History Creator / MarkTwain

[[caption-width-right:275:Just look at that [[BadassMustache glorious mustache]].]]

Boston, Massachusetts, November 1869. A short, thin man wearing a cheap suit, an [[FieryRedhead unkempt mop of red hair]], [[BadassMustache a long red mustache]], and brandishing a [[CigarChomper smelly cigar]], ambles up the staircase at 124 Tremont Street to the second story headquarters of Ticknor & Fields, a publishing firm. Settling into the office of William Dean Howells, a junior partner of the firm, he lets fly a ravishing quip, referencing a favorable review of his latest work, ''Literature/TheInnocentsAbroad'', in a magazine published by the firm. [[ChocolateBaby "When I read that review of yours, I felt like the woman who was so glad her baby had come white"]].

* AnAesop: Mark Twain's "[[http://www.ntua.gr/lurk/making/warprayer.html The War Prayer]]" slams home that people willingly ignore the obvious because it doesn't fit in with their world view. How so? By having a congregation of war-mongers march on right to war after an angel tells them not to.

* [[AlohaHawaii Aloha Sandwich Islands]]: A good chunk of the book takes place in UsefulNotes/{{Hawaii}}; as usual, Clemens spared no details on the trip there and back.

* SelfAbuse: DiscussedTrope. Twain's speech satirized anti-masturbation activists, who were very real in those days.

And thus Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), now one of the most quotable men in history, erupted onto the literary scene. He was a [[DownOnTheFarm backwoods outcast]] of low social standing who became a seminal American author, and he is considered to be the father of American literature. He took his most prominent PenName from 19th century riverboat jargon. The boatmen would call out "marks" indicating the depth of the water. "Mark Twain" indicates two fathoms, which is [[AmbiguousSituation the transition point between safe and unsafe depths]]. The name is deliberately ambiguous, for mark twain is the point at which dangerous waters become safe -- and safe waters become dangerous. (Clemens himself loved being a steamboat pilot, and rejoiced when he received his riverboat license in 1859. He called the river a book where "there was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing.")

* [[AlohaHawaii Aloha Sandwich Islands]]

And thus Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910) erupted onto the literary scene. He was a [[DownOnTheFarm backwoods outcast]] of low social standing who became a seminal American author, and he is considered to be the father of American literature. He took his most prominent PenName from 19th century riverboat jargon. The boatmen would call out "marks" indicating the depth of the water. "Mark Twain" indicates two fathoms, which is [[AmbiguousSituation the transition point between safe and unsafe depths]]. The name is deliberately ambiguous, for mark twain is the point at which dangerous waters become safe -- and safe waters become dangerous. (Clemens himself loved being a steamboat pilot, and rejoiced when he received his riverboat license in 1859. He called the river a book where "there was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing.")

And thus Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910) erupted onto the literary scene. He was a [[DownOnTheFarm backwoods outcast]] of low social standing who became a seminal American author, and he is considered to be the father of American literature. He took his most prominent PenName from 19th century riverboat jargon. The boatmen would call out "marks" indicating the depth of the water. "Mark Twain" indicates two fathoms, which is just deep enough for safe maneuvering. The name is deliberately ambiguous, for mark twain is the point at which dangerous waters become safe -- and safe waters become dangerous. (Clemens himself loved being a steamboat pilot, and rejoiced when he received his riverboat license in 1859. He called the river a book where "there was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing.")

* SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped: It wouldn’t be anywhere near as effective if the atrocities in the Congo had not all been real, and if the West did not largely ignore them because the victims were black. The pamphlet even shows graphic photographs of the aforementioned maimed women and children.[[invoked]]

His early years as a writer was out West, especially in Carson City and San Francisco. It was during his period in San Francisco where he met some of the more colorful personalities that would find their way into his stories, especially [[CrazyAwesome Emperor Norton]] (who showed up as the King in ''Huckleberry Finn''.)[[note]]Twain later regretted upon hearing Norton's death in 1880 that he never got a chance to work on biography for the Emperor of the United States.[[/note]]

* MagnumOpusDissonance: "I like ''Joan of Arc'' best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none."

