They are so good at this...

10 September 2025: I want to remember how good my American Fiction class was today. 

We finished up Huck Finn through the lens of really spikey pieces of criticism and we start James on Monday. Before we got that part started, though, listening to their pre-class chatter, I asked them what 9-11 means to their generation. Boy, did that spark an enlightening conversation. (They weren't born then, of course.) Somehow--but it's actually not that much of a mystery if you think about it--we made that connection back to Twain and his, to quote Toni Morrison (whose piece they read!), "amazing, troubling book."

These kids are so angry about our world. Used to the specter of violence hanging over them for every day of their lives. (Returned to my office to see news of a shooting of a right-wing figure on a college campus and a shooting at a high school in Colorado. It's always appalling and soul-crushing, but less shocking every time.)

These students are jaded and cynical and...angry. 

But also not without energy and hope. 

And they are so damn smart and decent. 

They give me so much hope. 

"a 'boom' in it"

3 June 2025: Made my way through a really cool new edition of Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson today and was delighted by a couple of excerpts from his letters that appeared in the editor's introduction.

First, in 1892, he writes about his enthuiasm for the book and notes, “I believe there’s a ‘boom’ in it” (520). 

Second, in 1893, he tells a friend, “I’ve finished the book & revised it. The book didn’t cost me any fatigue, but revising it nearly killed me. Revising books is a mistake” (545).

Work Cited

Griffin, Benjamin, editor. Pudd’nhead Wilson: Manuscript and Revised Versions with “Those Extraordinary Twins.” By Mark Twain, U of California P, 2024. 

A study in contrasts...

2 June 2025: For the "Year's Work" essay, I spent some time this afternoon reading through a new collection of Twain's writing, a collection with a pretty cool theme and idea driving it. I was so disappointed, though, that the editor made a point of highlighting and celebrating these awful AI-generated illustrations he included. They are so janky-looking and depressing. 

Moreover, right after, I reviewed another new collection, this one structured around gathering and celebrating human-created illustrations. The constrasts between the two approaches and their results are stunning. 

And, of course, I keep thinking about the piece I read and blogged about specifically about what Twain can teach us about AI.

He even taught the cat tricks...

26 May 2025: I really love a piece like Kevin Mac Donnell's essay on George Griffin, who worked as a butler of sorts for Sam Clemens and his family for years and who a model for Jim in Huck Finn (along with two other men). It's a combination biography, literary criticism, and detective story. Mac Donnell tells readers the story of George's life--a truly astounding one, fit for a movie or a stand-alone book. Then he introduces and does a close reading of a recent discovery--the only known photo of this extraordinary man. 

Mac Donnell is such a good writer that he makes it work better that you expect it to--the whole thing: the biography, the historiography, the authentication and verification of that photo. It's a lot to do in a limited space. And then he just nails the ending, explaining why that photo matters.

“We have had a much longer time to think about Mr. Griffin than Huck had to think about Jim, but have we really seen Mr. Griffin before us all that time? If not, we can certainly see Mr. Griffin before us now. He meets our gazes, eye-to-eye, confident, human, knowing. Do we see his humanity? We Americans—all of us—have had a very long time to look into the faces of others who do not look like us—others—whose races, ages, sexes, ethnicities, heights, weights, disabilities, sexual identities, religions, and socioeconomic classes do not mirror our own. Surely, we see their humanity. But as we move forward, shall we, like Huck, be willing to go to hell for the sake of our common humanity?” (44).

[And yes: Griffin taught one of the Clemens' cats, Abner, how to ring the bell four times "like a servant" (19).]

Work Cited

Mac Donnell, Kevin. “George Griffin: Meeting Mark Twain’s Butler Face-to-Face.” Mark Twain Journal, vol. 62, no. 1, 2024, pp. 11–58.

"not a labor of exposition so much as a labor of discovery"

22 May 2025: Getting started in earnest working through the articles and books for the “Year’s Work in Humor Studies” that I am once again co-writing, beginning with the Twain stuff. I found myself really into Bruce Michelson’s piece about what Twain can teach us about AI. Here’s a long passage that I enthusiastically marked up (setting up Michelson’s point that Twain is a writer work turning to on this topic): 

“Utterance that matters to us is not a labor of exposition so much as a labor of discovery. We become who we are, we construct and furbish our own consciousness by struggling for the right words; and the result—again, if we are lucky—is not just felicitous utterance but deeper and richer inner life. The kind of writing that matters is never a low-engagement process of fitting discourse together like pieces from an IKEA flat-pack. The effort of revision, of ruthlessly interrogating ourselves on relationships between each possible utterance and the next, is not a tidying up but a telling of a story— in some dimensions always a fiction—of one’s own mind in motion, describing or implying cognitive and emotional journeys with more poise and clearer steadier direction than the actual jumps, backtracks, and flashes from which presentable thinking might (thanks to these private struggles to find the words and the order) eventually emerge. Which leads to at least one collateral paradox: though veteran teachers may see a measure of truth in my attempt here to describe these dynamics, they also recognize how difficult it can be to convey it, given the imperatives and longstanding practices embedded in how American colleges and universities normally teach the production of passable expository prose” (4-5).

