Traveling in Mark TwainSuffering from wanderlust like many of his countrymen, Mark Twain had the good fortune to be paid to offer his observations in a series of travel letters and books. Curious and indefatigable, he used his incomparable skills to produce the vivid descriptions and humorous commentaries that made his books immensely popular. At the same time, travel writing afforded him the opportunity to engage in more personal explorations. The looseness of the travel narrative enabled Twain to put down virtually whatever came to mind, with little concern about connections. At a time when established values were faltering, this tolerance suited him. His travel books are strings of incidents, anecdotes, descriptions, and the occasional odd detail, all arranged along a geographical line. At any given moment, Twain's anarchistic independence was free to assert itself. The travel books are more than entertaining compilations. They represent serious, if offhand, explorations of Mark Twain's outer and inner worlds and help define him as part of the whole van of modernists moving into the twentieth century. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987. |
Contents
Section 1 | 1 |
Section 2 | 14 |
Section 3 | 30 |
Section 4 | 61 |
Section 5 | 70 |
Section 6 | 93 |
Section 7 | 105 |
Section 8 | 121 |
Section 9 | 146 |
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A. B. Paine Albert Bigelow Paine American anecdote appear associative audience beautiful Berkeley Bixby California Press captain chapter Christian Clemens corpses dead volcano death dorian dream Duncan Dunbar Edited existence feelings finally Following the Equator Greeley's Haleakala Hannibal Henry Huttleston Rogers Henry Nash Smith HEVACE EVEELOJ Holy Land Huck Finn Huckleberry Finn human humor humping identity imagination India Innocents Abroad involved islands joke killed later lecture lingam living Livy Mark Twain Mark Twain's Notebooks ment Mississippi mood Mormons MTHHR MTHL MTLP narrative Nevada Nevada Territory never night notebook entry observed paragraph passengers person pilot preacher Pudd'nhead Wilson raft reality river Roughing satiric Sawyer seemed ship steamboat story struck suffering suggests tells thing thought tion tive Tom Sawyer Tramp Abroad travel book trip turned turnips Twain found Twain's mind Twain's writing University of California wrote York young