My Mark Twain: Reminiscences & Criticisms Book

William Dean Howells paints a glowing picture of Mark Twain. Having been one of Twain's closest friends for decades, though, one might be forgiven for thinking that this picture may not be totally unbiased.

When Mark Twain started dictating his autobiography Howells asked him in a letter :
"You always rather bewildered me by your veracity, and I fancy you may tell the truth about yourself. But all of it ? The black truth which we all know of ourselves in our hearts, or only the whity-brown truth of the pericardium, or the nice, whitened truth of the shirtfront ? Even you won't tell the black heart's truth."

We don't know what kind of truth Howells gives us about Mark Twain. In view of the latter's own fierce truthfulness I don't believe Howell would have insulted his friend's memory by whitewashing any serious flaws, yet he may have left things unsaid about this extraordinary, larger-than-life personality.

Many of the facts and anecdotes are already known from Twain's letters and I wish that Howell had given us more insights into Twain's personal life; he might have touched on the deaths of Susy and Jean for example . I also would have appreciated him telling the reader more about Mark Twain's last years.