[Chernow's] book is an endurance test, one that skimps on the things that formed Twain and made him the most lucid, profound, unpredictable and irascibly witty American of his time. Hardy will be the souls who tour this air-conditioned edifice all the way through and glimpse the exit sign.
Ha ha. Garner doesn't sound like much of a fan of "Hamilton (The Musical)." "Devoured while on a vacation" — why mention the vacation?!
Twain is married to Olivia Langdon and has settled down by Page 166 of Chernow’s book. He is 34 and will live to be 74. Here is when the alert reader, weighing the left and right sides of the elephantine volume in his lap, notices there are still 850 pages to go. How will the author fill them?
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68 comments:
Twain's autobiography is definitely worth a read.
1200 hardcover pages ! Your go-to resource for busting ganglion cysts.
One of my favorite Twain quotes:
“In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.”
Literally 2016 vs. 2024, many were MAGA before it was cool.
I got halfway through Chernow's Grant book and stopped. He's simply not a very good writer.
Read Twain's and Grant's own writings.
I laughed myself sick over Innocents Abroad by Twain when I read it thirty, no, forty, years ago. I wonder what I'd think of it these days. At that time, Three Men in a Boat was one of my favorite books. And Wodehouse and Thurber. Then I was in a career surrounded by corporate double-speak and casual pomposity. Now life is better for me because I've retired but society as a whole has a pandemic of the same kinds of shuffle-talk and mental pretzeling going on for pretty much the same reason - a desire to get ahead. Perhaps I should reread the Old Masters - Twain, Wodehouse and Thurber. A study of the classics is always. rewarding
Samuel Clemons was the greatest American writer of witty literature. Unsurpassed.
A biography might detail a famous person’s life but not be well written.
Plenty of well written books that skimp on substance as well
Garner’s not writing very well here, either. To call something a “McMansion” is to criticize it as mass-produced. But that’s not the point Garner wants to make: he’s condemning the book’s length and superficiality. Then, having saddled himself with the architectural metaphor, Garner calls the book an “air-conditioned edifice.” Huh? If you want to convey that the experience of reading something is uncomfortable because it’s dull and endless, why bring up air-conditioning? A scathingly negative review can be one of a reader’s fondest pleasures, but it’s harder than it looks to pull off. Garner’s review itself shares the faults he attributes to the book—it’s too long, it slogs dutifully through its catalogue of Chernow’s shortcomings, and it never finds the language to summarize its critique in a memorable line or two.
I'm no Twain expert, but I would assume most of his oeuvre was written between ages 34 and 74. So I would be expecting a lot more biography once I got to 34.
JSM
Read Twain's and Grant's own writings.
Grant's autobiography is one for the ages. The best book ever written by a President. I believe they study it side-by-side with Julius Caesar's at West Point.
Chernow is a mediocre writer who writes these door stopper books about famous Americans. Grant -1000 pages. Hamilton - 800 pages. Washington - 900 pages. He's a former journalist and that's the level of his writing. Quantity doesn't equal quality.
As for Twain, he can read his autobiograhy if you like door stopper books. I sorta got through Volume 1, but didn't have the energy to go on to Volume 2.
THe other problem with Chernow is you get the standard NYT/WaPo/liberal standard establishment view of these historical figures. Now doubt that's the audience. You know the kinda of people who read the NYT/Wapo/New Yorker. The last thing they want is someone challenging their core beliefs about any historical figure.
"Garner’s not writing very well here, either."
His name is "Garner." He never stood a chance.
I vote for a new tag: garner (the name!).
"Ron Chernow’s new biography of Mark Twain is enormous, bland and remote — it squats over Twain’s career like a McMansion."
Is that a McMansion with fries and a large Coke?
Ron Chernow has nothing literary to fear from Dwight Garner, though it be a very small comfort.
My left cerebral hemisphere keeps rejecting McMansion and substituting Ed McMahon. Apparently it finds it easier to visualize Carson's second banana squatting over anything than a McMansion with legs.
I've always thought of Twain as an American Chesterton. Both had remarkable insight into human behavior, differing only slightly in the delivery of their various witticisms: Chesterton with his clever British anti-snobbery, and Twain his earthy repartee that only proximity to the Mississippi provides.
