Two Fictions: Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens

Abstract

Michael J. Kiskis, ed. Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. Pp. xi + 301 and appendices. Guy Cardwell. The Man Who Was Mark Twain: Images and Ideologies. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991. Pp. xv + 267. Although portions of Mark Twain's Own Autobiography have appeared elsewhere—notably in works edited by Albert Bigelow Paine, Bernard DeVoto, and Charles Neider—this is the first reprinting of all the twenty- five chapters originally published in the North American Review in 1906-07. In his introduction, Michael J. Kiskis expertly guides us through the larger and still more diverse collection of manuscript materials, composed between 1870 and 1910, that Mark Twain chose to think of as his complete "autobiography" (xvi). It includes character sketches, remembrances, occasional essays, diaries, dictations and even letters. Previous attempts at selecting from these manuscripts—attempts valuable in their own right—have nevertheless resulted in "editorial intrusions]" that have shaped the "material to suit a particular purpose" (xix, xxii). Here, there are no such intrusions. Instead, excellent notes, together with a comprehensive index, maintain an objectivity which insures that the work will become a new and important resource for scholars. What should also prove useful is an appendix providing detailed lists of those particular passages from the chapters in the North American Review that have also appeared in the works of Paine, DeVoto, and Neider. But in Mark Twain's Own Autobiography, we gain the advantage of having Mark Twain himself select, revise, order, and emphasize those materials that were to be his one sustained effort at presenting a portrait to the public.