Reading with Style discussion

It’s hard to decide but I’m going to say my favorite author is Mark Twain. I love his dry sense of humor and how if was able to put a light on political and social issues in a humorous way that made everyone laugh rather than angry. He is most well known for his believed novels taken from his own childhood experiences on the Mississippi River of the Antebellum era. I never tie of reading about the intrepid Tom Sawyer and his streetwise, yet naive friend, Huck. There has been controversy about his using the N in those novels and were even banned for a time. But if you read the books, that word is only used in the dialogue of his characters in their authentic voice representing the times. In fact, both books actually made a case against slavery and racism in a time when it was very unpopular and in some parts of the country, dangerous to do so. But yet again, instead of attacking and putting people on the defensive, his narratives gently open the eyes of many who had never given the institution any particular thought.
As America’s hero writer and so beloved, many don’t realize his particular philosophical and religious views thaT ran counter to the societal trend of the upright Victorian trend. He also pokes run at religion, our cherished cultural icons, our political institutions and meaningless traditions. Again, with humor so that when he dies, the nation mourned. One leading newspaper printed a cartoon of Mark on his deathbed and Uncle Sam setting at the bedside, hat off, head down and weeping profusely showing how much America mourned his loss.
His nonfiction books give us a first hand view of that time in American History in which the country was expanding westward into uncharted territory, but at the expense of the indigenous people and the groups of immigrants that came looking for their dream.

Twain was devoted to his wife and daughters but sadly lost all but one in death. You can see the sadness in his face and writings in his later years. He also experienced a serious financial disaster having made an investment in a new printing press that was immediately superseded by a much better one shortly after its production. He had persuaded many of his friends and acquaintances to invest as well and feeling a strong moral obligation to return the money he had convinced them to give up, he took off on a European tour giving lectures, travel writing and raising the money to repay them. Unfortunately, it was while away on this mission that his beloved youngest daughter took ill and died.

Yet despite his personal tragedies and the loneliness of his later years, he still used humor to keep America’s conscience alive. We could sorely use him today.
Like I said his books are very different in genres but still keep that vein of dry humor.
My favorites are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Tom Sawyer Abroad
Tom Sawyer, Detective
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The Prince and the Pauper
The $30,000 Bequest And Other Short Stories:
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays
The Mysterious Stranger
Was it Heaven? Or Hell?

Thanks, Rebekah. I have not read Twain for many years. Perhaps I should revisit him.

I’ve made regular visits to the tourist trap I call Mark Twain Town of Hannibal, Missouri and I love, love it! You might even see Mark Twain himself walking around, speaking to passerby’s!
I also visited his home ( mansion) in Connecticut where is next door neighbor was Harriet Beecher Stowe. Wouldn’t you have loved to have been a guest at one of their dinner parties?

I still have many of his works yet to read including Life on the Mississippi, and his Autobiography, neither the one published in his life time nor the huge one that he ordered published a century after his death, although I own them all.
I also liked The Gilded Age, A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage and he really tore into James Fenimore Cooper with his critical satire. Mark Twain always thought Personal Reflections of Joan of Arc was his masterpiece and although it was good, it’s not in my top 100 favorite books.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Thanks, Rebekah. I have not read Twain for many years. Perhaps I should revisit him."

And both his pen name and legal name fit 10.6 Postal task! 😉

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Years ago I read his Life on the Mississippi. Being a riverboat captain is where he got his pen name. They would test the depths of the river, with a rope and weights. Depths would be measured as "mark" something or other. When the river was more than deep enough to navigate they would call out Mark Twain.

Last year, I read Joan of Arc, which I'd never heard about, but then read somewhere that he considered it his best book. I loved it.

My son's elementary school class was supposed to go to Hannnibal as a field trip last spring, but it was cancelled when school closed down. He was so disappointed not to get to go as the trip is built up as a big reward for the final year in elementary.

Also, I just read The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty and I think her humor and tone share some of Twain's style.

Mark Twain’s 185th Birthday Today! 🥳
30 November 1835
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj2Q2...

Joanna wrote: "Also, I just read The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty and I think her humor and tone share some of Twain's style."

Me too! Why I Live at the P.O reminds me of the humor too.

Tell your son 2hen this all blows over, I’ll go with him! My kids and grandson were taken there so many times when my daughter was in boarding school in Iowa that they could point out every attraction blindfolded. But was grandson is all about trains and 5hey have a wonderful model train set up in this one shop that takes up every sing sp@ce with all these trains continuously running around mountains, over rivers through cities, pastures, tunnels etc. great for the rainy day but even better is the railroad that runs parallel with The Mississippi and only a few yards away. Every time he heard 5he whistle, we’d have to run as quickly as we could to the end of the street with Mark Twain’s house to Glascock Park and just stand there and watch it go by. Then we could return to what we were doing until next time we heard a whistle a few hours later.
Cheap entertainment.