I knew Mark Twain was always hustling for money, and I knew he was more than a little bit bitter and angry toward the end of his life, but until I read Powers' biography, I had no idea how deep Twain's (largely self-imposed) financial woes went, and how incredibly bitter and angry he became.

The biography is well researched and laid out. While at times a bit too detailed, it’s still an extraordinary read. While very respectful and fair towards Twain, it still falls way short of a hagiographic treatment of the subject.

Powers has no hesitation in showing Twain in both flattering, and negative lights. The subject was definitely a product of his times, and showed little restraint in demonstrating the current attitudes, and slurs of pre and post civil war racism and prejudice. Powers does however, temper each of those stories with accommodating explanations that while Twain’s words (in letters, as well as in his journalistic works) are jarring, they can be, to an extent, mitigated a bit.

He also shows the somewhat loutish characteristics, heavy drinking, and hayseed personality that Twain really played up throughout his life to his benefit; and while it worked well at the time, one could imagine his act growing a bit thin in more current times (although loutishness seems to be making quite the comeback currently).

Regardless, the bio, while more erudite than it needed to be, is worth reading. Simply because it shows sides of Twain not generally written about.

4+, rounding up.

Too bad - the Twain book by Chernow comes out in May this coming year. Don’t think I’ll be quite ready for another in-depth Twain opus anytime soon.

Powers shows Twain using a prodigious imagination to fuse reality and myth. He also points to contexts that inspired the content of this imagination.

https://thebestbiographies.com/2020/1...

“Mark Twain: A Life” was published in 2005 and is one of a dozen books authored by Ron Powers – not including four he co-authored as well as a biography of Jim Henson he wrote which remains unpublished due to objections from the deceased puppeteer’s family. Powers won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for critical writing as a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. His most recent book “No One Cares About Crazy People: My Family and the Heartbreak of Mental Illness in America” explores his two sons’ battles with schizophrenia.

This biography’s most obvious strength is its ability to follow the jagged contours of Twain’s tumultuous life – observing, considering and coherently reporting the countless twists and turns negotiated during his seventy-four-years of success, infamy, pain and hardship. And during most of its 627-page run, the narrative incorporates healthy doses of cultural and social context, providing an invaluable backdrop to Twain’s various machinations.

Many readers will be entranced by early tales of his days as a budding reporter in Nevada, his years spent as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River and his “luxury cruise” to the Holy Land in 1867. Others will appreciate the persistent appearance of witty one-liners (“The first weeks of Sam’s courtship bore all the cerebral complexity of a Saint Bernard beating its tail against the floor.”)

Powers’s prose in this adventurous biography is much like Twain himself – thoughtful, complex, often quite clever and, at times, almost irreverent. But readers who have grown accustomed to the alluring literary voice of biographers such as Chernow or McCullough will find this biography rougher terrain. The narrative is delightfully trenchant and penetrating but rarely elegant or smooth-flowing…and never settles into a rhythm for long.

In addition, while some authors incorporate highbrow vocabulary with admirable dexterity, Powers’s use of sophisticated syntax seems designed to send his audience searching for a dictionary. Finally, the biography ends promptly with Twain’s death; no consideration of his life or legacy is provided beyond that which is subtly injected into preceding chapters. Since much of his fame accrued after his death, Powers’s failure to consider Twain within the context of our time is regrettable.

Overall, Ron Powers’s “Mark Twain: A Life” may be as close to a fully-satisfying biography of Twain as is possible given the daunting complexity of this restless, gifted and flawed American Voice. It seems unlikely that another biographer will research Samuel Clemens more fully, analyze his character more deeply or be more unsparing (if still sympathetic) of his personal and professional failures. But if it is possible to write a better biography of Mark Twain, my money is on Ron Chernow (rumored to be working on a biography of Twain at the moment).

Overall rating: 3¾ stars

History can sometimes be appreciated best by following one individual's journey through it. Earlier this year, I began by reading about Lincoln, which then led me to Grant. Twain--who ultimately published Grant's definitive autobiography at the end of his life--seemed like the natural next choice. Together, the lives of these three men cover almost the entirety of the 19th century and embody so much of the nascent American identity. Incredible fortitude, genius, resilience, and sheer creativity: all three capture so much of our ethos and our self-image as a nation. The statesman, the warrior, the humorist: it is hard for me to imagine three better figures to serve as guides through America's middle century.

Ron Powers is an excellent historian, and this substantive book covers far more than a simple narrative of a great American author. With historical context, concise literary critical analysis, and empathetic prose, Powers remains engaging throughout this voluminous book. Twain emerges as a volcanic force, a prophet in the wilderness speaking truth to power while wrestling with his own demons. He is pure creativity, channeling and directing and imagining uncharted worlds and concepts. Twain gives voice to a country emerging from its divided, uncertain experiment into a global power with its own contradictions. Both grow and learn together and leave equally ambiguous legacies for the modern era.

Read more at https://znovels.blogspot.com/2019/12/...

This is a deep, incisive, and insightful biography of Mark Twain, told largely through his letters, and notebooks. It does engage in remote psychoanalysis, but at least has the decency to support its conclusions with exhaustive citation. A few of the vignettes came close to brining me to tears. Twain seems to have really lived most of the great and lasting images of Antebellum, post-bellum, and Gilded Age America.

I learned a few interesting things from the book. First, that Twain was generally unhappy for most of his life, which likely accounts for his humor; that he got caught up in the waves of post-war get-rich-quick entrepreneurship, often with disastrous results; and that he was a staunch anti-imperialist whose last solid writing was a series of anti-imperial polemics. (Personally, I can recommend Twain's "War Prayer," which I originally thought was written about the Civil War, as an example of this body of work.)

