Mark Twain in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

On 14-15 January 2002, Ken Burns brought his latest patriotic documentary, Mark Twain, to PBS, and what a pleasure it was, the great photographs, the great singular life, all that wit and humor. As one enjoyed The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), and Jazz (2001), each film declaring a triumph for our new post-Civil War nationality, one relished Mark Twain, which might be said to conclude that specific cycle of films in Burns's documentary project. The first night ended with Mark Twain writing and publishing the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). We got a good look at Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York, where Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn. There was the famous octagonal study, so beautifully placed on a promontory overlooking the broad expanse of the Chemung River valley, Mark Twain in it, leaning out, looking at us. We saw in different photographs the strong black face of Mary Ann Cord, cook, in A True Story (1874), and the strong black face of John T. Lewis, farm managerAfrican American persons around Mark Twain as he wrote Huckleberry Finn. We owe Auntie Cord and John Lewis a lot, Mark Twain insisted. Mark Twain had their stories. In A True Story Aunt Rachel rebukes Misto C for his blindness to the tragedy of her life. As Huck confronts the consequence of his race betrayal, the social hell reserved for nigger lovers in slaveholding Missouri, these richly humane African-American voices are speaking around Mark Twain, are in their African American conversation, are often speaking to him, addressing his Southern innocence. Mark Twain's importance in American literature, said Mark Twain, depends on Jim, on the African American factor in Mark Twain's literary production. It is a major point in the film, a restatement of that verity. Jim does not save Huck in Huckleberry Finn, losing him finally to Tom Sawyer, but he saves Mark Twain in the twentieth century and is floating him still in the twenty-first. Part One ends presenting Huck's letter to Miss Watson, a letter of betrayal, quite possibly the