Work Cited

Michelson, Bruce. "Mark Twain Legacies in the Dawn of Gen AI." The Mark Twain Annual, vol. 22, 2024, p. 1-20.

"Tom Sawyerish..."

28 July 2023: “One of my prized boyhood possessions was a metal Band-Aid box containing teeth which I had extracted from a raccoon skull that I found by the side of the road—if that isn’t Tom Sawyerish, I don’t know what is” (Hawley 133).

I got a kick out of this charming piece by Timothy Hawley in which he reflects on his life-long love of Twain and his work printing editions of his writings.

Work Cited

Hawley, Timothy. “From Mark Twain Fanatic to Mark Twain Pirate Publisher.” Mark Twain Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, Fall 2022, pp. 133–52.

There's just something about Twain scholars...

23 July 2023: "Barbara Snavely’s father sneered, and maybe even snickered. ‘Come back when you own a wood mill as large and successful as mine,’ snorted Snavely snidely to the twenty-one-year-old suitor. Lick, snubbed and in a snit, and who was not one to snivel in response to snootiness, instead snapped at Snavely, snarling that he would someday build a mill that would make Snively’s Stumpstown mill ‘look like a pigsty’" (Donnell 12). 

Donnell's piece is one of the most fun that I've read for the Twain section of the Year's Work essay. It's about a work that he's rediscovered--which is fascinating and importnat--but he's having so much in it. It's not just the wordplay above, either. He even includes a bit of origami at the end. 

Can confirm that Twain scholars tend towards the hilarious and fun. 

Work Cited

Donnell, Kevin Mac. “Mark Twain’s State Banquet Remarks--A Lost Work Recovered.” Mark Twain Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, Fall 2022, pp. 11–38.

Twain's on fire...

17 June 2023: Was literally reading an article that discussed how Twain uses self-immolation imagery when this song--a cover I'd never heard before--came on. 

I do love this song, as I've posted about before. 

  

Another "submit" completed...

2 July 2020: Just hit "submit" (well, technically "send") on another item on my summer writing to-do list: a book review of Mark Twain in Context. I had in mind to get it done by July 1, but I'll still count this as a win since a) it's done (duh), b) one day ain't a big deal, c) I've had a ton of extra work dumped on me, and d) I also completed another abstract that wasn't even on my list.

So...clicking along so far on the professional development list. I think the next steps will be a bit harder: they're longer, more substantial. But still, as I said above, I'll take the wins when I can get them.

Also hit "send" on a kind of important letter today. Trying to get something fixed that I should have fixed a long time ago (an equity pay issue). Fingers/toes crossed on that one. Feels good to stand up for myself.

"the space-annihilating power of thought"

16 May 2020: “It is curious—the space-annihilating power of thought. For just one second, all that goes to make the me in me was in a Missourian village, on the other side of the globe, vividly seeing again these forgotten pictures of fifty years ago, and wholly unconscious of all things but just those; and in the next second I was back in Bombay, and that kneeling native’s smitten cheek was not done tingling yet! Back to boyhood—fifty years; back to age again, another fifty; and a flight equal to the circumference of the globe-all in two seconds by the watch!” --Mark Twain, Following the Equator

I'm working on a review of a new book about Twain and came across this passage in which he writes about being in Bombay and seeing an Indian boy struck by a white man. He is instantly transported in his mind back to his boyhood in Missouri and the memory of a slave suffering similar violence. It reminded me of yesterday's post and all of the thoughts I've been having since then.

"This Amazing, Troubling Book"

3 November 2019: "The source of my unease reading this amazing, troubling book now seems clear; an imperfect coming to terms with three matters Twain addresses—Huck Finn’s estrangement, soleness and morbidity as an outcast child; the disproportionate sadness at the center of Jim’s and his relationship; and the secrecy in which Huck’s engagement with (rather than escape from) a racist society is necessarily conducted. It is also clear that the rewards if my effort to come to terms have been abundant. My alarm, aroused by Twain’s precise rendering of childhood’s fear of death and abandonment, remains--as it should. It has been extremely worthwhile slogging through Jim’s shame and humiliation to recognize the sadness, the tragic implications at the center of his relationship with Huck. My fury at the maze of deceit, the risk of personal harm that a white child is forced to negotiate in a race-inflected society, is dissipated by the exquisite uses to which Twain puts that maze, that risk." --Toni Morrison, on Huck Finn

I re-read this remarkable piece today, in preparation for class later this week. There is so much to admire here, from Morrison's impeccable close reading to the way she melds the personal and the academic and--what really stood out to me on this reading--her ability to find "rewards" in such a problematic and complicated novel. She is such a model for what it means to be an engaged, critical, charitable, and open reader.

Twain and cats

27 August 2016: Slept in a bit today and when I finally went outside, I found a package on my doorstep. Inside was today's good thing: this amazing birthday present from Rita, Mikeee, and Ainsley.

