Review title: Money changes everything

Mark Twain as both a cultural artifact, a historical figure, and a writer has survived over a century after his death as a remarkably consistent and modern commentator and thinker. Yes, while his most common perception and adopted voice is that of the home spun humorist, Twain is revealed in his bibliography as a serious thinker using humorous forms. This collection of his short stories shows the breadth of his reach. While some of these were written and published as traditional stand-alone short stories, some were embedded as chapters or picaresque asides in other Twain books such as Roughing it or Following the Equator.

Twain was an early adopter of technology, being one of the first to use a typewriter for his writing, and also an early investor in technology, some of which failed and gave him. Incentive to write to recoup his losses and make a living. So much the better for us! One outcome of this technology fixation was his 1878 piece "The Loves of Alonzo Fiz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton" (p. 127-143), which involves the use of the telephone for a long-distance romance--and the early and eerily prescient problem of data privacy and security.

Twain was ahead of his time in recognizing social change as well. "The Man that Corrupted Hadleysburg", one of the longer and better known stories here, touches on what we would call "fake news" today, relying on the then-new networking technology of the telegraph and the Associated Press to spread the "click bait" far beyond the reach of one small town. His stories often hinge on setups that test the best--and the worst--instincts of human nature, and both are sometimes the winners. As they are arranged here in chronological order as originally published, we can watch the maturation of the writer. Some of his early stories rely on the supernatural and read like Poe or Dickens, but when Twain is speaking in his own avuncular and sometimes rough-edged voice he is the most eloquent.

My review title reflects the frequent references that these stories make to money--how we earn it, spend it, fret over it, fight over it, how it changes our morality, personality and our very soul. Money and the influence of morality (true, false, spiritual, or profane) are indeed the very spiritual core of these stories. Twain in his plain story-telling way says profound things about deep subjects even as we laugh at and with those he writes about, realizing with a wry nod and bittersweet smile that they are us.

Still fresh as new.. Eternal.

I averaged all the stories to about 3 stars. Some were great, some were okay or boring, and some were not my cup of tea at all. Nonetheless, Twain remains one of the most clever and brilliant authors of all time.

Enjoyed the light humor at the start, especially How I Edited an Agricultural Paper, My Watch, The Membraneous Croup, the Burglar Alarm, and Luck. I shared The Californian’s Tale with my wife, because it’s so sweet. But it got darker as the book went on, I lost interest in his disappointment with religion.

I started reading this collection as my bedtime reading just after the start of the new year; it took me this long to read the book because Mark Twain wrote a lot of short fiction. I very much enjoyed my reading, and only wish that Twain had not become somewhat bitter as he grew older.

The Introduction to the volume, by Charles Neider, is rather dated (written in 1957), but a good preface to Twain’s writing. The stories begin, of course, with “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, and continue with such gems as “My Watch”, “The Story of the Old Ram, ” “Playing Courier”, “The £1,000,000 Bank-Note”, ”A Horse’s Tale,” and “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven”.

Twain suffered a great deal of pain in his later years, from repeated bankruptcies and the death of his daughter; and this pain shows in his latter stories, which, to put it mildly, are not as lighthearted as the earlier works. They are still good stories, but with a very definite darkness, as shown especially in “The $30,000 Bequest”, “A Dog’s Tale”, “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg,”, and “Was it Heaven? Or Hell?”.

I loved reading all of these stories, even the dark ones, and can say without reservation that this collection of Twain short stories was dandy bedtime reading.

Bow to your sardonic Overlord

For anyone who’s grown up in the United States, you’ve more than likely been exposed to Mark Twain in one form or another, whether it’s having read one or more of his books in high school, seeing a biographical story about him on TV, or hearing one of the many hundreds of references about him; to many his is the quintessential “Great American Author.” And just a little over a century after his passing, Everyman’s Library has released a beautiful hardcover edition collecting all of his short stories. What makes these different stories compared to his novels? Twain is freer and seems to have more fun with his short stories, being more uproarious, satirical and rollicking in the short prose than with the long. This is the Twain that many may not be as familiar with, but it is well worth the read.

There is the strange tale of “The Facts in the Great Beef Contract” about a debt owed to a family by the US government for beef, and how as each family member passes without the payment being fulfilled, the next member ventures forth to try and get back what was owed. There is the famous “Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” set in the familiar Northern Californian “Angel’s Camp.” “Journalism in Tennessee” is about a journalist taking on the agriculture section of a local newspaper, even though he knows nothing about farming, and proceeds to spew complete lies and fiction, incurring the ire of the local farmers.

Collectingall of Mark Twain’s sixty short stories, this collection shows the great author’s full breath from writing entertaining fiction, to travel pieces, to contemplative nonfiction; the only problem is that at times the line between fiction and reality becomes somewhat blurred. But with Twain’s conversational and comforting voice, readers will be welcomed and taken on a truly great adventure.

Originally written on September 13, 2012 ©Alex C. Telander.

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I love Mark Twains' wit. The way he spins sarcasm and humor makes him one of my favorite writers of all time. I would love to have met this great man!

