Who Is Mark Twain? (17 page)

“What’s most remarkable about this collection of Twain’s work is that, more than 100 years after he wrote these stories, they remain not only remarkably funny but remarkably modern…. Ninety-nine years after his death, Twain still manages to get the last laugh.”

—Vanity Fair

“As funny and insightful as any of his published and well-known works, these essays take on the federal government, religion, race, fame, and even the literary canon with a sharp-eyed clarity we can chuckle over as we read while feeling uncomfortable knowing that they feel all too contemporary.”

—The Daily Beast

“Most of all, though,
Who Is Mark Twain?
is worth reading for the sheer pleasure of rediscovering why this writer was so popular in his day.”

—Los Angeles Times

“Twain once famously wrote: ‘The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.’ This book proves that he continues to enjoy literary immortality.”

—South Florida Sun-Sentinel

“
Who Is Mark Twain?
possesses one inestimable virtue: its author is never dull…. He was, in the phrase of his friend William Dean Howells, ‘the Lincoln of our literature’ but also a writer to rival Samuel Beckett in gallows humor and philosophical bleakness. At the heart of his work lies that greatest of all American qualities: irreverence.”

—Washington Post

“
Who Is Mark Twain?
captures the folksy icon’s furious but often repressed compulsion to tell the world what he really thought of its tedious platitudes and received wisdom…. Twain’s wit and lethally precise powers of description are on full display.”

—NPR

“Twain’s voice can often seem surprisingly germane and culturally savvy, even after a century. This volume is a timely contribution to the enterprise of keeping Twain’s spirit alive.”

—St. Louis Dispatch

The Innocents Abroad

Roughing It

The Gilded Age

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

A Tramp Abroad

The Prince and the Pauper

Life on the Mississippi

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

Following the Equator

WHO IS MARK TWAIN?
Copyright © 2009, 2010 by the Mark Twain Foundation. Texts by Mark Twain copyright © 2001 by the Mark Twain Foundation. Transcription, reconstruction, and emendation of the texts copyright © 2001, 2009, and 2010 by The Regents of the University of California. First published in 2001 by University of California Press under a license from the Mark Twain Foundation. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

The Mark Twain Foundation expressly reserves to itself, its successors and assigns, all dramatization rights in every medium, including without limitation, stage, radio, television, motion picture, and public reading rights.

We are grateful to Special Collections, Vassar College Libraries, for access to the original manuscripts of “The Devil’s Gate” and “I Rise to a Question of Privilege.”

First HarperStudio trade paperback edition published 2010.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Twain, Mark, 1835–1910.

Who is Mark Twain? / by Mark Twain.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-06-173501-1 (pbk.)

1. Twain, Mark, 1835–1910. 2. Authors, American—19th century—Biography. I. Title.

PS1331.A2 2010b

818’.409—dc22

[B]

2010001430

EPub Edition © April 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-202085-7

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1