KEEPING THE FAITH IN SAMUEL CLEMENS'S WORLDS

Abstract

Forrest G. Robinson. In Bad Faith: The Dynamics of Deception in Mark Twain's America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. viii + 255 pp. John Madson. Up On The River: An Upper Mississippi Chronicle. New York: Viking Penguin, Inc., 1986. 276 pp. IIIus. Beverly R. David. Mark Twain and His Illustrators: Volume I (1869-1875). Troy: The Whitston Publishing Company, 1986. xi + 268 pp. IIIus. Forrest G. Robinson's complex notion of bad faith can be applied not only to the novels of Mark Twain but also to the culture and politics of the American nation. Take, for instance, the Irangate affair. A recent analysis in The New Yorker magazine proposes a startling analogy whereby Ronald Reagan becomes free- wheeling Oliver North and the American electorate becomes President Reagan. The article concludes that "the American body politic, with a sort of wink and a nod, endeavored to shield itself from the recognition of what its subordinate . . . was up to and what the consequences of his activities might be."1