Mark Twain at Work

By Bernard DeVoto

WHEN Bernard DeVoto became custodian of the Mark Train Papers four years ago, a great deal of material began to reach print which Mr. Paine had not released. The present book represents further “work in progress” towards the definitive life which Mr. DeVoto will write in time. It consists of three essays, with illustrative matter, on the origin and growth of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn — both deeply interesting to lovers of those great books — and a fresh theory about the cause of Mark’s late cynicism and misanthropy. The new theory finds the cause not in shame and spiritual defeat, but in external events. His daughter’s death, his bankruptcy, physical and mental strain, his wife’s invalidism — these combined not only to make him doubt man’s freedom and responsibility, but almost to inhibit his invention. He was very near insanity, but was saved by trying to write out his bewilderment on paper. The discussion is an engrossing piece of critical detection. The other related question, of whether Mark emasculated his works because of the prudery of his wife, Howells, or Gilder, receives an ironical answer: Mark was more reticent and even prudish (in print) than any of his friendly critics. R. M. G.