His early works were humorous (and Clemens in his Twain persona is one of the most famous {{Deadpan Snarker}}s there is), but he became a bit of a StrawNihilist later in life when his favorite daughter, Susan, caught meningitis, went mad and died at 24[[note]]in her delirium she composed an amazing 47-page prose poem, partly addressed to the long-dead opera singer Maria Malibran, whom vocal student Susan considered kind of a role model[[/note]] his wife died of heart failure, and his middle daughter Jean drowned in the bathtub on Christmas morning after suffering an epileptic seizure. And let's not forget losing most of his fortune to business investments that went bad, forcing him to declare bankruptcy. Despite it all, Twain always seemed to come back from tragedy, becoming more and more of a hero to people who viewed him as a survivor. In addition, Twain [[ReplacementGoldfish dealt with the deaths of his daughters]] by what he called "collecting" girls age 10 through 16, whom he called "Angel Fish", to be their unofficial grandfather, taking them to concerts, the theatre, and to his own house for card games, billiards, and reading. (His surviving daughter Clara did not approve, and was more than a little jealous of the attention he gave them. The letters between Clemens and the girls can be found in the book ''[[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820334987/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0820334987&linkCode=as2&tag=vicastingcom-20 Mark Twain’s Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence]]''.) Despite what you may be thinking, there is no evidence these relationships were in any way inappropriate, and it was Clemens's way of dealing with his grief of tragically losing his own daughters.

His early works were humorous (and Clemens in his Twain persona is one of the most famous {{Deadpan Snarker}}s there is), but he became a bit of a StrawNihilist later in life when his favorite daughter, Susan, caught meningitis, went mad and died at 24[[note]]in her delirium she composed an amazing 47-page prose poem, partly addressed to the long-dead opera singer Maria Malibran, whom vocal student Susan considered kind of a role model[[/note]] his wife died of heart failure, and his middle daughter Jean drowned in the bathtub on Christmas morning after suffering an epileptic seizure. And let's not forget losing most of his fortune to business investments that went bad, forcing him to declare bankruptcy. Despite it all, Twain always seemed to come back from tragedy, becoming more and more of a hero to people who viewed him as a survivor. In addition, Twain [[ReplacementGoldfish dealt with the deaths of his daughters]] by what he called "collecting" girls age 10 through 16, whom he called "Angel Fish", to be their unofficial grandfather, taking them to concerts, the theatre, and to his own house for card games, billiards, and reading. (His real daughter Clara did not approve, however, and was more than a little jealous of the attention, even changing the name of the manor to "Stormfield". The letters between Clemens and the girls can be found in the book ''[[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820334987/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0820334987&linkCode=as2&tag=vicastingcom-20 Mark Twain’s Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence]]''.) Despite what you may be thinking, there is no evidence these relationships were in any way inappropriate, and it was Clemens's way of dealing with his grief of tragically losing his own daughters.

His early works were humorous (and Clemens in his Twain persona is one of the most famous {{Deadpan Snarker}}s there is), but he became a bit of a StrawNihilist later in life when his favorite daughter, Susan, caught meningitis, went mad and died at 24[[note]]in her delirium she composed an amazing 47-page prose poem, partly addressed to the long-dead opera singer Maria Malibran, whom vocal student Susan considered kind of a role model[[/note]] his wife died of heart failure, and his middle daughter Jean drowned in the bathtub on Christmas morning after suffering an epileptic seizure. And let's not forget losing most of his fortune to business investments that went bad, forcing him to declare bankruptcy. Despite it all, Twain always seemed to come back from tragedy, becoming more and more of a hero to people who viewed him as a survivor. In addition, Twain [[ReplacementGoldfish dealt with the deaths of his daughters]] by what he called "collecting" girls age 10 through 16, whom he called "Angel Fish", to be their unofficial grandfather, taking them to concerts, the theatre, and to his own house for card games, billiards, and reading. (His real daughter Clara did not approve, however, and was more than a little jealous of the attention, even changing the name of the manor to "Stormfield". The letters between Clemens and the girls can be found in the book ''[[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820334987/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0820334987&linkCode=as2&tag=vicastingcom-20 Mark Twain’s Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence]]''.)[[note]]Imagine a celebrity doing this in this day and age! Their intentions would be questioned, to say the least! Twain's own were entirely honorable and a way of coping with the grief of the deaths in his own family. In addition, there were numerous chaperones as well.[[/note]]

The son of Missouri slave owners (though an abolitionist himself), he dropped out of school at age twelve and spent his formative years working as a printer's apprentice, before becoming a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi and later a newspaper reporter in the Nevada Territory. His early fame was as a humorist and satirical newspaper writer, before he broke into the American literary landscape as an author and essayist. His "speaking engagements" were essentially [[UrExample what would be called]] "standup comedy" these days; one young man during one of his performances said that if Twain got any funnier, he would DieLaughing. He was so skilled [[DeadpanSnarker Deadpan Comedy]] and at working a crowd, that at the start of one performance he said absolutely nothing for a few minutes, just looking knowingly at the audience, and the crowd was eventually roaring in laughter.

