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Mark Twain is America’s—perhaps the world’s—best known humorous writer. Yet many commentators in his time and our own have thought of humor as merely an attractive surface feature rather than a crucial part of both the meaning and the structure of Twain’s writings. This book begins with a discussion of humor, and then demonstrates how Twain’s artistic strategies, his remarkable achievements, and even his philosophy were bound together in his conception of humor, and how this conception developed across a forty-five year career.
Kolb shows that Twain is a writer whose lifelong mode of perception is essentially humorous, a writer who sees the world in the sharp clash of contrast, whose native language is exaggeration, and whose vision unravels and reorganizes our perceptions. Humor, in all its mercurial complexity, is at the center of Mark Twain’s talent, his successes, and his limitations. It is as a humorist—amiably comic, sharply satiric, grimly ironic, simultaneously humorous and serious—that he is best understood.
Mark Twain is America’s—perhaps the world’s—best known humorous writer. Yet many commentators in his time and our own have thought of humor as merely an attractive surface feature rather than a crucial part of both the meaning and the structure of Twain’s writings. This book begins with a discussion of humor, and then demonstrates how Twain’s artistic strategies, his remarkable achievements, and even his philosophy were bound together in his conception of humor, and how this conception developed across a forty-five year career.
Kolb shows that Twain is a writer whose lifelong mode of perception is essentially humorous, a writer who sees the world in the sharp clash of contrast, whose native language is exaggeration, and whose vision unravels and reorganizes our perceptions. Humor, in all its mercurial complexity, is at the center of Mark Twain’s talent, his successes, and his limitations. It is as a humorist—amiably comic, sharply satiric, grimly ironic, simultaneously humorous and serious—that he is best understood.
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Shape of a Humorist’s Career
A Peculiar Genius
Forty-Five Years as a Serio-Humorist
A Century of Criticism
A Humorist’s Self-Definition
Toward a Discussion of Humor
Chapter 2: The Physics of Humor
Chapter 3: The Psychology of Humor
Relaxation
Coping
Aggression
Chapter 4: The Sociology of Humor: National Character and
Morality
American Humor
The Morality of Humor
Mark Twain and the Natives, at Home and Abroad
Early Years: Comic Creations (1851-1872)
Chapter 5: The Strategy of Counterpoint
The Apprenticeship of a Humorist
The Clash of Contrast and the Stretch of Exaggeration
Jump-Starting a Career
A Humorist Afloat
The Innocents Abroad
Samson Trimmed, Lightly
Roughing It
Chapter 6: Throw in Another Grizzly: The Tall Tale in America
Middle Years: The Triumph of Satire (1873-1889)
Chapter 7: Old Times and New Narrators
“Old Times on the Mississippi”
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
A Joke for John: The Whittier Birthday Speech
Tramping with Twichell
A Turn to History: The Prince and the Pauper
Chapter 8: The Non-Example of Bret Harte
Chapter 9: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Joke on Jim
Beyond Jim: The Humor of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Chapter 10: Comic Contrast and Violent Humor: A Connecticut Yankee
in King Arthur’s Court
Comic and Satiric Contrasts
The Humor of Violence
Satire and Poignancy
Chapter 11 The Advocacy of W. D. Howells
Later Years: The Humorist as Ironist (1890-1910)
Chapter 12: The Not-So-Gay Nineties
Busted
A Bankrupt Abroad
Raffish Reviewer
Twain’s Twins: Pudd’nhead Wilson
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
Gains and Losses
Chapter 13: A Subtle Humorist
Recovery
Following the Equator
Vienna and London
Homecoming
Satirist vs. Imperialists
Adam and Eve
The Higher Animals
The Christian Science Autocracy
Shakespeare and the Law
God and Man
Pessimist?
Remnants
Chapter 14: Mysterious Strangers
The Texts
Editorial Pain
Symbols, and a Theory, of Despair
Chapter 15: An Uncharted Sea of Recollection: Mark Twain’s
Autobiography
Four Twentieth-Century Editions
The Twenty-First Century Definitive Autobiography
“The Right Way to Do an Autobiography”
Appendix
Books by Mark Twain: A Selected List of American Editions Published
in His Lifetime
Tales and Sketches
Posthumously Published Works
Sources
Key to Abbreviations
Notes
Other Works Cited
Index
Harold H. Kolb Jr. is emeritus professor of American literature at the University of Virginia, where he was the founding director of the American Studies Program and the Center for the Liberal Arts. His writings include articles and monographs on American literature, American history, humor, composition, legal writing, natural history, and education.
In Mark Twain: The Gift of Humor, Kolb has assumed the Herculean
task of providing a comprehensive study of the core of Twain's
lasting attraction to readers over the course of the last 150
years, his understanding of, and incorporation of a depth of
understanding of humor far surpassing that of his contemporary
‘phunny phellows,’ and many of our twenty-first century
practitioners. That he has succeeded in his mission must be
regarded as nothing less than an astounding achievement, one which
renders this work worthy of including in the library of every
serious student of Twain. It can confidently be concluded that Mark
Twain: The Gift of Humor is the benchmark on the subject against
which any forthcoming attempts will be measured for the next
century.
*Mark Twain Forum*
At a time when most literary critics are as giddy as teenagers to
embrace the latest intellectual fad, Kolbs his magisterial 500-page
study around the disarmingly uncontroversial claim that Mark Twain
was, first and last, a humorist…. There are so many highlights in
Kolb’s discussion that a reviewer is helpless to do more than
gesture toward some of the book’s more surprising episodes…. If a
single image emerges from Kolb’s panoramic study, it would be that
of Mark Twain as an ‘amiable’ humorist, a writer whose innate sense
of disparity fostered a profoundly sympathetic vision of human
beings and the world they inhabit. There are many interpretive
treasures in this book.
*American Literary Realism*
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