Mark Twain, Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter

by James E. Caron

Overview

Tracing the arc of Clemens’s career from self-described “unsanctified newspaper reporter” to national author between 1862 and 1867, Caron reexamines the early and largely neglected writings—especially the travel letters from Hawaii and the letters chronicling Clemens’s trip from California to New York City. Caron shows how Clemens not only adjusted to but also challenged the guidelines of the newspapers and magazines for which he wrote, evolving as a comic writer who transmuted personal circumstances into literary art.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826218025
Publisher:	University of Missouri Press
Publication date:	06/18/2008
Series:	MARK TWAIN & HIS CIRCLE Series
Edition description:	Mark Twain and His Circle Series
Pages:	504
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James E. Caron is Associate Professor of English at the University of Hawaii and coeditor of Sut Lovingood’s Nat’ral Born Yarnspinner: Essays on George Washington Harris.

The Mark Twain and His Circle Series, edited by Tom Quirk and John Bird

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     XI
Abbreviations     XIII
Prologue for a Comic Performance     1
The Comic Lineage of Washoe Mark Twain
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
The Backwoods Roarer and the "Literary Comedian"
Charles Farrar Browne's Artemus Ward: Scalawag and Spokesman     50
The Communal Function of Comic Violence
Sut Lovingood "Playin' Hell"     69
William Wright's Dan De Quille as Citizen Clown     76
Washoe Mark Twain
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
Playing with Comic Dynamite
Reading a Reporter Who Mocks Journalism     127
Lying to the Public for Laughs     135
Punchlines That Hurt     156
Mark Twain in San Francisco
"Strike Up Higher" in the Periodical World
A National Campaign     163
Periodicals and the ProfessionalComic Writer     169
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
American "Flaneurs"
Of Flaneurs and Feuilletonistes: The Example of Bret Harte     222
Comic Flaneur: Charles Webb     227
"Flanerie" That Subverts the News
Mark Twain's Comic Flanerie     234
The Pose of Naive Innocence     242
Spinning Yarns out of Facts     249
"Foremost of the Merry Gentlemen of the California Press"
That Celebrated Jumping Frog     257
A Taste for Comic Material     265
Correspondent on Assignment
Work and Leisure in Two Cultures
Sam Clemens in Hawai'i     283
American Missionaries and Hawai'ian Culture: Industry as Salvation     289
How Hula Hula turned Mark Twain into a Missionary     299
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
Writing Travel Letters
The Out-of-Town Correspondent     339
Correspondent at Large
American Travel Letters
The Ironic Return of Washoe Mark Twain     353
Unsanctified Missionary     360
Comic Performance
Hawai'i's Queen Emma Convinces Mark Twain to Become a Comic Lecturer     373
A Fellow Savage on the Lecture Platform     377
Theater and Illusion     388
Afterword: The Clown and the Satirist     393
Works Cited     413
Index     445

Editorial Reviews

This is one of the most significant, innovative, yet incontrovertible books on Mark Twain in many years. I now feel that I have watched the professional birthing of Mark Twain.”—Louis Budd, coeditor of A Companion to Mark Twain

From the Publisher