Who is Mark Twain?
” — a collection of 24 previously uncollected stories and essays drawn mostly from the vast archive of the author’s papers and correspondence at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library — is an entertaining reminder of why that’s so. Twain’s death of heart disease at the age of 74 came as such a blow to the country that it evoked an expression of official White House regret from President William Howard Taft: “Mark Twain gave pleasure — real intellectual enjoyment — to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come. . . . His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of American literature.
But then this book of hitherto unpublished pieces is being brought out under the august aegis of the Mark Twain Project, Bancroft Library, at the University of California at Berkeley. They probably know Latin there. Besides, “disjecta membra,” viewed as slightly skewed English, seems almost shockingly indelicate, which might have pleased Twain, who delighted in flouting the genteel tradition. In one essay included here, “The Grand Prix,” he actually speaks approvingly of Parisian courtesans. Not that Twain is ever truly licentious. These 24 pieces weren’t kept in a drawer because they offended 19th-century morals. No, most of them were failures; they simply don’t work. One or two are absolutely terrible; several intended to be funny aren’t (“The Music Box”); some are dated and practically incomprehensible (“The Quarrel in the Strong-Box”); and a few never got finished. None is as good as “A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage” (2001), a previously unpublished story edited (as is this vol
