The Mark Twain Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Work Book

"Mark Twain," William Faulkner once observed, "was the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs." In this unique collection scores of these literary legatees from the U.S. and around the world take the measure of Twain and his genius, among them: José Martí, Rudyard Kipling, Theodor Herzl, George Bernard Shaw, H. L. Mencken, Helen Keller, Jorge Luis Borges, Sterling Brown, George Orwell, T. S. Eliot, Richard Wright, W. H. Auden, Ralph Ellison, Kenzaburo Oe, Robert Penn Warren, Ursula Le Guin, Norman Mailer, Erica Jong, Gore Vidal, David Bradley, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, Min Jin Lee, Roy Blount, Jr., and many others (including actor Hal Holbrook, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, stand-up comedians Dick Gregory and Will Rogers, and presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Barack Obama). Included are essays originally published in Chinese, Danish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish that have not previously been available in English, as well as the work of several visual artists, such as James Montgomery Flagg (creator of the "Uncle Sam Wants You" poster), French playwright and artist Jean Cocteau, and Chuck Jones (of Bugs Bunny fame). Published to mark the centennial of Twain's death, this collection testifies to the enduring and continuing legacy of the man William Dean Howells called "the Lincoln of our literature."

Library Journal

This collection opens with pages of pithy tributes—a preamble to a full course of essays, letters, and stories about Mark Twain, along with rarely seen pencil sketches and drawings of him. Fishkin (director, American studies, Stanford Univ.; Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture), a prominent Twain scholar, gathers a surprising number of eclectic voices from around the world—16 pieces are previously untranslated and resonant of his influence over more than a century. The anthology hosts a conversation among expected and unexpected notables: Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe tells of his intrigue with Huck Finn during the time when America and Japan were at war; Grant Wood, painter of American Gothic, recalls his consequential boyhood reading of Huckleberry Finn; and Hal Holbrook describes his research as he prepared for his one-man show, Mark Twain Tonight! Entries are ordered chronologically; each introduces the writer with a short, enjoyable backstory about the piece. With a source listing and index to works. VERDICT This is an affordable, richly distinct, and essential anthology for all American literature collections.—Katharine A. Webb, Ohio State Univ. Libs., Columbus