Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0070
Blake Bronson-Bartlett
Abstract:This article is about Clemens’s early California and Hawaii notebooks (Notebooks IV–VI, Jan. 1865–Apr. 1866), which he used during the period recounted years later in approximately the last quarter of Roughing It. An illustrated reading of the notebook makes three general points: first, that Clemens used pocket notebooks and graphite pencils (the mid-nineteenth-century’s portable media) to train himself to write down experience as he saw and heard it; second, that the traces left by this training process were (and are) ironic, because they visibly and comically fail to capture experience; and third, that Clemens referred to the notebooks throughout his career for their evocative gestures (as much if not more than the linguistic contents). Following readings of the notebooks that are grounded in graphite traces and their multiple afterlives in print, this article concludes by hailing their forthcoming publication online, where other scholars and general readership will be able to see their traces.
摘要:本文研究了克莱门斯早期在加利福尼亚和夏威夷的笔记(notebook IV-VI, january 1865-Apr。1866年)，他在多年后的《艰苦生活》的最后一季中讲述了这段时期。通过对笔记本的插图阅读，我们可以得出三个要点:第一，克莱门斯使用袖珍笔记本和石墨笔(19世纪中期的便携式媒体)来训练自己写下所见所闻的经历;第二，这种训练过程留下的痕迹过去是(现在也是)具有讽刺意味，因为它们明显而滑稽地未能捕捉到经验;第三，克莱门斯在他的整个职业生涯中都提到了这些笔记本，因为它们令人回味的姿态(如果不是更多的话，至少和语言内容一样多)。在阅读了以石墨痕迹为基础的笔记本及其印刷后的多重生命之后，本文的结论是赞扬他们即将在网上出版，其他学者和普通读者将能够看到他们的痕迹。
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Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0038
D. Eutsey
Abstract:This article examines how prominent liberal frontier ministers influenced Mark Twain’s “low” literary calling in the 1860s and how two of them, in particular, influenced Roughing It.
{"title":"“Thick as Thieves”: Mark Twain and the West’s Spiritual Frontiers","authors":"D. Eutsey","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0038","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines how prominent liberal frontier ministers influenced Mark Twain’s “low” literary calling in the 1860s and how two of them, in particular, influenced Roughing It.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41466432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0143
S. Fredericks
Abstract:Mark Twain’s early literary experimentation in the West gave rise to his most recognizable narrative voices, tropes, and techniques—including expressions of anger. These newspaper endeavors featured and were fundamentally shaped by invective, especially the insult, a robust and flexible form of verbal abuse. Twain used insults to establish his literary superiority, demonstrate or reinforce his various group identities, and contest his place within social and professional in-group hierarchies. This article constructs a framework for Twain’s rhetoric of insults in his western newspaper contributions prior to his 1866 trip to the Hawaiian Islands, focusing on insults in three contexts: the rivalry, the hoax, and the honor contest. It analyzes the multiple rhetorical dimensions of Twain’s varied forms of mock and malicious insults (including vehicle, intensity, and invective loci) and traces the social bonds created or affected by his insults.
{"title":"Mark Twain’s Western Rhetoric of Insults","authors":"S. Fredericks","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0143","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Mark Twain’s early literary experimentation in the West gave rise to his most recognizable narrative voices, tropes, and techniques—including expressions of anger. These newspaper endeavors featured and were fundamentally shaped by invective, especially the insult, a robust and flexible form of verbal abuse. Twain used insults to establish his literary superiority, demonstrate or reinforce his various group identities, and contest his place within social and professional in-group hierarchies. This article constructs a framework for Twain’s rhetoric of insults in his western newspaper contributions prior to his 1866 trip to the Hawaiian Islands, focusing on insults in three contexts: the rivalry, the hoax, and the honor contest. It analyzes the multiple rhetorical dimensions of Twain’s varied forms of mock and malicious insults (including vehicle, intensity, and invective loci) and traces the social bonds created or affected by his insults.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46647525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0201
J. Melton
Abstract:This article explores the overland journey section of Roughing It as a key component of his overall engagement with the natural environment and his employment of mobility in landscape descriptions. Twain’s interactions with nature as he presents them to readers are rarely static evocations of beauty or of the sublime. To the contrary, he is often keenly attentive to the complex interactions between the natural environment and human movements. Twain evokes the vitality of nature by emphasizing movement as its definitive characteristic. Although he comically asserts in the prefatory that Roughing It derives from “variegated vagabondizing,” the narrative suggests a more nuanced immersion into the American West built on the persistent desire to move.
