Letters From My Library (II)

The Only Yankee I Have Ever Rooted For

I got another book when I was pretty young – It was given to me as a present from my grandfather at or around my seventh birthday.  It was a good sized paperback and the printing on the pages was small.  There were no pictures in the book and the words, even those in the title on the cover – were big.  Bigger than any I had attempted previously.  I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle something that seemed so adult – and I said so.

“You’ll be OK” my grandfather assured me – “you can read this one”.

He’d never steered me wrong before but I was still wary – “What’s it about?” I asked.

“It’s about a man who gets hit on the head and wakes up in the time of King Arthur”. 

King Arthur I knew about – at least I thought I did.  He had a round table, a bunch of knights with funny names like “Sir Loin of Beef” and "Sir Osis of the Liver” – of course, this was only the Bugs Bunny version of the tale.  What I knew about the Arthurian legend was just what I had picked up from Loony Tunes cartoons.  But it was enough to make me think that I could probably handle a book about someone getting hit on the head and landing back in time – it seemed to line up pretty well with what I’d seen on Saturday morning television.

And so I was introduced to the world of Mark Twain not through Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn but via A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.  I ended up reading both of the former books soon after finishing Yankee, but I’m glad I took what would have to be considered the non-traditional route to Twain.  A Connecticut Yankee is not an easy book even for an adult to read and catch all of the things that are going on at once.  I’m pretty sure (having read it a number of times) that I still haven’t caught all of the little jokes and satirical barbs that Twain includes throughout.  But it is interesting enough in plot to keep anyone involved, funny enough to keep anyone entertained and, most tellingly, intelligent enough to keep any reader, no matter what age, aware that there is lots more going on with this story than just what you read on the surface.  I copped on to this fast enough when reading through the book – here, for example, is Twain’s Yankee on how easy it becomes for good people to begin to accept things which should, by all logic, be completely unacceptable – this scene takes place just after a group of religious pilgrims has come upon the sight of a slave master beating a young girl with a whip for the crime of getting tired during a long forced march:

Our pilgrims looked on and commented – on the expert way that the whip was handled. They were too much hardened by the lifelong everyday familiarity with slavery to notice that there was anything else in the exhibition that invited comment.  This was what slavery could do, in the way of ossifying what might be called the superior lobe of human feeling; for these pilgrims were kindhearted people, and they would not have allowed that man to treat a horse like that.

Even a seven year old couldn’t miss what was going on there – that if people got so used to something in the day to day run of things they can miss just how wrong those very things were.  I later figured out that Twain was trying to explain how so many people in the United States – in his own time – had deluded themselves into accepting slavery as normal.  Even later I figured out that Twain was trying to explain how he, himself, had managed to hold that position for much of his younger life.

But it wasn’t all heavy political thinking – Mark Twain’s sense of humor is justifiably famous.  It comes out in sneaky little spots – such as when an noble applicant for a royal honor is being interviewed as to his background:

"By what illustrious achievement for the honor of the Throne and the State did the founder of your great line lift himself to the sacred dignity of the British nobility?"

"He built a brewery" 

And in broader strokes such as when he bestows upon the Yankee the title of neither Knight, Duke, Earl or Prince, but instead that of “Boss”.  A Connecticut Yankee is a book about politics, technology, capitalism, religion and a thousand other heavy topics but, because it hides so well behind its tale those things never get in the way of a seven year old being able to work through the book and enjoy it thoroughly.  I now own just about every word Mark Twain ever published and read at least one of his books every year.  He’s been called a gift to American literature but to me he is primarily a gift from my grandfather, who never did steer me wrong.

Books by/about Mark Twain in my library: (Note: the “Unabridged” collections gather together the great mass of Twain’s work, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Roughing It, and so on.  They’re a great way to get a lot of Twain without having to hunt down each book.  Also – to get an idea of the darker, more cynical side of Twain I’d track down “Letters From the Earth” – basically this is a work where Twain, writing as a demon reporting back to Satan, skewers all of humanity.  Twain could be incredibly critical of what he saw as mankind’s unbearable hypocrisy and here he lets loose with both barrels.  His publisher withheld it from the public for more than a half century after Twain’s death, thinking it just too bitter to release.)

The Unabridged Mark Twain – Volume One	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
The Unabridged Mark Twain – Volume Two	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Mark Twain
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court	Mark Twain
A Pen Warmed Up in Hell – Mark Twain in Protest	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
Tales, Speeches Essays and Sketches	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
The Innocents Abroad	Mark Twain
The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calveras County and Other Stories	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
Letters From the Earth	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
Mark Twain Himself	Milton Meltzer	Twain, Bio
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain	Justin Kaplan	Twain, Bio