Mark Twain: The Gift of Humor

Mark Twain is America’s—perhaps the world’s—best known humorous writer. Yet many commentators in his time and our own have thought of humor as merely an attractive surface feature rather than a crucial part of both the meaning and the structure of Twain’s writings. This book begins with a discussion of humor, and then demonstrates how Twain’s artistic strategies, his remarkable achievements, and even his philosophy were bound together in his conception of humor, and how this conception developed across a forty-five year career. Kolb shows that Twain is a writer whose lifelong mode of perception is essentially humorous, a writer who sees the world in the sharp clash of contrast, whose native language is exaggeration, and whose vision unravels and reorganizes our perceptions. Humor, in all its mercurial complexity, is at the center of Mark Twain’s talent, his successes, and his limitations. It is as a humorist—amiably comic, sharply satiric, grimly ironic, simultaneously humorous and serious—that he is best understood.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Chapter 1: The Shape of a Humorist’s Career A Peculiar Genius Forty-Five Years as a Serio-Humorist A Century of Criticism A Humorist’s Self-Definition Toward a Discussion of Humor Chapter 2: The Physics of Humor Chapter 3: The Psychology of Humor Relaxation Coping Aggression Chapter 4: The Sociology of Humor: National Character and Morality American Humor The Morality of Humor Mark Twain and the Natives, at Home and Abroad Early Years: Comic Creations (1851-1872) Chapter 5: The Strategy of Counterpoint The Apprenticeship of a Humorist The Clash of Contrast and the Stretch of Exaggeration Jump-Starting a Career A Humorist Afloat The Innocents Abroad Samson Trimmed, Lightly Roughing It Chapter 6: Throw in Another Grizzly: The Tall Tale in America Middle Years: The Triumph of Satire (1873-1889) Chapter 7: Old Times and New Narrators “Old Times on the Mississippi” The Adventures of Tom Sawyer A Joke for John: The Whittier Birthday Speech Tramping with Twichell A Turn to History: The Prince and the Pauper Chapter 8: The Non-Example of Bret Harte Chapter 9: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The Joke on Jim Beyond Jim: The Humor of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Chapter 10: Comic Contrast and Violent Humor: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Comic and Satiric Contrasts The Humor of Violence Satire and Poignancy Chapter 11 The Advocacy of W. D. Howells Later Years: The Humorist as Ironist (1890-1910) Chapter 12: The Not-So-Gay Nineties Busted A Bankrupt Abroad Raffish Reviewer Twain’s Twins: Pudd’nhead Wilson Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Gains and Losses Chapter 13: A Subtle Humorist Recovery Following the Equator Vienna and London Homecoming Satirist vs. Imperialists Adam and Eve The Higher Animals The Christian Science Autocracy Shakespeare and the Law God and Man Pessimist? Remnants Chapter 14: Mysterious Strangers The Texts Editorial Pain Symbols, and a Theory, of Despair Chapter 15: An Uncharted Sea of Recollection: Mark Twain’s Autobiography Four Twentieth-Century Editions The Twenty-First Century Definitive Autobiography “The Right Way to Do an Autobiography” Appendix Books by Mark Twain: A Selected List of American Editions Published in His Lifetime Tales and Sketches Posthumously Published Works Sources Key to Abbreviations Notes Other Works Cited Index

About the Author :
Harold H. Kolb Jr. is emeritus professor of American literature at the University of Virginia, where he was the founding director of the American Studies Program and the Center for the Liberal Arts. His writings include articles and monographs on American literature, American history, humor, composition, legal writing, natural history, and education.

Review :
In Mark Twain: The Gift of Humor, Kolb has assumed the Herculean task of providing a comprehensive study of the core of Twain's lasting attraction to readers over the course of the last 150 years, his understanding of, and incorporation of a depth of understanding of humor far surpassing that of his contemporary ‘phunny phellows,’ and many of our twenty-first century practitioners. That he has succeeded in his mission must be regarded as nothing less than an astounding achievement, one which renders this work worthy of including in the library of every serious student of Twain. It can confidently be concluded that Mark Twain: The Gift of Humor is the benchmark on the subject against which any forthcoming attempts will be measured for the next century. At a time when most literary critics are as giddy as teenagers to embrace the latest intellectual fad, Kolbs his magisterial 500-page study around the disarmingly uncontroversial claim that Mark Twain was, first and last, a humorist…. There are so many highlights in Kolb’s discussion that a reviewer is helpless to do more than gesture toward some of the book’s more surprising episodes…. If a single image emerges from Kolb’s panoramic study, it would be that of Mark Twain as an ‘amiable’ humorist, a writer whose innate sense of disparity fostered a profoundly sympathetic vision of human beings and the world they inhabit. There are many interpretive treasures in this book.