Mark Twain: On the Writer's Use of Language

Abstract

attention to his mastery of style, and that even fewer have paid attention to the essays and the letters in which he himself discussed the art of writing.'2 Matthews's observation still describes the major trend in Mark Twain studies-the emphasis on Samuel Clemens, the man, rather than on Mark Twain, the writer. Some aspects, however, of his attitude toward authorship need little additional comment. His faith that a story worth the telling will determine its own form and tell itself, his desire for mass approval of his work, his instinctive contempt for Jane Austen, Scott, Dickens, Cooper, and Henry James are well known. One of the most neglected phases of Twain's critical theory is, strangely enough, a matter on which most of his appraisers agree. From Howells to Hemingway, Mark Twain is usually greeted as an expert on the writer's use of language. Howells was fascinated by his 'single-minded' use of words, and Hemingway was hypnotized by the same facet of his genius when he called Huckleberry Finn 'the best book we've had' and named it the progenitor of 'all modem American literature.'3