Mark Twain and Youth: Studies in His Life and Writings ed. by Kevin Mac Donnell and R. Kent Rasmussen (review)

This book begins with the voice of a ninety-year-old man, Hal Holbrook, recalling his first encounter with the writings of Mark Twain—the persona he would portray on stage for the next sixty-two years. Holbrook states that the "boy raised on the river" later "used children as a disguise" and "the younger generation to express his commentary on the hypocrisies of the world" (xi–xiii). The book ends with the voices of youth itself—fourteen-year-old ninth graders—enthusiastically offering insights on the writings of the same author. Thus, editors Kevin Mac Donnell and R. Kent Rasmussen bookend Mark Twain and Youth: Studies in His Life and Writings, a collection of twenty-six original essays from noted Twain scholars and teachers.

The volume provides biographical background on Twain's life and lucid analysis of his writing in the context of youth. In their introduction, the editors recognize Albert E. Stone's "landmark volume" The Innocent Eye: Childhood in Mark Twain's Imagination as an "excellent overview of Twain's youth-themed writings" but also see the need of a fresh examination, given the "wealth of primary sources and fresh biographical information" that has surfaced since Stone's 1961 publication (xxi). Indeed, the recent publication of the three-volume autobiography as well as A Family Sketch and Other Private Writings figure prominently throughout. In reading this fine collection, scholars will concur with the editors' assertion that such a book "has long been overdue" (xxiv).

Stone focused on "the role and depiction of childhood" within Twain's works; he didn't touch on the "broader themes." This volume does. For example, it addresses "grimmer themes" such as childhood disease, death, and vulnerability as well as social issues such as race, education, parenting, gender identity, adoption, and more (xxi).

The editors divide the essays into five parts: "Overviews," "The Clemens Family," "Sam Clemens's Life Experiences," "Mark Twain's Writings," and "Modern Perspectives." This arrangement makes great sense in two ways: one, obviously, readers can choose to delve within a section of interest; and two, they can sense the book's thematic unity if reading it cover to cover. With one exception (which I mention below), the editors proportion sections wisely. Moreover, the essays almost implicitly generate and forecast questions that succeeding sections seem to answer, even though the authors "do not all agree with each other or speak with a single voice" (xxi).

The four essays in Part 1, "Overviews," as the editors note, provide insight and analyze questions about "Twain's lifelong attitudes toward youth" and the "place of his writings in the broader context of the literature of his time" (xxii). In the opening essay, Holger Kersten covers various contexts that produced Twain's vacillating, and often paradoxical, opinions about youth and old age. Drawing from interviews, speeches, the autobiography, and Twain's own writing, he confirms that Twain "felt no desire to celebrate youth as a superior period of life," and ultimately viewed the grave as a "blessed refuge" (10). Extending Kersten's claim about Twain's "darker view of humanity," Lawrence Berkove explores why Twain developed his basic tragic vision for the human race and his "disillusionment with the promise of youth" as well as how that vision and disillusionment contributed to his "conceptions of youth" (xxii, 12). He argues that Twain was certainly aware of representative British and American authors in the Victorian period who portrayed "youth as an unhappy experience" (13). He then summarizes Twain's heretical vision of Calvinism as a "nine-point 'counter-theology,'" which he uses to analyze three books that have youthful protagonists (Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). Next, Lucy E. Rollin surveys early nineteenth-century American literature to illustrate its purpose of preparing youth for the future and aiding in their moral development. She explains a shift...