Mark Twain as Critic in The Innocents Abroad

Abstract

WISH TO CHALLENGE the conventional interpretation of Mark JL Twain as critic in The Innocents Abroad.1 It seems to me mistaken, arising, I think, from the mere repetition, in all sincerity, of a point of view crystallized decades ago and accepted ever since without critical examination. It was in error in the first place and was guilty of the critical sins of citing statements out of context and of skipping from ant hill to ant hill of evidence while ignoring the peaks. The misstatements made so long about The Innocents Abroad are now a tradition in American criticism. This tradition asserts that in The Innocents Abroad Clemens is a typical Western backcountry democrat realistically, unsentimentally, and honestly telling what Europe is like, without idealizing, without romantic coloring, without yielding to the conventional. In this burlesque, this satiric travelogue, he represents the rough humor of the West, which displays a barbaric contempt for the guidebook traditions of the Old World and for the historical memorials of the human spirit in Europe. This native Western barbarian laughs at humbug and absurdity wherever he finds them. He is the frontier itself, deriding European culture, guffawing at reverend traditions, mocking simple faith as superstition, ridiculing literary and artistic traditions, laughing at everything that did not seem to him overpoweringly sacred. The Innocents Abroad presents Europe as seen from the Rocky Mountains, Rome as interpreted from Carson City. It flattered the mob with the spectacle of the free-born American romping through venerable lands and finding them inferior to America.2