Mark Twain in the Twenty-First Century

Mark Twain. By Ken Burns. Florentine Films, 2001

Mark Twain, Social Philosopher, 2nd edition. By Louis J. Budd. University of Missouri Press, 2001

The Short Works of Mark Twain, A Critical Study. By Peter Messent. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001

Refiguring Huckleberry Finn. By Carl F. Wieck. University of Georgia Press, 2001

Achilles and the Tortoise, Mark Twain's Fictions. By Clark Griffith. University of Alabama Press, 2000

On 14-15 January 2002, Ken Burns brought his latest patriotic documentary, Mark Twain, to PBS, and what a pleasure it was, the great photographs, the great singular life, all that wit and humor. As one enjoyed The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), and Jazz (2001), each film declaring a triumph for our new post-Civil War nationality, one relished Mark Twain, which might be said to conclude that specific cycle of films in Burns's documentary project. The first night ended with Mark Twain writing and publishing the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). We got a good look at Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York, where Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn. There was the famous octagonal study, so beautifully placed on a promontory overlooking the broad expanse of the Chemung River valley, Mark Twain in it, leaning out, looking at us. We saw in different photographs the strong black face of Mary Ann Cord, cook, "Aunt Rachel" in "A True Story" (1874), and the strong black face of John T. Lewis, farm manager— African American persons around Mark Twain as he wrote Huckleberry Finn. We owe Auntie Cord and John Lewis a lot, Mark Twain insisted. Mark Twain had their stories. In "A True Story" Aunt Rachel rebukes "Misto C" for his blindness to the tragedy of her life. As Huck confronts the consequence of his race betrayal, the social hell reserved for nigger lovers in slaveholding Missouri, these richly humane African-American voices are speaking around Mark Twain, are in their African American conversation, are often speaking to him, addressing his "Southern" innocence. Mark Twain's importance in American literature, said Mark Twain, depends on Jim, on the African American factor in Mark Twain's literary production.

It is a major point in the film, a restatement of that verity. Jim does not save Huck in Huckleberry Finn, losing him finally to Tom Sawyer, but he saves Mark Twain in the twentieth century and is floating him still in the twenty-first. Part One ends presenting Huck's letter to Miss Watson, a letter of betrayal, quite possibly the most famous letter in American fiction. Part Two broods over the Hartford house, wants us to understand what this house meant to Mark Twain. The Huckleberry Finn section is pious, solemn, sententious. Hal Holbrook gets emotional as he expresses his admiration. His voice gets husky. His eyes are moist. The Hartford house section is interesting, revelatory. Mark Twain's Hartford house is indeed a thing to see, a Mississippi triple-decker steamboat, a statement house, set down in linear prim Hartford. There, across the way, was Harriet Beecher Stowe's house, angular, modestly handsome. When Mark Twain considers the house, the film is on to something, seeing at once the wit of its structure and the reach of its statement, the house at once an ornate steamboat and a manorial hall, Clemens Hall. Mark Twain evocatively films Suzy Clemens, eldest daughter, alone in Hartford, slowly dying, wandering through the empty rooms of Clemens Hall. Huck is one story in Mark Twain. The Hartford house is the other.

Mark Twain, it might be said, does not sufficiently problematize the relation. The Mark Twain that matters, that justifies the expense of the documentary, is the Mark Twain that writes Huck's letter of betrayal. The final episode of Part One is entitled: "All right, then, I'll go to hell." In Burns's sampling of the present Huckleberry Finn conversation in American literature, Russell Banks (Northern novelist), William...