* ProtagonistCenteredMorality: Belgium's King Leopold II argues that he's brought prosperity, peace, and dignity to the Belgian Congo. By enslaving the populace and forcing them to work on rubber plantations.
* SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped: It wouldn’t be anywhere near as effective if the atrocities in the Congo had not all been real, and if the West did not largely ignore them because the victims were black. [[invoked]]

Boston, Massachusetts, November 1869. A short, thin man wearing a cheap suit, an [[FieryRedhead unkempt mop of red hair]], [[BadassMustache a long red mustache]], and brandishing a [[CigarChomper smelly cigar]], ambles up the staircase at 124 Tremont Street to the second story headquarters of Ticknor & Fields, a publishing firm. Settling into the office of William Dean Howells, a junior partner of the firm, he lets fly a ravishing quip, referencing a favorable review of his latest work, "The Innocents Abroad", in a magazine published by the firm. [[ChocolateBaby "When I read that review of yours, I felt like the woman who was so glad her baby had come white"]].

!! ''The Innocents Abroad'' (1869)
* AdventurerArchaeologist: During the Holy Land leg of their journey, Twain's fellow passengers on the SS ''Quaker City'' fancied themselves as this. In real life, they were just a bunch of [[HawaiianShirtedTourist prototypical yuppie tourists]] who had a disturbing penchant for breaking off and stealing pieces of historical monuments, such as Judas' tomb and the arch that Christ walked under on Palm Sunday. As Twain put it, "Heaven protect the Sepulchre when this tribe invades Jerusalem!"
* CovertPervert: When Twain visited France and the Can Can Dancers, he mentioned he was ''shocked'' and covered his eyes at such a scene -- but peeked through his fingers. Keep in mind, ''real'' Can Can Dancers ''didn't wear any underwear''.
* InexplicablyIdenticalIndividuals: Twain refers to every tour guide he encounters on the European continent as "Ferguson". This also counts as a RunningGag.
* TheNicknamer: Twain himself gave nicknames to most of the Quaker City's passengers. One of these, a seventeen-year-old tourist who was nicknamed 'Interrogation Point' and was described 'young, and green, and not bright, not learned, and not wise', later became Twain's brother-in-law. He and the fellows he played cards and drank with at night, he called the "Nighthawks".
* SelfDeprecation: One of Twain's most famous tales in the book are how a camel feasted on some of his belongings. It finally choked to death on some of the material he wrote; even the camel couldn't stomach it.
* SlobsVersusSnobs: Twain divided up his fellow travelers into two groups: the pious, Bible-studying upper middle class "Pilgrims", and the hard-drinking, sabbath-ignoring, rule-breaking "Sinners". Go ahead and guess which group he identified with.
* TakeThat:
** Against 19th Century travel guides at first; the second half is a AuthorTract against American tourists and Americans in general, as well as Europeans, Arabs, and, well, everybody else he encounters. If there's a message to be found in the book, it's likely to be that people ''in general'' trust authority too much, even when the authority is bugfuck crazy. Whether he's explaining, in detail, why Abelard was a nincompoop, ranting about how the self-appointed KnowNothingKnowItAll thought that both of the Pillars of Hercules were on the same side of the Strait of Gilbraltar, crying out in agonized confusion about how he doesn't understand why the Italians ''don't rob their churches'', or mocking the bejeezus out of the aforementioned tour guides (one of whom takes him to four different silk stores ''instead of guiding him to the Louvre as he had asked in the beginning and at every stop along the way''), Twain's authorial character is always attacking ''anyone'' who takes advantage of a position of authority. Oddly enough, he keeps doing it for the rest of his career, too, all the way up through ''The Mysterious Stranger'', where he has a go at God.
** Twain earned a few chuckles from the pious tourists who asked the ship captain if they could stop sailing on Sunday as a way to observe Sabbath.
* WorldTour: Clemens travels through Europe.

His early works were humorous (and Clemens in his Twain persona is one of the most famous {{Deadpan Snarker}}s there is), but he became a bit of a StrawNihilist later in life when his favorite daughter, Susan, caught meningitis, went mad and died at 24[[note]]in her delirium she composed an amazing 47-page prose poem, partly addressed to the long-dead opera singer Maria Malibran, whom vocal student Susan considered kind of a role model[[/note]] his wife died of heart failure, and his middle daughter Jean drowned in the bathtub on Christmas morning after suffering an epileptic seizure. And let's not forget losing most of his fortune to business investments that went bad, forcing him to declare bankruptcy. Despite it all, Twain always seemed to come back from tragedy, becoming more and more of a hero to people who viewed him as a survivor. In addition, Twain [[ReplacementGoldfish dealt with the deaths of his daughters]] by what he called "collecting" girls age 10 through 16, whom he called "Angel Fish", to be their unofficial grandfather, taking them to concerts, the theatre, and to his own house for card games, billiards, and reading. (His real daughter Clara did not approve, however, and was more than a little jealous of the attention, even changing the name of the manor to "Stormfield". The letters between Clemens and the girls can be found in the book ''[[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820334987/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0820334987&linkCode=as2&tag=vicastingcom-20 Mark Twain’s Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence]]''.)[[note]]Imagine a celebrity doing this in this day and age! Their intentions would be questioned, to say the least! Twain's own were entirely honorable and a way of coping with the grief of the deaths in his own family.[[/note]]