Aggie,
Thank you for this belated Mother's Day reminder of my mother and her Biblical cure for ganglion cysts.
Twain's early life and career are pretty interesting, but once he settles down in CT what is there to right about? Novel, speaking tour, speaking tour, novel. Kids dying, novel, speaking tour, shaking fist at God, helping Grant get out of debt, losing own fortune, wife dying, more shaking fist at God, novel. Whoops, guess there is more there than I thought.
I've read a fair number of Chernow's books. To some extent, your interest in the book is dependent upon your interest in who he's writing about, but his books are certainly worth reading. He takes the liberal view on his subjects, but he's off the devil's party. His bio of the OG Rockefeller is critical, but you can't help noticing that Rockefeller comes off looking good......I bet a good number of the remaining 830 pages are end notes. Chernow's books are meticulously researched....I wonder if Mark Twain is one of those writers like Orwell or Churchill, where you mine the nuggets and disregard the slag. I mean no disrespect, but Twain got a fair number of things wrong, and the ending of Huckleberry Finn is a disaster.
An excellent biography is by another Ron: Mark Twain: A Life (An American Literary History) by Ron Powers. Reads like a novel, great work.
Twain was a great author and humorist. But his political and religious views were on the same level of Scott Adams or Christopher Hitchens. He wasn't a deep thinker, and after the Civil war his views more or less reflected those of the New England elite. Some of his anti-Imperialist stuff is good.
But on the whole he was just a conformist. There's no evidence he was anti-slavery before the Civil war. Or that he that he was anti-Confederate. Being from Missouri he was conflicted over the war, and just went West to wait it out. Its only AFTER the war that he started praising Grant and writing critiques of Southern society like Huck Finn.
"the ending of Huckleberry Finn is a disaster."
A Stephen King ending level disaster.
the ending of Huckleberry Finn is a disaster
Boys just want to have fun.
I just visited the Mark Twain home in Hartford CT. It was well worth the visit. So many great quotes and one that I had not heard before: "Do your duty today, and repent tomorrow." I very much liked Chernow's biographies of Rockefeller and Hamilton, and also quit his Grant biography halfway through because it was becoming a slog.
I’ve read Chernow’s (big) bios of U.S. Grant and John D. Rockefeller (“Titan”) and thoroughly enjoyed both. I came away with an increased appreciation for the accomplishments of both men. I’ve been looking forward to Chernow’s Mark Twain bio.
New Yorker said...
“Garner’s not writing very well here, either. To call something a “McMansion” is to criticize it as mass-produced. But that’s not the point Garner wants to make: he’s condemning the book’s length and superficiality.”
A McMansion is not just a house that has been mass produced.
Two of the other criteria that identify a McMansion are:
- Size, usually for the sake of size. That matches well with criticism of the book’s length.
- The architectural features of the house are slathered on like a coat of paint instead of being part of the house’s style and integrity. That matches the 2nd point about superficiality.
"Hardy will be the souls who tour this air-conditioned edifice all the way through and glimpse the exit sign."
Worst sentence of the year. Nothing connects associatively.
[Chernow's] book is an endurance test
Many will be purchased; few will be read. The majority will fill bookcases behind talking heads on TV.
"Many will be purchased; few will be read."
Literary Classic: A book that everybody talks about, but few people have read.
I read his Rockefeller biography and thought it quite interesting and informative, but generally it's best to start with autobiographies, when available. After you've read Grant's definitely read Sherman's. That would fill 5 seasons of quality TV.
I'm going to Hamilton tonight!
Isaacson does verbose but breezy very well. That's the bar...
I've a good number of Cherow's books, Hamilton, Washington, Rockerfeller, Morgan and Grant. Hamiltion was the best of the bunch. I found them all to be interesting, and had the right level of depth - those lives warrant at least 800-900 pages. That's actually a mere fraction of what Caro has written about LBJ and Caro still has at least another 1,000 pages in the pipeline.
Robert Caro
Enormous, bland, remote? Quick, call Ken Burns to make a 20-part PBS documentary for $100,000,000! I've been suffering from insomnia because I'm reading Mark Twain's books before bedtime. They are so exciting I can't put them down.
