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    Mark Twain under Fire: Reception and Reputation, Criticism and Controversy, 1851-2015
    Unavailable
    Mark Twain under Fire: Reception and Reputation, Criticism and Controversy, 1851-2015
    Unavailable
    Mark Twain under Fire: Reception and Reputation, Criticism and Controversy, 1851-2015
    Ebook517 pages7 hours

    Mark Twain under Fire: Reception and Reputation, Criticism and Controversy, 1851-2015

    By Joe B. Fulton

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Threatened by a rival editor brandishing a double-barreled shotgun, young Samuel Clemens had his first taste of literary criticism. Clemens began his long writing career penning satirical articles for his brother's newspaper in Hannibal, Missouri. His humor delighted everyone except his targets, and it would not be the last time his writing provoked threats of "dissection, tomahawking, libel, and getting his head shot off." Clemens adopted the name Mark Twain while living in the Nevada Territory, where his caustic comedy led to angry confrontations, a challenge to a duel, and a subsequent flight. Nursing his wounded ego in California, Twain vowed to develop a reputation that would"stand fire" and in the process became the classic American writer.
    Mark Twain under Fire tracks the genesis and evolution of Twain's reputation as a writer: his reception as a humorist, his "return fire" on genteel critics, and the development of academic criticism. As a history of Twain criticism, the book draws on English and foreign-language scholarship. Fulton discusses the forces and ideas that have influenced criticism, revealinghow and why Mark Twain has been "under fire" from the advent of his career to the present day, when his masterpiece Huckleberry Finn remains one of America's most frequently banned books.

    Joe B. Fulton is Professor of English at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He has published four previous books on Mark Twain.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCamden House
    Release dateJul 15, 2018
    ISBN9781787444324
    Unavailable
    Mark Twain under Fire: Reception and Reputation, Criticism and Controversy, 1851-2015

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    • 4/5
      Trolls are nothing newIt often seems that after Shakespeare, no one has been so written about and so dissected as Mark Twain. You could fill a library with the books, reviews, magazine articles, theses, dissertations (including one of 2,370 pages) and of course, all his own publications in all their editions and languages, edited, abridged and censored. Everyone seemed to have an opinion, and many of them were patently wrong, causing debate, argument, and battles. Joe Fulton, who has contributed repeatedly to that library, has assembled a collection of such criticisms. It’s a blur of opinions and controversy. Academics and reviewers all over the world reviewed and analyzed Twain. They reviewed each other’s reviews. They criticized each other as much as they criticized Twain. As for Twain, he has been banned in the USA, adored in Russia, questioned in Spain and pondered in France. And it’s all here, in Mark Twain Under Fire. Fulton examines them all, in minute detail. He exposes their context, background, and connections. Fulton is so meticulous he has followed these criticisms through several languages, and several editions to glean changes. Because of his pointed style, Twain endured and understood the wrath of trolls at an early age. He wrote that he intended to create “a reputation that would stand fire.” So he was hyper conscious of the words he employed, pace the reviewers who claimed to know more about them than he did.Fulton is obviously steeped in the knowledge of things Twain. He rubbishes rubbish reviews and reviewers, and praises insightful ones. He says books on books don’t sell very well, and this is a book about books about books. So it’s a labor of love. He takes it one era at a time rather than gather all of one kind of review. That he could engineer a rational progression of it all makes him a grand master, worth reading.With all the amateur psychoanalyses, claims of depression, sexual proclivities, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-native, anti-women, word choice, editing, religion, note-taking and more, they all seem to have missed the Mark Twain I know. The one who loved to get a laugh at the country’s expense. Twain loved to entertain. Starting at age 16 with fake news, he kept entertaining all his life. His tools were sarcasm and satire. The USA provided the motherlode of material. As a lecturer (really the first American standup comic), he is one of only three people I know of who could talk for hours on end without a break, and leave the audience so exhausted, their sides hurt all the next day. And they couldn’t remember a thing he said. (The others were Peter Cook and Jonathan Winters.) So there’s still another book to write on Mark Twain.David Wineberg