Excellent book

It took forever to read this book! I would read one story slow like, so I could savor it. I love everything about Mark Twain. The style of his writing captures my heart, even the long and convoluted sentences that seem almost taped together using semi colons are perfect. Twain’s humor is so inventive and fun, and his imagination is first rate. Mark Twain is one of my absolute favorite writers.

Assembling a complete collection of Mark Twain’s short stories begs for quotation marks around that word “complete.” The man was always telling stories. He composed some pieces distinctly as short stories; such tales as The £1,000,000 Bank-Note, The Stolen White Elephant, and The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg come to mind. But he also wrote essays and personal sketches where he expanded on the facts with enough humorous hyperbole that whether to call it short story or essay remains a judgement call, and not an easy one. Then there are his speeches, where, of course, he often couldn’t forbear including some whoppers that could make them eligible for a collection of short stories. Even within his non-fiction travel books and posthumously published autobiography he reeled off many tongue in cheek tall tales that easily merit inclusion in a “complete” collection. There are fragments and unfinished documents published decades after his death that could qualify. And all that’s before you even get to whether you classify a longish shorter work like The Mysterious Stranger as a longish short story or a shortish novel.

So, no, this isn’t really a “complete” collection of Mark Twain’s stories — too many judgment calls involved for that to even be possible. But it is a large collection. I count 156 stories, ranging from The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County at the front of Mark Twain’s career, to The War Prayer, published posthumously because he feared public reaction to its bitter honesty. Not everyone of these stories is a peach, but with Mark Twain, even his rotten apples make good cider.

Listing all the stories in this volume would be tedious, so below are ones I enjoyed the most:

*General Washington’s Negro Body Servant
*A Burlesque Autobiography
*My Watch
*Political Economy
*Journalism in Tennessee
*Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup
*The Facts in the Case of the Great Beef Contract
*A Medieval Romance
*The Siamese Twins
*How I Edited an Agricultural Paper
*Cannibalism in the Cars
*The Killing of Julius Caesar
*The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connect
*Punch Brothers Punch
*Conversation as it was the Fireside in the Time of the Tudors
*The Stolen White Elephant
*The £1,000,000 Bank-Note
*The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg
*A Double-Barreled Detective Story
*The Private History of a Campaign that failed
*A Dog’s Tale
*Extracts from Adam’s Diary
*Eve’s Diary
*The War Prayer
*Was it Heaven? or Hell?
*The Five Boons of Life
*A Burlesque Biography
*How To Tell A Story
*An Entertaining Article
*Advise to Little Girls
*The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm

There are two things someone who has read Twain knows that those who only know him by reputation do not. The first thing is not all Twain's stories are humorous. There is always pathos but many of his stories are achingly sad. The second is that Twain was no fan of Christianity. Many of his stories outright mock the religion and those who practice it.

But there is no denying the power of his pen. He captures human foibles with gentle teasing and sympathy. He never fails to move his reader. And nothing escapes his attention.

I can only read a bit of his short stories at a time. The all have many literary similarities that make reading one story after another tedious to me. It took me a long time to get through this 700+ page anthology. But it was worth it. The overall impression I'm left with is that of fondness for a favorite uncle who taught you to tie knots and let you drink a beer.

Highly recommended for those experiencing excess anxiety. Likewise, for those interested in Americana and the contributions of American writers to the world's literature.