Quote:
Originally Posted by fantasyfan
...There is a great deal of what is, in effect, sermonizing. Twain “tells” rather than “shows.”...
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Rasmussen in his
Critical Companion to Mark Twain~A Literary Reference to His Life and Work is crueler than either of us; he refers to them as being political diatribes (Rev. ed. 2007, Volume 1, p.59).
I must sit through the Ken Burn's PBS films again (I believe one of Rasmussen's earlier books was a reference during its making?) as I haven't watched them for a decade or more (they demand a quite big lump of time); I seem to recall there is quite a bit on his business failure, personal stresses and strains, and demeanour during his later life-those building around the time of
Connecticut....
One of the strengths I feel Twain had, at least in his earlier books up to
Huck..., was that he did not publish his first novel until he was close to 40 years of age. Like some similar others he thus approached them in a mature way (as an example of another, his approximately contemporary Joseph Conrad also did not write his first novel until of a similar age). That contrasted against many writers who start at a much earlier age, who often come across to me as producing an over written school pupil essay type of outcome.