{"title":"Nature and Mobility in Mark Twain’s Roughing It","authors":"J. Melton","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0201","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores the overland journey section of Roughing It as a key component of his overall engagement with the natural environment and his employment of mobility in landscape descriptions. Twain’s interactions with nature as he presents them to readers are rarely static evocations of beauty or of the sublime. To the contrary, he is often keenly attentive to the complex interactions between the natural environment and human movements. Twain evokes the vitality of nature by emphasizing movement as its definitive characteristic. Although he comically asserts in the prefatory that Roughing It derives from “variegated vagabondizing,” the narrative suggests a more nuanced immersion into the American West built on the persistent desire to move.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46987896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0158
A. Young
Abstract:This article argues, contrary to the contemporary critical consensus, that Twain’s notorious representation of the Goshutes in Roughing It is a complex satire directed at both the Indigenous people he encounters and those among his white audience who attribute the Goshute’s abjection to essential racial traits. This satire does not rescue the passage from an irredeemable racial logic, but it does mark Twain’s thinking on race as substantially different from the forms of “Indian hating” common among his contemporaries. Exploring Twain’s sources and considering the function of irony in Roughing It more broadly, this article argues that the leveling effect of his irony presages a shift in the United States’ settler colonial “logic of elimination” from frontier homicide to assimilationism, and the subsequent modes of liberal thought (most notably Richard Rorty’s) that imagine irony as a necessary mode of subjectivity for a citizen in a pluralist democracy.
{"title":"“The Vigorous New Vernacular”: Settler Colonialism and the Politics of Irony in Roughing It","authors":"A. Young","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0158","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article argues, contrary to the contemporary critical consensus, that Twain’s notorious representation of the Goshutes in Roughing It is a complex satire directed at both the Indigenous people he encounters and those among his white audience who attribute the Goshute’s abjection to essential racial traits. This satire does not rescue the passage from an irredeemable racial logic, but it does mark Twain’s thinking on race as substantially different from the forms of “Indian hating” common among his contemporaries. Exploring Twain’s sources and considering the function of irony in Roughing It more broadly, this article argues that the leveling effect of his irony presages a shift in the United States’ settler colonial “logic of elimination” from frontier homicide to assimilationism, and the subsequent modes of liberal thought (most notably Richard Rorty’s) that imagine irony as a necessary mode of subjectivity for a citizen in a pluralist democracy.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48218409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0022
J. Caron
Abstract:As a contribution to a literary portrait of Nevada that can provide background for Roughing It, this article examines two newspaper correspondents who were contemporaries of Sam Clemens to discern similarities and differences in their travel writings: William Wright, who also worked for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise; and J. Ross Browne, who traveled to Virginia City to report on the beginning of the Comstock silver strike for Harper’s Monthly. Both writers evince the vividness, intimacy, and accurate detail Mark Twain said defined a good correspondent. Though both writers employ comic elements, Browne comes closer to the Mark Twain persona in his willingness to burlesque and satirize.
{"title":"Mark Twain’s Rival Washoe Correspondents: William Wright and J. Ross Browne","authors":"J. Caron","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0022","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:As a contribution to a literary portrait of Nevada that can provide background for Roughing It, this article examines two newspaper correspondents who were contemporaries of Sam Clemens to discern similarities and differences in their travel writings: William Wright, who also worked for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise; and J. Ross Browne, who traveled to Virginia City to report on the beginning of the Comstock silver strike for Harper’s Monthly. Both writers evince the vividness, intimacy, and accurate detail Mark Twain said defined a good correspondent. Though both writers employ comic elements, Browne comes closer to the Mark Twain persona in his willingness to burlesque and satirize.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47389352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0115
Christopher Conway
Abstract:This article examines how two novels, Phong Nguyen’s The Adventures of Joe Harper (2016) and Robert Coover’s Huck Out West (2017), revisit the controversial ending of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by imagining Tom Sawyer as an embodiment of the savagery of Manifest Destiny. It explores how these novels try to redeem the character of Huckleberry Finn by rejecting Tom and embracing reparative forms of storytelling like Native American and hobo oral narrative, both of which are pacifist and open-ended in comparison to the jingoistic, bombastic, and injurious nationalism of Manifest Destiny. Other topics covered include the cultural politics of the “minor character” novel, adaptation, moral injury, and the representation of race and identity in both novels.
