ebook img

Mark Twain, Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter (Mark Twain and His Circle Series) PDF

465 Pages·2008·1.83 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Mark Twain, Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter (Mark Twain and His Circle Series)

000 fm (i-xvi) 4/30/08 11:15 AM Page i Mark Twain U N R NSANCTIFIED EWSPAPER EPORTER 000 fm (i-xvi) 4/30/08 11:15 AM Page ii M A R K T WA I N AND HIS CIRCLE S E R I E S (cid:129) (cid:129) (cid:129) (cid:129) Tom Quirk, Editor 000 fm (i-xvi) 4/30/08 11:15 AM Page iii Mark Twain U N R NSANCTIFIED EWSPAPER EPORTER J E. C AMES ARON UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI PRESS COLUMBIA AND LONDON 000 fm (i-xvi) 4/30/08 11:15 AM Page iv Copyright © 2008 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 09 08 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Caron, James Edward, 1952– Mark Twain, unsanctified newspaper reporter / James E. Caron. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “A fresh perspective on the early years of Samuel Clemens’s career as a writer and newspaper reporter. Caron examines Clemens’s developing comic voice in his journalism in Nevada and San Francisco, then in the travel letters from Hawaii and letters chronicling his trip from California to New York City”—Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-0-8262-1802-5 (alk. paper) 1. Twain, Mark, 1835-1910—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Twain, Mark, 1835-1910—Knowledge—Journalism. 3. Twain, Mark, 1835– 1910—Correspondence. 4. Authors, American—19th century— Correspondence. 5. Humorists, American—19th century 6. Humorists, American—19th century—Biography. 7. Twain, Mark, 1835-1910—Travel. 8. Twain, Mark, 1835-1910—Knowledge—America. 9. United States— Description and travel. I. Title. PS1338.C37 2008 818'.409—dc22 2008011961 This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Designer: Foley Design Typesetter: BookComp, Inc. Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Typefaces: Minion, Carpenter ICG, American Typewriter, and EngraversDRom Acknowledgment is made for permission to quote from Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 1: 1853–1866,ed. Edgar M. Branch, Michael B. Frank, and Kenneth M. Sanderson, © 1988 by The University of California Press. 000 fm (i-xvi) 4/30/08 11:15 AM Page v FOR LOU BUDD AND HENRY NASH SMITH they showed the way 000 fm (i-xvi) 4/30/08 11:15 AM Page vi Mark Twain’s early literary training was that of a writer for newspapers, where news was scarce and hard to get, and the public demanded their intellectual fare dressed with the hottest, strongest condiments. Is it not nat- ural that we should see distinct and powerful traces of this method in all his later work? GEORGET. FERRIS Appleton’s Journal JULY4, 1874 000 fm (i-xvi) 4/30/08 11:15 AM Page vii CONTENTS Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii Prologue for a Comic Performance 1 Act One _______ The Comic Lineage of Washoe Mark Twain Scene One: Backwoods Civility; or, How the Roarer Became a Gentleman Washoe Mark Twain and the Old Southwest Writers: Comic Violence and Cultural Barbarism 25 David Crockett Meets Nimrod Wildfire 32 Charles F. M. Noland on the Devil’s Fork 41 William Tappan Thompson’s Domestic Roarer 44 Scene Two: The Backwoods Roarer and the “Literary Comedian” Charles Farrar Browne’s Artemus Ward: Scalawag and Spokesman 50 vii 000 fm (i-xvi) 4/30/08 11:15 AM Page viii viii CONTENTS Scene Three: The Communal Function of Comic Violence Sut Lovingood “Playin’ Hell” 69 William Wright’s Dan De Quille as Citizen Clown 76 Act Two _______ Washoe Mark Twain Scene One: Sam Clemens Clowning on the Comstock Fighting Words 85 Virginia City Carnival 88 Brewing Washoe Mark Twain 98 Mark Twain’s Humor of Raillery 116 Framing the Humor of Raillery 123 Scene Two: Playing with Comic Dynamite Reading a Reporter Who Mocks Journalism 127 Lying to the Public for Laughs 135 Punchlines That Hurt 156 Act Three _______ Mark Twain in San Francisco Scene One: “Strike Up Higher” in the Periodical World A National Campaign 163 Periodicals and the Professional Comic Writer 169 Scene Two: Satire and the Bohemian Journalist The Satirist Reporting for the Morning Call 179 Satirist as Literary Critic: Mark Twain in the Californian 186 Fitz Smythe and the Sanctified 194 Readers and Aesthetics in the Marketplace of Literary Periodicals 208 000 fm (i-xvi) 4/30/08 11:15 AM Page ix CONTENTS ix Scene Three: American “Flâneurs” Of Flâneursand Feuilletonistes:The Example of Bret Harte 222 Comic Flâneur:Charles Webb 227 Scene Four: “Flânerie”That Subverts the News Mark Twain’s Comic Flânerie 234 The Pose of Naive Innocence 242 Spinning Yarns out of Facts 249 Scene Five: “Foremost of the Merry Gentlemen of the California Press” That Celebrated Jumping Frog 257 A Taste for Comic Material 265 Act Four _______ Correspondent on Assignment Scene One: Work and Leisure in Two Cultures Sam Clemens in Hawai‘i 283 American Missionaries and Hawai‘ian Culture: Industry as Salvation 289 How Hula Hulaturned Mark Twain into a Missionary 299 Scene Two: Mark Twain’s Comic Raid on the Kingdom of Hawai‘i Scenes in Honolulu 309 Mark Twain and Mr. Brown Ransack the Islands 312 Mr. Brown Defends a Centric Vision of Hawai‘i 323 Eccentric yet Civilized(?) Mark Twain and Mr. Brown 330 Scene Three: Writing Travel Letters The Out-of-Town Correspondent 339

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.