I got halfway through Chernow's Grant book and stopped. He's simply not a very good writer.
Grant's Personal Memoirs (written while he was dying of throat cancer) are one of the best autobiographies around.
So, Ron didn't garner plaudits from Dwight? Chernow stays off TV, unlike Isaacson and Meacham, so if he's a hack I wouldn't know.
I thought a McMansion was a big pretentious house on a small plot, without all the land to back up the house's pretentions. If Twain is great and profound, doesn't he deserve a massive biographical edifice? In this case, maybe McMansion implies a slapdash lack of quality in the work.
Chesterton and Twain both had witty, paradoxical insights into human nature. I suppose snobbish Brits could put down the middle-class Chesterton as easily as genteel Americans did the backwoodsman Twain. The difference may be that while Chesterton was bold enough to venture speculations on God and the ultimate things, he didn't go to Europe and ridicule the natives and their centuries of culture. Like a good Briton, he stayed on his patch.
Ken Burns already did Mark Twain back around the turn of the century. In Hollywood terms, though, I guess they are due for a reboot. Burns had a lot of talking heads and most of them have passed away, but who's going to fill the shoes of Arthur Miller, William Styron, Dick Gregory, and Hal Holbrook?
Grant's autobiography is one for the ages. The best book ever written by a President.
Twain was Grant’s editor.
The thing about Huckleberry Finn is that Twain had this system of selling subscriptions to novels before they were finished, and in the advertising for the book, a certain number of chapters were promised, and so had to be delivered. The story arc ends when Tom shows up knowing that Jim had been freed, he should have told Jim and Huck, and happy ending and maybe the greatest American novel of all time, but there was the matter of owing all of those extra chapters to people who had already bought subscriptions, and so he wrote ten chapters or so that made Tom Sawyer look positively evil, and would have made appropriate entertainment to be read aloud at a minstrel show.
Does he explain the bad metaphor in some other publication? I don't get it.
Dave Bagley: am eagerly awaiting a full review.
A scathingly negative review can be one of a reader’s fondest pleasures
"The covers are too far apart."
RCOCEAN,
The problem with Twain's autobiography, if I remember correctly, is that he didn't write it, he *dictated* it. It's pretty long and quite rambly, so that would make sense. I set it a side partway through because I needed to read something else... I wasn't really planning to abandon it but I just never took it up again.
That really is a rough first sentence.
"But that’s not the point Garner wants to make: he’s condemning the book’s length and superficiality. Then, having saddled himself with the architectural metaphor, Garner calls the book an “air-conditioned edifice.” Huh? If you want to convey that the experience of reading something is uncomfortable because it’s dull and endless, why bring up air-conditioning?"
Ha ha.
Thanks for participating in Bad Analogy Day on this Blog!
Also, how does a McMansion squat? Squatting in the real-estate sense is something done IN a house not BY a house. Is there a metaphor on top of a metaphor where we're supposed to picture the house... defecating???... on Twain's career???
wildswan:
Wodehouse was still alive and writing when I used to shelve his books in my high school part-time job at the local library. It's amazing to contemplate that Twain was still writing and publishing *his* stuff when Wodehouse's first books were.pulished.
Was he reaching for "Towers over.."
I actually like McMansion usage. So, we have a vulgar, 21st century, more or less unattractive structure vs. Twain's witty, and humorous writings.
I am not a big fan of biographies in general. The genre calls out for completeness, but even in the case of a great man, not every single day was interesting.
One of the interesting things that the Ken Burns PBS series noted was that Clemens/Twain, for all of his twitting of the foolishness of stuffed shirts, institutional pomposity and social climbing, was personally incapable of resisting any honors, ceremonies or awards for which he was the honoree. He loved nothing more than being the center of attention at university graduation ceremonies where he was named an honorary doctor of literature, and dressing the part.
Also, when Twain lived in Hartford, his neighborhood was both the wealthiest and most notable place to live in the country. His neighbors were J.P. Morgan, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Samuel Colt and Frederick Law Olmstead. It was like the Silicon Valley of the era. (That was obviously a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away).