It reads: "A home without a cat--and a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat--may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove it's title?" --Mark Twain. 

 Bing approves.

Veronica likes the packaging.

Lit links...

1) Coming soon: Mark Twain's autobiography, which has been in a vault for the past 100 years. This is an interesting article, but I'm not sure I agree with the woman who says, "Most people think Mark Twain was a sort of genteel Victorian." Really?

2) Jane's amazing mom passed this link onto me yesterday: "Emily Dickinson's Poetry Blooms at New York Botanical Gardens Exhibit." Another incentive to try to get up to NY sometime soon!

3) To Kill a Mockingbird turns 50.

4) Sarah Palin's spoken word poetry.

Who's up for a road trip?

One of my dream road trip destinations is Concord, Massachusetts. Yeah, I know that makes me even more of an English nerd, but let's face it, for a nineteenth-century Americanist like myself, there are few destinations more exciting. This lovely post from Bluestalking Reader captures one of the reasons I am so eager to go.

FYI: This blogger, Lisa, also has a nice post about a visit to the Mark Twain house, which I wrote about visiting in a post this past summer. She also has lots of cool posts about banned books, another interest of mine.

The Most Famous Man in America

I’ve recently finished reading Debby Applegate’s The Most Famous Man in America: A Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. I first heard about the book when it came out and received really excellent reviews. So I picked up a gently used copy online (actually, I don’t think it had even been read!) and it sat on my night stand for about eight months. This summer, though, I’ve started work on an essay on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s* Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the SAMLA conference in Atlanta in November. There isn’t all that much out there specifically and explicitly connecting Hawthorne and Stowe, so I found myself doing more general reading on both and looking for interesting connections there. This led to me to another excellent biography, Joan D. Hedrick’s Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life. After reading Hedrick’s book and learning just a bit more about the fascinating Beecher clan, I couldn’t resist diving into Applegate’s text.

And I am so glad I did. When this book first came out, I remember people making a lot out of what was probably the most sensational part of Beecher’s life: his very public trial for adultery. (See here and here). It was, to use a cliché, a trial of the century, with all the bells and whistles: sex, religion, secrets, scandals…no murders, so maybe it wouldn’t find its way into a Law and Order: 19^th Century America series, but you get my point. The trial business was incredibly interesting, but the book as a whole is quite good. It has a less academic voice than most biographies I read these days, but honestly, I found that just a bit refreshing.

Simply put, Beecher is a fascinating man: smart, compassionate, passionate, deeply flawed, but (and I think I can say I really believe this) a good man who ultimately wanted to do good work in the world. I found myself very interested in Beecher’s own religious struggles. Raised by Lyman Beecher, the last of the great New England Calvinist preachers, he inwardly struggled with and eventually rejected Calvinism, embracing instead an explicitly evangelical religion that stressed Christ’s loving redemption of men—as well as man’s potential to do and be good. The sections in which Applegate addresses Beecher’s agony over perfectionism are especially moving, I think. (Hedrick, incidentally, also discusses Stowe’s battle with perfectionism with equal skill). It makes sense, of course, that great minds of the nineteenth-century—people like Beecher, Stowe, Hawthorne, Emerson—would lose sleep over their spiritual states. Nineteenth-century America was a place of great promise and trouble—a nation growing and changing, but also marked by great national sins (the way I describe it to my students): slavery, unequal rights for women, and the continuing genocide of the Native Americans. Beyond the scope of the nineteenth-century, though, Beecher’s spiritual journey still resonates today for Christians who wonder about the big questions: what is the nature of man? What is my role in this world? How should I live my life as a Christian? What role should evangelism play in my everyday life?

Anyway, Applegate’s book gives great insights on nineteenth-century America and the amazing Beecher clan. It also reinforces a point that continues to impress me the more I learn about this time period—how very connected all the big names were. For instance, Walt Whitman admired Beecher very much, as did Twain*. I am reminded of a moment in researching my dissertation when I discovered that Sarah Winnemucca had possibly met Henry James on one of her trips east. It’s hard to think of two figures in nineteenth-century American less alike than these two (both of whom figure into my dissertation), yet even they seem to have crossed paths.

Next on my list of pseudo-fun reading: Reinventing The Peabody Sisters, a collection of essays on these amazing women. Well, I suppose that’s more “work” reading than fun, but I do need to get to this book, which I’ve had since January. Maybe I ought to pick up this one for fun…

*I've linked to both the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and the Mark Twain House in part because I have very nice memories of visiting both homes during a snowstorm a few years ago while visiting my sister in Hartford, CT. She lived right behind the Twain house, which is right next to the Stowe House. Don't ask her about it though--she'll just talk about how all we did in Stowe's house was visit the gift shop. "Some scholar of women's writing you are," she laughed. In my defense, the snow was really coming down by the time we got there! Plus I didn't even know the Stowe House was there until we saw it, which says a lot about her reputation these days versus Twains'.