Lewis Leary – författare

This collection of correspondence between Clemens and Rogers may be thought of as a continuation of Mark Twain's Letters to His Publishers, 1867-1894, edited by Hamlin Hill. It completes the story begun there of Samuel Clemens's business affairs, especially insofar as they concern dealings with publishers; and it documents Clemens's progress from financial disaster, with the Paige typesetter and Webster & Company, to renewed prosperity under the steady, skillful hand of H. H. Rogers. But Clemens's correspondence with Rogers reveals more than a business relationship. It illuminates a friendship which Clemens came to value above all others, and it suggests a profound change in his patterns of living. He who during the Hartford years had been a devoted family man, content with a discrete circle of intimates, now became again (as he had been during the Nevada and California years) a man among sporting men, enjoying prizefights and professional billiard matches in public, and-in private-long days of poker, gruff jest, and good Scotch whisky aboard Rogers's magnificent yacht.

Like Don Quixote, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and Fielding's Tom Jones, Modern Chivalry is a tale of adventuring, episodic and exciting. Despite the author's European inspirations, it is a distinctively American book, not just because of its homespun, native characters and slapstick humor, but also because it is a narrative of journeying and questing. As it follows Captain Farrago and his sidekick on their travels, the book's premise becomes clear—that democracy as practiced in America is valuable and worthy, but that it is subject to malfunctions when tinkered with by unfit men. A pointed caricature of American life, Modern Chivalry will be of great value to all interested in American history and literature.

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Mark Twain - American Writers 5 was first published in 1960. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.