His early works were humorous (and Clemens in his Twain persona is one of the most famous {{Deadpan Snarker}}s there is), but he became a bit of a StrawNihilist later in life when his favorite daughter, Susan, caught meningitis, went mad and died at 24[[note]]in her delirium she composed an amazing 47-page prose poem, partly addressed to the long-dead opera singer Maria Malibran, whom vocal student Susan considered kind of a role model[[/note]] his wife died of heart failure, and his middle daughter Jean drowned in the bathtub on Christmas morning after suffering an epileptic seizure. And let's not forget losing most of his fortune to business investments that went bad, forcing him to declare bankruptcy. Despite it all, Twain always seemed to come back from tragedy, becoming more and more of a hero to people who viewed him as a survivor. In addition, Twain [[ReplacementGoldfish dealt with the deaths of his daughters]] by what he called "collecting" girls age 10 through 16, whom he called "Angel Fish", to be their unofficial grandfather, taking them to concerts, the theatre, and to his own house for card games, billiards, and reading. (His real daughter Clara did not approve, however, and was more than a little jealous of the attention, even changing the name of the manor to "Stormfield". The letters between Clemens and the girls can be found in the book ''[[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820334987/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0820334987&linkCode=as2&tag=vicastingcom-20 Mark Twain’s Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence]]''.[[note]]Imagine a celebrity doing this in this day and age! Their intentions would be questioned, to say the least! Twain's own were entirely honorable and a way of coping with the grief of the deaths in his own family.[[/note]]

His early works were humorous (and Clemens in his Twain persona is one of the most famous {{Deadpan Snarker}}s there is), but he became a bit of a StrawNihilist later in life when his favorite daughter, Susan, caught meningitis, went mad and died at 24[[note]]in her delirium she composed an amazing 47-page prose poem, partly addressed to the long-dead opera singer Maria Malibran, whom vocal student Susan considered kind of a role model[[/note]] his wife died of heart failure, and his middle daughter Jean drowned in the bathtub on Christmas morning after suffering an epileptic seizure. And let's not forget losing most of his fortune to business investments that went bad, forcing him to declare bankruptcy. Despite it all, Twain always seemed to come back from tragedy, becoming more and more of a hero to people who viewed him as a survivor. In addition, Twain [[ReplacementGoldfish dealt with the deaths of his daughters]] by what he called "collecting" girls age 10 through 16, whom he called "Angel Fish", to be their unofficial grandfather, taking them to concerts, the theatre, and to his own house for card games, billiards, and reading. (His real daughter Clara did not approve, however, Clara, didn’t appreciate the behavior, and was more than a little jealous of the attention, even changing the name of the manor to "Stormfield". The letters between Clemens and the girls can be found in the book ''[[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820334987/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0820334987&linkCode=as2&tag=vicastingcom-20 Mark Twain’s Aquarium: The Samuel Clemens-Angelfish Correspondence]]''.[[note]]Imagine a celebrity doing this in this day and age! Their intentions would be questioned, to say the least! Twain's own were entirely honorable and a way of coping with the grief of the deaths in his own family.[[/note]]

His early works were humorous (and Clemens in his Twain persona is one of the most famous {{Deadpan Snarker}}s there is), but he became a bit of a StrawNihilist later in life when his favorite daughter, Susan, caught meningitis, went mad and died at 24[[note]]in her delirium she composed an amazing 47-page prose poem, partly addressed to the long-dead opera singer Maria Malibran, whom vocal student Susan considered kind of a role model[[/note]] his wife died of heart failure, and his middle daughter Jean drowned in the bathtub on Christmas morning after suffering an epileptic seizure. And let's not forget losing most of his fortune to business investments that went bad, forcing him to declare bankruptcy. Despite it all, Twain always seemed to come back from tragedy, becoming more and more of a hero to people who viewed him as a survivor.

* ''Sandbox/FenimoreCoopersLiteraryOffences''