The Macabre & Creepy Edgar Allan Poe group discussion

Monday, November 30, 2009
Birth of Mark Twain

What a curious thing a "detective" story is. And was there ever one that the author needn't be ashamed of, except the "Murders in the Rue Morgue"?
So says Mark Twain (the pen name of Samuel L. Clemens). Twain was born on November 30, 1835. He never knew Poe (he was 13 when Poe died) but both writers were pursuing a national identity in American literature. Twain, however, thought Poe had failed miserably (he thought so about many authors). A day before Poe's centennial in 1909, he wrote to William Dean Howells and told his fellow novelist his opinion of the master of the macabre: "To me his prose is unreadable—like Jane Austen's. No, there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's."

It's unclear what kind of salary Twain got for reading Poe or for writing an obscure short story called "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut." Scholar Robert Comeau identified this story by Twain as borrowing themes from Poe's "William Wilson," a character from "Hop-Frog," and a device from "The Raven."

Poet-turned-Poeist Daniel Hoffman wrote: "In Poe's own country the only thing like 'William Wilson' is by that other demon-haunted genius, Mark Twain. But where Poe's tale is taut with demonic intensity, there is a wonderful hilarity in 'The Facts Concerning A [sic:] Recent Carnival of Crime In Connecticut.'" In the story, a character is tortured by his Calvinist conscience, but outwits his tormentor by murdering him. Suddenly conscience-free, the character goes on murdering, cheating, and generally indulging in mischief.

For a time, the character's conscience is perched on a bookshelf. According to Comeau, this serves as the same symbolism as the bust of Pallas in Poe's "The Raven."

Happy birthday, Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain.
Posted by Rob Velella at 11:10 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: birthdays, Criticism, detective stories, The Raven

I've been reading, in the past week, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death by Deborah Blum. It is a quite wonderful outlining of the history of spiritualism in Victorian times. One of the stories it tells is of Sam Clemens, who joined the British Institute of Psychical Research, ostensibly because he had had a premonition of his brother's death just days before it happened. That cynical, practical Mark Twain could be enticed into the spiritualist movement goes to show what an effect "Creepy, other-worldlinees" had on 19th century english-speaking society. It's good to read that Clemens could channel some of his interest in things creepy into Poe and the mystery story.