Module 1

Module 1

In our first week — Module 1 — we are reading Twain’s very early writings, and while they have all the earmarks of mistakes that many young writers exhibit (too long, somewhat disorganized, lack of rich writing), they also become appetizers to what would define much of Twain’s writing throughout his life: deception, credulity, and a contrast between formal, pompous language and short, to-the-point, realistic language.

In our readings for this week, choose one of his early writings and give examples of what you consider to be Twain’s weaknesses and/or his strengths in his writings. Are there any passages where it is especially obvious that Twain is still feeling his way around as a writer?

Post 1:

The early work that I found most interesting was the Cincinnati Boarding House Sketch. The story takes place in a mid-nineteenth century boarding house parlor. The residents of the boarding house are having a conversation while sitting in chairs around the fire. The attributes of the story that show the great author that Mark Twain would become are the rich ways that he is able to describe the characters. The father and son duo of the Cabbages both have the exact same type of hair loss but they are each described in such great detail that you know they are not the same person. He describes the father as having “the appearance of the moon in a dim halo”, while the son “has the soft appearance of mush done up in a cotton rag” (page 19).

The dialogue is also quite good. It is interesting and descriptive with each character having a turn getting into the conversation. The problem I noticed was the awkward way the dialogue is organized. The dialogue is not as conversational as it could be. It reads more like a stage play with the stage directions included. The way the directions are laid out can be confusing at times, requiring the reader to stop to read the directions. An example is “(No.2 who thinks B. ‘soaked it’ to T. that time, enjoys the joke exceedingly; but not seeing any good opening to begin his argument again, goes partially asleep.)” (Page 20). I also noticed that Mark Twain used a lot of farcical names for his characters such as “Mr. Luculus Cabbage”, “Mr. Blathers”, “Mr. Pottery, Mr. Doodle and Mr. Toploftical.” (Page 19).

Twain, M. (1995). Cincinnati Boarding House Sketch. In Mark Twain (pp. 18-21). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Post 2:
For this discussion, I chose the story “Petrified Man”. This brief story reads like a news clipping. The tempo is told in rapid fire description and one can imagine it being read by a newscaster. I think this was Twains’ purpose and why the sentences are quite long. Even though this is written as a news story you get a glimpse of an unreliable narrator. At one point in the story, Twain mentions the justice’s name as Sewell or Sowell. For me, this made the remaining story suspect since the facts in the story aren’t clear. Why would a reporter not get a detail such as a name of a justice correct? I immediately took this to be one of Twain’s tall tales but it’s too subtle. This I think is one of the weaknesses of this piece. For a tall tale, it’s entirely too believable and the reader is unable to see the humor. I only found one clue given by Twain that the piece is entirely fictitious. I did some research on this and found an article that explains how at the time the story was published; readers did believe the tall tale completely. Twain admitted that the tale had only one clue for readers to indicate it was a false story. This clue was the position of the Petrified Man’s hands which as described by Twain, were arranged in a gesture of ridicule (unknown, http://hoaxes.org). This story was Twain’s first attempt at writing a tall tale and he was surprised and quite pleased at the audiences’ reaction (unknown, http://hoaxes.org). .

Resource
Unknown. The Petrified Man. Retrieved from http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_petrified_man/ on October 21, 2016.