Reviews for My Mark Twain: Reminiscences & Criticisms

The average rating for My Mark Twain: Reminiscences & Criticisms based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-01-22 00:00:00 Matthew Smith "He was Lincoln to American literature", the last words of this narrative are probably the best way to sum it up. William Howells was a friend of Samuel Clements for forty-four years and spent many memorable hours with this icon of late 19th Century American literature. This account isn't filled with reviews of Clements' work but rather a description of the man. I found it both interesting and informative as it enlightened me on many subjects Clements neglected to articulate on. His views on slavery, literature, religion and many sketches of home and family life are exposed in this highly readable account of a truly great man. Some of the scenes are very moving and I would highly recommend it to all lovers of Mark Twain.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-10-30 00:00:00 Laurie Maclennan 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.