{"title":"The American West and the Redemption of Huckleberry Finn in Phong Nguyen’s The Adventures of Joe Harper and Robert Coover’s Huck Out West","authors":"Christopher Conway","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0115","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines how two novels, Phong Nguyen’s The Adventures of Joe Harper (2016) and Robert Coover’s Huck Out West (2017), revisit the controversial ending of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by imagining Tom Sawyer as an embodiment of the savagery of Manifest Destiny. It explores how these novels try to redeem the character of Huckleberry Finn by rejecting Tom and embracing reparative forms of storytelling like Native American and hobo oral narrative, both of which are pacifist and open-ended in comparison to the jingoistic, bombastic, and injurious nationalism of Manifest Destiny. Other topics covered include the cultural politics of the “minor character” novel, adaptation, moral injury, and the representation of race and identity in both novels.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46262152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0190
J. W. Leonard
Abstract:When Mark Twain sets out on his journey west in chapter 1 of Roughing It, he is looking forward to seeing Indians and such creatures as buffalo, prairie dogs, and antelopes; traveling through (or near) magnificent plains, deserts, and mountains; and at the end of the journey, gathering bucketfuls of easily obtainable gold and silver nuggets. What he carries with him, however—aside from some clothing, his Smith & Wesson seven-shooter, Orion’s Colt revolver, and an unabridged dictionary (belonging to Orion)—are some pretty standard preconceptions about the West and its inhabitants. Though such themes reinforce our generic expectations, Twain manages to check crucial elements of expansionist desire through the novel’s various iterations of failure. In this article, I explore ways in which the rhetoric of individualist “lordship” never fully manifests, even as the landscape itself largely offers up its promissory grandeur and tabula rasa potentiality.
{"title":"Mark Twain’s Ambivalent Encounter with the Western Landscape","authors":"J. W. Leonard","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0190","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:When Mark Twain sets out on his journey west in chapter 1 of Roughing It, he is looking forward to seeing Indians and such creatures as buffalo, prairie dogs, and antelopes; traveling through (or near) magnificent plains, deserts, and mountains; and at the end of the journey, gathering bucketfuls of easily obtainable gold and silver nuggets. What he carries with him, however—aside from some clothing, his Smith & Wesson seven-shooter, Orion’s Colt revolver, and an unabridged dictionary (belonging to Orion)—are some pretty standard preconceptions about the West and its inhabitants. Though such themes reinforce our generic expectations, Twain manages to check crucial elements of expansionist desire through the novel’s various iterations of failure. In this article, I explore ways in which the rhetoric of individualist “lordship” never fully manifests, even as the landscape itself largely offers up its promissory grandeur and tabula rasa potentiality.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45746630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0009
J. C. Reesman
Abstract:This article addresses Mark Twain’s as well as Jack London’s writing about the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre against settlers moving west; this occurred in newly colonized Mormon land in Utah. The Mormons used local Indians as scapegoats, but the survivors pinned the event solely on Mormon shoulders. Interestingly, in contrast to most other writers and journalists, neither Twain in Roughing It nor London in The Star Rover simply paints a picture of Mormon atrocity, but instead tries to enter the minds of the persecuted Mormons as well.
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Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0088
M. Seybold
Abstract:Among the most famous scenes in Roughing It is Mark Twain’s account of riding through western Nebraska atop a makeshift bed of mail-bags. His stagecoach was overloaded with correspondence, catalogs, packages, and periodicals headed to the newly incorporated Colorado Territory and what Cameron Blevins characterizes as the second artillery line of the rapidly expanding U.S. postal service. As Blevins outlines, the “sprawling, fast-moving, and ephemeral” infrastructure of the U.S. Post formed the largest communications network in the world up to that point. This article argues that through his relationship to the “gossamer network,” a complex and rapidly changing web of public investment and private enterprise, Twain learned to regard graft and government capture as endemic to American expansionist politics, but also to pursue his own interests on the public doll.
{"title":"The Mail-Bag Bed of Empire: Roughing It and the Gossamer Network","authors":"M. Seybold","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0088","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Among the most famous scenes in Roughing It is Mark Twain’s account of riding through western Nebraska atop a makeshift bed of mail-bags. His stagecoach was overloaded with correspondence, catalogs, packages, and periodicals headed to the newly incorporated Colorado Territory and what Cameron Blevins characterizes as the second artillery line of the rapidly expanding U.S. postal service. As Blevins outlines, the “sprawling, fast-moving, and ephemeral” infrastructure of the U.S. Post formed the largest communications network in the world up to that point. This article argues that through his relationship to the “gossamer network,” a complex and rapidly changing web of public investment and private enterprise, Twain learned to regard graft and government capture as endemic to American expansionist politics, but also to pursue his own interests on the public doll.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43394179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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