Mark Twain: American Humorist by Tracy Wuster (review)

In the twenty-first century Mark Twain usually appears in popular culture as the unthreatening, white-haired man wearing a white suit, accompanied by one of his pithy quotes, sometimes one he did not write. But in the introduction to Mark Twain: American Humorist Tracy Wuster asks us to eradicate this sagely image from our minds and imagine a younger Twain, "whose physical presence—his dress, his bearing, his speech, and his mannerisms—confused and delighted many, while shocking and dismaying others." Wuster separates the development of this version of Mark Twain into three literary stages: the western period when Samuel Clemens began to sign his nom de plume in 1863 until he left the West in 1866; the late-1860s and early 1870s (the bulk of the book's focus) when Twain published his first book and became a popular American humorist; and the final stage from 1869 to the early 1880s when The Innocents Abroad and W. D. Howells helped Twain enter the domain of "quality" humor and "respectable" literature.

Though many books pronounce Mark Twain a humorist, Wuster's study offers a verdant perspective on Twain's development beyond his identity as a western or popular humorist. Such success, Wuster argues, transformed Twain into an "embodiment" of American humor. Wuster includes discussions of Twain's lectures on the lyceum circuit that illustrate his growing reputation as a speaker as much as a writer. Wuster also incorporates details and images that reflect Twain's rising respectability and photographs that show Mark Twain posing among humorists such as josh Billings and Petroleum V. Nasby. Finally, Wuster places Twain and his work within the context of numerous other humorists, including Bret harte, Artemus Ward, james Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell holmes and their spheres of lectures, speeches, and periodical and book publishing.

Perhaps the greatest strength of Mark Twain: American Humorist is how smoothly Wuster narrates the story of a liminal Twain, especially the small moments that created vast epochs in his career. For example, Wuster explores how harte's "generous" contract with the Atlantic in 1871 fizzled into insulting offers by Howells in 1874, which allowed Twain to replace Harte as the new American humorist in the prestigious magazine. Because Wuster clearly explains his methods and terms (such as quality, popular, course, profane, genuine), the reader understands how the writer is reexamining what we know about Twain as a humorist and how we know it. Related to this asset is the thoroughness of the study—in terms of Twain's career in relation to other humorists and literary figures, how Twain became a symbol for American literature and humor, and the context of Wuster's book within Twain and humor studies. Wuster accepts some of the earlier Twain research in these fields and challenges others, while offering so many examples that readers other than Twain or humor scholars might find the narrative in some cases overburdened. And yet the research is profound and cogent and deserves mention among texts written by Bernard DeVoto a century ago or recently by James Caron, for Wuster's book contests and reconciles with verve the polite and raucous worlds of Twain and humor studies.