What did everyone hate about the ending of Huck Finn? It had to end somehow. It took me turning back a few pages to understand what exactly he was talking about before I understood it. Like it passed me by when I first read it and i had to go back. What did you not like about it? How would it have ended better?
Seems like you’d be better off reading 200 pages of Twain rather than 1200 of Chernow.
Big Mike said: Twain was Grant’s editor.
That is a piece of trivia that I am glad to know. Thanks.
I had a comment that got eaten about Huck Finn's ending, so I will try again without any language that might have somehow been tangential to problematic. So this might end up being repetitious.
After Huck and Jim go through their journey down the river, and all of their adventures, he meets Tom Sawer, and Tom knows that the Widow Douglas, I think... set Jim free in her will and has died, so Jim is free to return home. Tom withholds this important fact from Jim and Huck and puts them through all kinds of needless torture for comic effect, for like ten chapters, before finally telling them and so setting Jim free. Without those ten unneeded chapters, which came after the arc of the story had finished, Huck and Jim have arrived at safety, and with a word from Tom, Jim is free, Twain really marred his novel.
Jim is forced to hide while Huck sneaks him food, because Huck is still protecting Jim, because Huck and Jim believe that he is still a fugitive slave, and Tom plays pranks on them. It just destroys the seriousness of the novel and the reputation of Tom Sawyer.
It ends that way because people wanted Tom Sawyer the character in the book. And was marketed as a "follow-on" to Tom Sawyer (the novel). Further Huck Finn was considered a kids book when first published. It only gained the status as a "great novel" later on.
Yes, he sold his novels by subscription, and the people marketing the subscriptions often made promises to buyers without asking Twain, and before a novel was finished. And so for reasons of having contracted to produce a certain number of chapters with his readers, Twain threw in a bunch of stuff at the end to mollify these readers.
I think that Twain thought of Tom and Huck as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. There is a lot of this energy in both books. At the beginning of Huckleberry Finn, there is a scene where Huck is sleeping in a hogshead, which is a large shipping barrel, and there is a famous painting in London, which Twain probably saw, of Diogenes, who reportedly lived in a wine barrel. There are a lot of layers to the book, and it was always more than a children's novel, always a deeper novel than Tom Sawyer, which was a book for children.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/73890/retrobituaries-diogenes-sinope-ancient-philosopher-who-lived-wine-barrel
Hamilton was great tonight. Nearly sold out. Enthusiastic audience.
À propós of Hamilton, here are the Maccabeats with a send up of one of the songs:
https://youtu.be/u3UubcYj49k?si=yZUX5WoX-tppWqb1
"Literally 2016 vs. 2024, many were MAGA before it was cool."
Hahahaha! It wasn't cool, it isn't cool, it will never be cool.
I've read Chernow's Hamilton and Grant and enjoyed both of them. He falls into the trap of overly admiring his subjects, but their greatness is still compelling. Hamilton needed no resurrection, but Grant convinced me that not only was USG a great general, but also one of our greatest presidents, counter to his reputation. He set the US on the path of economic dominance with his economic policies, including resistance to debasing the currency in response to the crisis in 1873. The corruption associated with his administration was not tied to him, only that he was overly trusting, and in any case seems petty compared to what goes on today.
Grant's rep as president has been going up among historians for decades now, and would not have been that low in the first place if he hadn't been one of the first targets of the post-ACWABAWS Democrat slime machine.
Chernow didn't break any new ground there.
@Narr, yeah, I'm aware of that, but Grant still rarely cracks the top 20 in those surveys of historians. Granted (no pun intended) they are leftists and have to have Obama, LBJ (!), JFK, in the top 10 (and Trump last, of course). I would have Grant in my top 10, off the top of my head a list that would include (in no particular order) Reagan, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant, Coolidge in the first group. The only Democrats I might consider are FDR, Truman, and Cleveland.
@James K, I didn't intend to imply that you weren't aware of the change, and good on Chernow if he makes more people aware of it.
As for D presidents, I think both Jackson and Polk did some good things.
Robert Merry (whose book about William McKinley is excellent) wrote a book about presidential rankings some years ago, but I haven't read it.
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