Book review: “Mark Twain: A Life” by Ron Powers

Published 11:21 pm Thursday, September 18, 2008

Nearly 100 years after his death, Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, remains relevant. His masterpiece, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” remains classic, controversial, and the model for the great American novel. His other great and/or famed works, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” “The Prince and the Pauper,” “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” remain prototypes of American storytelling. Yet, possibly more than his works, Mark Twain, the man and character himself, remains an American prototype. We have a view of Mark Twain, of Samuel Clemens, as being a folksy spinner of down-home witticisms. There’s some truth to that, a kernel of truth, but, in this biography, Ron Powers exposes a far more complex character than the one portrayed by Hal Holbrook in a one-man Evening with Mark Twain show. Powers describes Twain’s lecture series as being the birth pangs of what would become that most American of things: the rock star tour. In towns across America, thousands of people attended Twain’s shows where he told stories and presented witticisms. While we may consider these shows folksy by our standards, many of Twain’s lectures were deemed raw, even vulgar and shocking, by his day’s standards. Powers follows Twain through his life, from his childhood through his old age, through his personal tragedies, his business successes and failures, through his dealing with friends, family, and enemies. Powers also provides interesting insight into Twain’s writing and his stories. Readers can see how Clemens’ life shaped his most famous stories and his most famous creation: himself as Mark Twain. Yet, Powers also explores how under all of that famous Mark Twain humor ran a current of rage. As many of today’s comedy seems fueled by anger, Mark Twain also seethed with a rage that pushed his comedy, his writing, and his observations forward.