Most of them are quite capable of standing on their own merits: shrewdly observed, written with preternatural clarity, and often very funny, they are not simple rejects. Their range of subjects and techniques is itself impressive, even when Mark Twain declined to complete his own experiment. And for these and other reasons, I hope their publication now will pique the curiosity of today’s readers about just who Mark Twain is. The success of his masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn, has tended to overshadow the fact that he experimented constantly in various short forms, even in the things he published during his long career. Public curiosity about him and what he wrote in this vein goes back to at least November 1865, when his friend Charles Henry Webb said that to his way of thinking, “Shakspeare had no more idea that he was writing for posterity than Mark Twain has at the present time, and it sometimes amuses me to think how future Mark Twain scholars will puzzle over that gentleman’s present hieroglyphics and occasionally eccentric expressions.” Not even Webb, however, anticipated that “future Mark Twain scholars” and readers would still be encountering previously unpublished work of this quality, a century after his death in 1910.
ROBERT H. HIRST
General Editor, Mark Twain Project
Note: I have described all twenty-six pieces as “previously unpublished,” by which I mean not printed or otherwise made readily accessible to the general reader. More strictly speaking, all of them were included in a microfilm edition issued by the Mark Twain Project in 2001. Also in 2001 twenty-two of these twenty-six pieces were printed in Twenty-Two Easy Pieces by Mark Twain, a special limited edition published by the University of California Press. Four have been previously printed for a very limited audience. “Interviewing the Interviewer” and “The American Press” were included in Mark Twain: Press Critic, commentary by Thomas A. Leonard, published by The Friends of The Bancroft Library in 2003. “Jane Austen,” with editorial comment inserted between almost every sentence, was published by Emily Auerbach in the Virginia Quarterly Review for Winter 1999. “The Walt Whitman Controversy” was published by Ed Folsom and Jerry Loving in the Virginia Quarterly Review for Spring 2007. “Happy Memories of the Dental Chair” was not printed in full but only quoted by Sheldon Baumrind in “Mark Twain Visits the Dentist,” The Journal of the California Dental Association, in December 1964. But Who Is Mark Twain? represents the first time any of these manuscripts has been published for a general audience.
The date of composition if known, or an approximate range for it, is given for each manuscript. When the title is enclosed in square brackets, I have supplied it because Mark Twain left the manuscript untitled.
[Whenever I Am about to Publish a Book] 1881–1885
[Frank Fuller and My First New York Lecture] May–July 1895
Conversations with Satan October 1897–February 1898
Jane Austen 1905
The Force of “Suggestion” July–August 1907
The Privilege of the Grave 18 September 1905
[A Group of Servants] 4 June 1898
The Quarrel in the Strong-Box July–November 1897
Happy Memories of the Dental Chair 1884–1885
[Dr. Van Dyke as a Man and as a Fisherman] 29 April 1908
[On Postage Rates on Authors’ Manuscript] September 1882
The Missionary in World-Politics 16 July 1900
The Undertaker’s Tale September–October 1877
[The Music Box] 1879
[The Grand Prix] 1879
[The Devil’s Gate] June 1868
The Snow-Shovelers March–May 1886
[Professor Mahaffy on Equality] 15–31 August 1889
Interviewing the Interviewer 5–6 January 1870
An Incident September 1887
[The Jungle Discusses Man] 1902
I Rise to a Question of Privilege 18–23 May 1868
Telegraph Dog 1907
The American Press June–September 1888
The Christening Yarn March 1889
The Walt Whitman Controversy March 1882
Whenever I am about to publish a book, I feel an impatient desire to know what kind of a book it is. Of course I can find this out only by waiting until the critics shall have printed their reviews. I do know, beforehand, what the verdict of the general public will be, because I have a sure and simple method of ascertaining that. Which is this—if you care to know. I always read the manuscript to a private group of friends, composed as follows:
- Man and woman with no sense of humor.
- Man and woman with medium sense of humor.
- Man and woman with prodigious sense of humor.
- An intensely practical person.
- A sentimental person.
- Person who must have a moral in, and a purpose.
- Hypercritical person—natural flaw-picker and fault-finder.
- Enthusiast—person who enjoys anything and everything, almost.
- Person who watches the others, and applauds or condemns with the majority.
- Half a dozen bright young girls and boys, unclassified.
- Person who relishes slang and familiar flippancy.
- Person who detests them.
- Person of evenly-balanced judicial mind.
- Man who always goes to sleep.
These people accurately represent the general public. Their verdict is the sure forecast of the verdict of the general public. There is not a person among them whose opinion is not valuable to me; but the man whom I most depend upon—the man whom I watch with the deepest solicitude—the man who does most toward deciding me as to whether I shall publish the book or burn it, is the man who always goes to sleep. If he drops off within fifteen minutes, I burn the book; if he keeps awake three-quarters of an hour, I publish—and I publish with the greatest confidence, too. For the intent of my works is to entertain; and by making this man comfortable on a sofa and timing him, I can tell within a shade or two what degree of success I am going to achieve. His verdict has burned several books for me—five, to be accurate.
Yes, as I said before, I always know beforehand what the general public’s verdict will be; but I never know what the professional reviewer’s will be until I hear from him. I seem to be making a distinction here; I seem to be separating the professional reviewer from the human family; I seem to be intimating that he is not a part of the public, but a class by himself. But that is not my idea. He is a part of the public; he represents a part of the public, and legitimately represents it; but it is the smallest part of it, the thinnest layer—the top part, the select and critical few. The crust of the pie, so to speak.
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