The book deserves a three and a half star rating. A long read, but very detailed. The only thing that kept me from giving the book a four star rating, is the author seemed to have a 'word of the day' requirement. Thankfully, I read the Kindle version, so the built in dictionary was quite useful. I enjoyed how the author described advancements and happenings in the world in conjunction with the events in Twain's life. A couple of the most interesting things I learned, was that Twain owned a publishing company, and that company published President Grant's autobiography. Twain was bankrupt for a time, but managed to work his way back to prosperity through his writings and lecture circuit. There were many tragedies in his life, and he met many personalities of the day. If you're interested in the man, his writings, or the time period a highly recommended read.

4,5 stars - English Ebook

Loved this book, after visiting his boyhood home in Hannibal, Missouri. Twain was a complicated man, with some negative characteristics that dwarf his positives. Those who don't like this biography are probably folks who idealize Clemens based on his literature. His relationship to his family and children; his lack of discipline when it came to investments; the hard side of his personality toward other celebrities who he felt challenged his primacy in the last half of the 19th century: these are all instructive facets of a very complicated man. Powers paints Clemens warts and all.

One of my favorite genres is biography, especially biographies that place me into the context of the times. In te centre so to say. This book achieves that.

Heavy as a full loaded barge and as slow as one navigating down the Mississippi River that Samuel Clemens so famously wrote about, Ron Powers' Mark Twain is just that. Heavy and a slow read. However, much like the valuable resources barges tote, Powers' lengthy biography of a man who helped Ulysses S Grant write his memoirs, is THE resource for everything Twain(outside of Twain's own autobiography).
Distractions perhaps caused the reading to be so lengthy, as it took two months to finish 722 pages of material, putting one way behind on their reading goal, but it was well worth the journey.
From the beginning in 1835 to the end in 1910, Powers' chronicles and examines Twain's life both at home and abroad.
Through bad investments, friendships, family, travels and of course the books, Powers tells how Twain piloted himself up and down the literary river, heavy with satirical humor leaving us with a barge-full of stories and classic novels.

So it took me over a year to finish this book. I think that has more to do with my lukewarm attitude towards nonfiction in general than it has to do with this book in particular, but nonetheless I don't think anyone would call it a page-turner.

This is the first biography of Twain I have read, and I have yet to read much of Twain's work itself, so I came into this thing pretty ignorant. I think that ignorance diminished my appreciation of the book, because I got the sense that Powers was responding to/dialoguing with a lot of other Twain scholarship. Also, he expected a certain threshold knowledge of Twain's work that in many cases I lacked. So I would more heartily recommend this book for experienced Twain-o-philes. For relative newbies like me, it may not be the best place to start.

What I liked: Powers treats his subject as a regular person, neither hiding Twain's flaws nor unnecessarily extolling his virtues. His love for Twain as a writer and Clemens as a person is evident, but he comes off as more of a lifelong pal who is exasperated with (though tolerant of) Twain's/Clemens' foibles. He also spends a good deal of time (but not too much) providing cultural/political/religious/racial context for Twain's major works, which I needed and appreciated.

What I didn't like: Powers treats his subject as a regular person. This perspective cuts both ways: while I appreciate Powers' objectivity and honesty, I don't want to read hundreds of pages focused on Clemens' business failures and financial struggles. Perhaps this is an area previously ignored in Twain scholarship, but I think it absorbs too much of the book's focus, particularly in the second half of the book. Give me more discussions of Twain's work and Clemens' relationships with people, less discussions of his bank account.

What a terrific biography! I read so much of Twain when I was taking literature the first time I went to college. We also had to read him in high school, but I don't think I appreciated him back then. I would suggest to literature teachers to recommend this biography to students who are studying him, because it really helped to understand his writings. Powers so easily entwined Twain's writings in this book, and all the letters he wrote to so many people really made a huge difference in understanding the man. Twain was a complicated guy. He was funny, irreverent, cynical, and in spite of all this, he was a man who was a wonderful husband. His relationships with other people besides his wife, were less easy to nail down. His daughters worshipped him, he had some good friends that thought the world of him, while he kind of took them for granted. He was absolutely terrible to his brother, who he thought was a wimp. Powers brings all of this information and insight into Twain/Clemens into such a readable whole book, that many times, I was loathe to put the thing down. I actually was grateful to getting sick, so I would have an opportunity to finish the whole book.

Powers doesn't gloss over the bad things that Clemens did or said. But he really made it clear through the book how much the author thought and felt for this unusual man. Powers gives so much background that explains why Samuel Clemens was the kind of person he was...I really need to go back and read some of his writings over again, to understand his books from what I know now.

Too bad he isn't here now. We could certainly use his humor and his honesty in our politics and our foolish preoccupation with 'celebrities'. Even though he was very much a celebrity in his time, and he enjoyed being one, I think he would make short shrift of our current world, and put many people back in their rightful place!

A decent read. It lacked the penetrating insight of the best literary biographers, nor did it provide the empathetic treatment of the best biographies. It is fair to say that the life of Clemens is such that reducing it to in-depth analysis of his three or four preeminent works would have been at least as unsatisfying, but I still finished 600-odd pages without feeling as though I got the measure of the man. The attempts at Twainsian humor were occasionally funny but the references to the present-day were not; some are already dated and they injected a bit of politics into a life lived in time that was, politically, quite different. The author's asides about the literati of the day provided useful context without being tangential. Perhaps my take on the biography owes something to my opinion of its subject, parts admiration and parts disdain.