imprint).

Here Burns goes through the obligatory life of the author, starting from the rough and tumble days in Missouri and on the Mississippi River, on through to the fits and starts of finding a niche for himself (and a job) in the American literary market to success, fleeting as that was at times, and the fame, fortune, and in the end misfortune that went with that final acknowledgement that he was the premier literary man and storyteller of his times. The heart of this exploration of Twain's life, and what made it intriguing for a skeptical non-literary man like me was the way in which Twain was portrayed as a representative man of his age. That included both in his appetites for success, financial and otherwise, and to be, and be seen, as a successful product of the rough and tumble democratic American social system of the time. No small part of that persona is attributed to his wife and family that seemed, through thick and thin, hard times and good, to be his anchor. Not every successful writer has had that stable foundation but Twain literally thrived on it.

This film spend some time on Twain's literary production, his methods of work, his witticisms and his successful career as a public storyteller. I need not detail that information here. I would only say this-those who argue that Twain was first great American writer certainly have the best of the argument. In retrospect I can see where my own favorite from the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne, really was not writing for the great democratic masses beginning their long search for some cultural expression to which they could relate. Twain, for literary and financial reasons, was trying to reach that audience.

Finally, and here is where Mark Twain gets high marks from this reviewer, as the documentary pointedly highlights on many ocassions. Twain positioned himself as a truth-telling about the inequities of the world, the absurdities of racism and its cultural expressions and about the foolhardiness of the upcoming rise of the American empire that he was, in the end, helpless to stop. That he did so while feting kings and queens, the rich and famous and liking such activities points out the contradictions of his life as a man. A contradiction that more than one American would-be radical had faced unsuccessfully. But here is a home truth. We can always use an extra truth-teller or two, a rather rare commodity in any age. We can sort out Twain's contradictions from there. Twain devotee, or not, this documentary is worth four hours of your time.