Reading this book, one follows the development of Twain as a writer. At first he experiments. Some of the early stories are absurd, over-the-top in their impossible violence and humour. Then Twain comes into his own: funny, witty, cleverly written stories. Well developed plots, often over very few pages, and interesting experiments with the form of storytelling: sometimes like a newspaper article, using a framing story, diaries, court report or made up entirely out of direct speech.
Then, at the end of the book, Twain shoots out of control and straight into some kind of biblical afterlife with some very pessimistic, exalted, almost visionary and prophetic stories.
He’s always sarcastic, often cynical, but by the very last sentences of the very long final story (an experimental novel which Twain never finished himself, but was pieced together after his death), he has become a complete nihilist. Nothing is real, nothing matters and man is destructive, evil and stupid. This cultural pessimism and misanthropy are present in many of the stories.
So the gems of this book are in the center, like a pearl in an oyster that is sometimes hard to crack open. But still, if you read through the sarcasm and the absurdities and the overt moralism, these are great stories in their own right.

More than just the author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (3 stars)

Famous American writer Mark Twain (1835-1910), whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is well known as the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. But until recently I didn't realize that his literary output was very prolific, and that he had also penned many short stories.

In many ways Twain's writings were shaped his diverse experiences earlier in his life, which included working as a river boat pilot, a journalist, and a printer, and even spent time as a gold prospector and as a vagrant. He's one of America's most recognized writers, and is especially known for his sharp critiques of the social conditions of his day, themes that he often conveyed with biting wit, satire, and humour.

Twain was also a great story-teller, although his frequent use of dialect can sometimes be a barrier for modern readers to easily enjoy his work. Besides his two more famous novels, I've also enjoyed his excellent novel "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court". He also had success with travel books "The Innocents Abroad" and "Roughing It".

But it is particularly his short stories that are the focus of this review. Twain produced a large number of short stories in his time, so I made my starting point in lists of those which are generally considered to be his best. Some of them proved to be disappointing, but listed here are the ones I especially enjoyed and recommend:

- The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865): This humorous story made Twain famous, and tells about a compulsive gambler who trains a frog to jump, and then bets on it.
- The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1899): This longer story is really a satirical novella, and features a town noted for its honesty. Their hypocrisy gets exposed when a stranger tempts its citizens with an unclaimed sack of gold coins.
- Luck (1886): More satire, this time as a blundering British military officer becomes a hero through blind luck rather than skill.
- Extracts from Adam's Diary (1904) and Eve's Diary (1906): Adam and Eve write separate diaries about their experiences and interaction with each other in the newly created world. It could be considered somewhat irreverent, so it should be read not as an alternative take on a creation story, but rather as a humorous and clever satire on modern gender roles.
- The Stolen White Elephant (1882): This hilarious story describes the absurd efforts of detectives to find an elephant that has mysteriously gone missing.

The following three stories aren't as well known and celebrated as the above titles, but are ones I also enjoyed immensely and recommend:
- The Californian’s Tale (1892): A sad story about a lonely miner waiting for his wife's return, but with a powerful twist at the end.
- Cannibalism in the Cars (1868): A humorous political satire, in which train passengers in a stranded train carefully follow political procedures to justify murdering each other for survival.
- An Encounter with an Interviewer (1893): Witty dialogue between a journalist and his subject satirizes the absurdity of the nature of interviews.

There's one other novella that deserves mention in light of the recognition it has received:
- The Mysterious Stranger (1916): Twain wrote a couple of versions of this prior to his death, but the cobbled together version published posthumously is the most well-known. A young boy meets a mysterious stranger named Satan, an angel who is a nephew of the real Satan. The premise of the story is used by Twain to explore philosophical questions, and to call into question God's existence in light of human suffering and the nature of free will. Given that it's a critique of traditional religious beliefs, it's not something I could personally enjoy. Just read the final paragraph of the story to get Twain's own view about God and Christianity; it's not an optimistic perspective.

Recurring features in Twain's short fiction are his frequent criticism of the social conditions and structures of his day, which he mostly communicates through humor, wit, and satire. Sometimes these are clever and entertaining. But Twain isn't always easy to read. His tendency to reproduce the vernacular may have made him popular in his time, but it becomes an obstacle for most modern readers. And although he is highly regarded as a story-teller, there were frequent times I found him repetitive, verbose, or just boring.

While there are glimmers of brilliance in his work, I'm not likely to ever read any more of his short stories - although I know I will certainly enjoy re-reading the stories I've covered above. But despite my personal experience with his short stories, there's no doubt that Twain has undoubtedly had a huge influence on American literature, and will always be considered a literary great.

Rounded up to three stars, because my collection concluded with “the mysterious stranger” in its entirety, which I had not read before. This is a masterpiece of darkness and dread. The other stories in the book may have been funny in another time, but I did not find them so. Guaranteed if there was an animal narrator, he or she was going to die, and die horribly. The deaths seemed like a cheap I-don’t-know-how-to-finish-this shortcut.
Otherwise, the best entries were excerpts from his travel writings.

To be honest, this was sort of a "desperation" book; one of many that I've picked up from the three for a dollar room at the Boston Book Annex, which is down the street.

At three for a buck I can pick up all sorts of odd books that I wouldn't normally try. The Twain book doesn't really fall into that category, of course; I've read a fair amount of Twain. But the thing about this edition was that it was over 600 pages long with small type; it was very compact.

Anyway, I grabbed the Twain collection (which also includes short stand-alone fiction taken from within longer novels and non-fiction books) because it was long, not too big (the paper is extremely thin and delicate), and would take a long time to read. I expected that it might be a little dull. Twain's language has dated a bit, after all. But the old boy has life in him yet.

I laughed out loud - loudly - more than once, and one story got me so choked up that I spent half an hour fighting back tears. Yes, I'm a big sap. No, I'm not going to tell you which story.

I was sorry when I came to the end of the book. It won't be long before I read it again.