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    Those Extraordinary Twins
    Those Extraordinary Twins
    Those Extraordinary Twins
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    Those Extraordinary Twins

    By Mark Twain

    3.5/5

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 1, 1911
    Author

    Mark Twain

    Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Missouri in 1835, the son of a lawyer. Early in his childhood, the family moved to Hannibal, Missouri – a town which would provide the inspiration for St Petersburg in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. After a period spent as a travelling printer, Clemens became a river pilot on the Mississippi: a time he would look back upon as his happiest. When he turned to writing in his thirties, he adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain ('Mark Twain' is the cry of a Mississippi boatman taking depth measurements, and means 'two fathoms'), and a number of highly successful publications followed, including The Prince and the Pauper (1882), Huckleberry Finn (1884) and A Connecticut Yankee (1889). His later life, however, was marked by personal tragedy and sadness, as well as financial difficulty. In 1894, several businesses in which he had invested failed, and he was declared bankrupt. Over the next fifteen years – during which he managed to regain some measure of financial independence – he saw the deaths of two of his beloved daughters, and his wife. Increasingly bitter and depressed, Twain died in 1910, aged seventy-five.

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    Reviews for Those Extraordinary Twins

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    • 4/5
      As a companion read to Pudd'nhead Wilson this story was a very interesting read. The version I read (not sure if it applies to all editions) included commentary from Mark Twain in relation to the story itself and its later transformation into the Pudd'nhead Wilson story.Apparently, Twain worked on this story as a serial with the creative idea of a pair of conjoined twins (from Italy) each with very different mindsets. These twins visit a small Missouri town and astound the residents with their ideas, wit and charm. Each of the twins becomes members of different groups and organizations in the town (often organizations pitted against one another) and eventually a charge of assault is brought against the twins. Pudd'nhead Wilson acts as defense lawyer in the case and comically asserts that there's no way to determine which of the twins was consciously responsible for the assault and since you can't punish the guilty one without punishing the innocent one, they were set free. Similar "can't have one without the other" instances come about during elections to public office and other situations within conflicting organizations.From a high level, you can see the similarities to the Pudd'nhead Wilson book. Many of the same characters are present and a lot of very similar situations come about.As Twain put it, he started out planning to write this comical farce and ended up writing two stories in one. In the end, he yanked out the bits that made this one a comedy, changed the conjoined twins to 'normal' twins, modified some behaviors, and came up with the Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson. Fortunately, however, we are still left with this original piece that influenced the latter.This story is hilarious in concept and has lots of great situational and verbal comedy. The writing is clever and fun, as is to be expected with Twain. Even his own interruptions and commentary serve as humorous additions to the story. The depth of theme and concept isn't as deep and the overall tone is more akin to some of his shorter whimsical stories (celebrated jumping frog[Image], diaries of adam & eve[Image], man who corrupted hadleyburg[Image]). In the end, it's a great tale that's well worth reading.This story could certainly be read as a stand alone and be very entertaining. But for the full effect, I would suggest reading it along with the Tragedy that came as a result.****4 out of 5 stars

    Book preview

    Those Extraordinary Twins - Mark Twain

    Project Gutenberg's Those Extraordinary Twins, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: Those Extraordinary Twins

    Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

    Release Date: April, 2002  [Etext #3185]

    Last Updated: February 20, 2010

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS ***

    Produced by David Widger

    THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS

    by Mark Twain

    Contents

    A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality. He knows these people, he knows the selected locality, and he trusts that he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No—that is a thought which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale; a very little tale; a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has happened to me so many times.

    And I have noticed another thing: that as the short tale grows into a long tale, the original intention (or motif) is apt to get abolished and find itself superseded by a quite different one. It was so in the case of a magazine sketch which I once started to write—a funny and fantastic sketch about a prince and a pauper; it presently assumed a grave cast of its own accord, and in that new shape spread itself out into a book. Much the same thing happened with Pudd'nhead Wilson. I had a sufficiently hard time with that tale, because it changed itself from a farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it—a most embarrassing circumstance. But what was a great deal worse was, that it was not one story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed and interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion and annoyance. I could not offer the book for publication, for I was afraid it would unseat the reader's reason. I did not know what was the matter with it, for I had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories in one. It took me months to make that discovery. I carried the manuscript back and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and read it and studied over it on shipboard; and at last I saw where the difficulty lay. I had no further trouble. I pulled one of the stories out by the roots, and left the other one—a kind of literary Caesarean operation.

    Would the reader care to know something about the story which I pulled out? He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist works. Won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him how the jack-leg does it?

    Originally the story was called Those Extraordinary Twins. I meant to make it very short. I had seen a picture of a youthful Italian freak or freaks which was—or which were—on exhibition in our cities—a combination consisting of two heads and four arms joined to a single body and a single pair of legs—and I thought I would write an extravagantly fantastic little story with this freak of nature for hero—or heroes—a silly young miss for heroine, and two old ladies and two boys for the minor parts. I lavishly elaborated these people and their doings, of course. But the tale kept spreading along, and spreading along, and other people got to intruding themselves and taking up more and more room with their talk and their affairs. Among them came a stranger named Pudd'nhead Wilson, and a woman named Roxana; and presently the doings of these two pushed up into prominence a young fellow named Tom Driscoll, whose proper place was away in the obscure background. Before the book was half finished those three were taking things almost entirely into their own hands and working the whole tale as a private venture of their own—a tale which they had nothing at all to do with, by rights.

    When the book was finished and I came to look around to see what had become of the team I had originally started out with—Aunt Patsy Cooper, Aunt Betsy Hale, the two boys, and Rowena the light-weight heroine—they were nowhere to be seen; they had disappeared from the story some time or other. I hunted about and found them—found them stranded, idle, forgotten, and permanently useless. It was very awkward. It was awkward all around; but more particularly in the case of Rowena, because there was a love-match on, between her and one of the twins that constituted the freak, and I had worked it up to a blistering heat and thrown in a quite dramatic love-quarrel, wherein Rowena scathingly denounced her betrothed for getting drunk, and scoffed at his explanation of how it had happened, and wouldn't listen to it, and had driven him from her in the usual forever way; and now here she sat crying and broken-hearted; for she had found that he had spoken only the truth; that it was not he, but the other half of the freak, that had drunk the liquor that made him drunk; that her half was a prohibitionist and had never drunk a drop in his life, and, although tight as a brick three days in the week, was wholly innocent of blame; and indeed, when sober, was constantly doing all he could to reform his brother, the other half, who never got any satisfaction out of drinking, anyway, because liquor never affected him. Yes, here she was, stranded with that deep injustice of hers torturing her poor torn heart.

    I didn't know what to do with her. I was as sorry for her as anybody could be, but the campaign was over, the book was finished, she was sidetracked, and there was no possible way of crowding her in, anywhere. I could not leave her there, of course; it would not do. After spreading her out so, and making such a to-do over her affairs, it would be absolutely necessary to account to the reader for her. I thought and thought and studied and studied; but I arrived at nothing. I finally saw plainly that there was really no way

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