The Bookworm: The Complete Essays of Mark Twain

Mohammedans are Mohammedans because they are born and reared among that sect, not because they have thought it out and can furnish sound reasons for being Mohammedans; we know why Catholics are Catholics; why Presbyterians are Presbyterians; why Baptists are Baptists; why Mormons are Mormons; why thieves are thieves; why monarchists are monarchists; why Republicans are Republicans and Democrats, Democrats. We know it is a matter of association and sympathy, not reasoning and examination; that hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics, or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies.

There are better quotes in Essays but I don’t feel like hunting for them. It took me about a month to finish the 689 pages of tiny text so I have no desire to go searching through them for anything else.

Needless to say, this book is massive. The outdated, Wild West typeface doesn’t do anything to make the pages pass any faster. (I doubt this book has been re-typeset since it’s first edition was published in 1961.) Essays includes 77 essays written on a variety of subjects. Twain writes about his travels in Europe, his opinions on Joan of Arc and Shakespeare’s identity, and his belief that man is just a machine. Also on display is his obsession with Satan. Twain loved Satan, and wrote a lot about him. Ol’ Belezubub stars in “Sold to Satan,” “Letters to Satan,” “A Humane Word from Satan,” and “That Day in Eden.” Twain felt Satan had been given a bad rap and wanted to let Lucifer have his say. It’s interesting and funny stuff, but I’m unsure why some of it was considered nonfiction. Some of the “essays” would be thought of as experimental fiction today (at least in my opinion).

This book was too much Twain. Don’t get me wrong — I love Twain. I consider him the best American writer. Essays gave me an inside look at his life and thinking, but 700 pages was too much. Perhaps it’s just me. Not only am I a terse writer, I’m also a terse reader. Normally I wouldn’t read such a large book, but I bought Essays about three years ago and felt bad for leaving it on the shelf unread. So I forced myself to read it. I originally planned to read the first half and finish another book before polishing it off, but decided to plow through the entire length without a break. And was it ever a chore. Every moment I could spare was dedicated to chipping away at the thick stack of pages that never seemed to diminish. Last Sunday I finally made it to the end.

Though I’ve made it sound like reading Essays was torture (much of it can be blamed on my reading tastes), I have to admit it was good reading. His humor and voyeuristic nature are on display, as well as his compassion. The best essay in the collection, I felt, was “The Death of Jean,” which he wrote in the wake of his daughter’s sudden death at home. If I remember right, they found her on the bathroom floor on Christmas Eve Day. Twain shut himself in a room and wrote for the next few days while her body was taken away and interned at Elmira, New York. Needless to say, it devastated him. Before passing away in 1910, Twain lost his wife, a son, and two of his three daughters.

But, be forewarned: Not all the essays are interesting. Two prompted me to do something I rarely do when reading: I skipped pages. I quit reading “In Defense of Harriet Shelley” after reading the first few pages and quickly skimmed “Is Shakespeare Dead?” It’s my right as a reader to skip pages if I want to, but I normally don’t out of respect for the author, regardless of how boring it is. And who knows? Maybe it’ll turn out to be interesting after all. But not this time. No — I couldn’t do it. Both were monstrous pieces and neither one appealed to me. In the case of “Harriet Shelley” I had no clue what he was talking about and didn’t care to know. (Harriet Shelley, as it turns out, was the first wife of poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Percy left Harriet pregnant with their second child and she drowned herself in London’s Hyde Park. Percy went on to marry Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, future author of Frankenstein.)

Essays taught me a lot about Twain I never knew before, especially about this later life. I was expecting there to be many pieces about his days in Virginia City, San Francisco, Hawaii, and on the Mississippi when he was a steamboat pilot, but there were none. Much of what is included was written after 1880, when Twain became a settled aristocrat, musing about politics, religion, and philosophy, and writing travelogues. That’s what shocked me the most: Twain as an aristocrat. I knew he attained quite a bit of wealth, and that his wife was from a wealthy East Coast family, but I never associated Twain with hired servants, lavish trips to Europe and the Caribbean, expensive hotels, a 19-room house, and exclusive clubs. The Twain in Essays — although an older and wealthier version than his younger self — was a complete contrast to the Twain I knew from Roughing It or Life on the Mississippi. His humor and wit hadn’t changed (thank God), but his lifestyle had. I much prefer the depressed, lonely Twain in San Francisco, and the rebellious and curious reporter in Virginia City.

As cliché as this sounds it’s actually true: Essays is a must-have for Twain enthusiasts, like me. But it’s definitely not for the general reading public.