Hi, kids! Welcome back the The Book Report.

He was credited as publishing the first Great American Novel. Earnest Hemingway, in fact, once said of that book that “all modern American literature comes from [it].” He was as famous for his humor as his satire, called “the greatest humorist of his age.” His name was Samuel L. Clemens, and he wrote under the pen name of Mark Twain.

By the time of his death, more than fifty novels and essays were published by Twain. You’ve probably read a few of them. But Mark Twain wrote many articles and gave many speeches that never appeared in a novel collection, and a group of editors formed The Mark Twain Project to track them down. One result of their hunt is Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living: A handbook for The Damned Human Race, published in 2004. Another book worth taking a look at is The Bible According to Mark Twain, published in 1995.

Helpful Hints is a bunch of letters, anecdotes, newspaper articles, and short stories on topics ranging from the telephone to advice for burglars and traveling salesmen. Many of the letters and anecdotes had never been published before. Some of the other entries are rare finds receiving only their second printing.
What the book really offers, however, is a glimpse into the Clemens household. The humor is all there, of course, but you also get a sense of the man. Beyond the satire and moralizing was a man who smoked, swore, laughed, loved, and endured the same problems we all endure. It’s rare to find a book about an author that does what Helpful Hints does for Mark Twain.

Collected from four decades of writing, The Bible According to Mark Twain takes a humorous approach to the Bible. Often his satire will point out problems or inconsistencies he sees with the book, but the stories never fail to tickle the funny bone. One of my favorites is “The Diaries of Adam and Eve”, hilarious personal accounts of Eden, the Fall, and of being the first two lovers in the Universe.
Even amidst all the hilarity, however, are issues and ideas that Twain himself acknowledged as being heretical. Some of the stories were not published until 1962, when his daughter Clara finally allowed some stories to print.

What these two books offer a reader is some material from one of America’s greatest authors that many people have never read before. I highly recommend these books for anyone who enjoyed anything Mark Twain ever wrote.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_