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Reviews 11 (1961), Mark Schorer’s “official”jumbo biography allowed but little crit­ ical grass to grow. Among the Lewis Papers at Yale University and the University of Texas, however, is material underlying Lewis’s novels that Schorer by and large disregarded. Taking his cue from Malcolm Cowley, Hutchisson considers these documents and, rather than dwelling on Lewis’s failures after 1930, tries to explain the “height and nature” of Lewis’s achievement. Grounded in sound scholarship and sustained by clear thought, Hutchisson’s interpretation as to why Lewis made such a profound impact on his contemporaries is entirely plausible. In showing the transformation of Lewis’s notes, drafts, and the several versions of a fiction into its pub­ lished form, the critic-historian reveals how Lewis came to write a partic­ ular novel, how that novel helped shape Lewis’s career, and how each novel, in turn, influenced the work in progress. This story of Lewis’s com­ positional methods in the 1920s in the context of his development at the time provides continuities and perspectives, while the account of how his novels were received makes for amplitude and point. Combined with Hutchisson’s treatment of Lewis’s ties with Alfred Harcourt, the story also constitutes a chapter in the history of American book publishing. For all its specialized detail, each chapter is coherent, and the book as a whole (barring a few redundancies) is highly unified. And though sym­ pathetic to Lewis’s literary art, Hutchisson remains aware of Lewis’s often cheeky botchery. The intent of this study is not only refreshing but seems to me realized: to explain a phenomenon rather than to advance a cause. MARTIN BUCCO Colorado State University Mark Twain on the Loose: A Comic Writer and the American Self. By Bruce Michaelson. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1995. 269 pages, $45.00/$19.95.) Mark Twain on the Loose presents a Mark Twain who is wilder, more anarchistic than he appears in most scholarship. (The approach is announced even by the startling cover photograph of Clemens nude from the waist up.) Michaelson dissents from a long critical tradition that, how­ ever intelligent and well-informed, has imposed an uncomfortable coher­ ence on a rowdy spirit. He follows James Cox and Forrest Robinson, who have also insisted on Clemens’s roughhewn inconsistencies and “eva­ sions.” 78 Western American Literature In Michaelson’s view, at the core of Clemens’s imagination is an “anxiety about the nature of the self.” As a consequence, Clemens resists consistency in characterization, narrative structure, genre, or indeed any boundary that imposes a restraining definition on the self. A pattern of escape and disruption is ever present in the plots of his works, in charac­ terization, and, at a meta-level, in his attitude toward his art and his audi­ ence. Of course, by defining Clemens’s imagination in this way, Michaelson invites the charge that he also is imposing a single vision on the author: a danger well-recognized by this self-aware and goodhumored critic. The weight of his case rests in Michaelson’s accumulation of the evidence: the many instances of disruption, resistance, and evasion by Clemens. Michaelson attempts a nearly comprehensive reading of MarkTwain’s career, from the “Map of Paris” and the infamous Whittier Birthday speech to the dream fragments of his last years. A strength of his method is that it allows him to illuminate Clemens’s less successful and often overlooked (or embarrassing) texts, such as The Prince and the Pauper, Joan ofArc, and Christian Science, and provides an avenue to explore the inconsistencies of his acknowledged successes. The conclusion of Huckleberry Finn (“The Evasion”), a mighty stumbling block for most critics, is the centerpiece of Michaelson’s analysis. The last few years have been flush times for Mark Twain scholars. Michaelson’s fresh, ambitious book is one of the best of the new era. CHARLES L. CROW Bowling Green State University Rereading Jack London. Edited by Leonard Cassuto and Jeanne Campbell Reesman. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1996. 288 pages, $45.00.) Rereading Jack London is a collection of essays edited by two repre­ sentatives of conservative London scholarship. It begins by...

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