Ron Chernow on the life of Mark Twain

The Mississippi Valley is "as tranquil and reposeful as dreamland, and has nothing this-worldly about it … nothing to hang a fret or worry upon." It's a beautiful sentiment, and yet it contrasts with the fretful and worried life of the man who wrote those words: Samuel Clemens, known to the world by his pen name, Mark Twain.

Twain died 115 years ago, but his books are still being read, and hotly debated, around the globe. It's quite the legacy for a mischievous boy of modest means raised in Hannibal, Missouri, just steps away from the roaring Mississippi. It was, said Jim Waddell, "the international highway of 1835."

Waddell has portrayed Twain for three decades – a performance always in demand when Hannibal's streets are filled each spring for the Twain on Main festival. It's a good gig that requires of Waddell a clean white suit. "You keep the suit white by doing no work!" Waddell laughed.

Korbin Asbury and Ainsley Ahrens competed against other eighth graders in the town to represent the characters Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher in Hannibal. "I love meeting the new people, 'cause there's 44 different countries that visited Hannibal last year," said Asbury.

Asked if she were surprised that an author who lived more than 100 years ago still seems so relevant today, Ahrens replied, "I am, but not really, because his words that he said, they still work with us today. They're wise words."

Wise words, with more than a touch of humor:

"Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest."

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

Twain is quoted as having called himself not just an American, but "the American." "I think that part of the continuing fascination with Mark Twain is that he combines in his person both the best and the worst of our national culture," said Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow. He has chronicled the lives of great Americans, perhaps most famously Alexander Hamilton, whose biography spawned the Broadway musical. Chernow's latest book tackles the life of Twain, a figure who has never left the national spotlight.

Twain once wrote, "Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man – the biography of the man himself cannot be written." "That line was in my head every single day that I worked on this book," Chernow laughed. "I kind of had this image of Mark Twain coming back to life and saying, 'I told you so.'"

Chernow traces Twain's sardonic humor to the pain in which it was rooted. Although he enjoyed boyhood adventures that would inspire "Tom Sawyer," his father was a failure in business. The fear of poverty, and an anxious pursuit of wealth, would dominate Twain's adult life.

In Hartford, Connecticut, site of Twain's home, Chernow described the sprawling mansion that he had built: "I see his personality. All the angles and porches and turrets, it's like all of the different sides of his personality. And he always loved conspicuousness, and this is probably the most conspicuous house in the city."

I asked, "Was Mark Twain happy here?"

"Not just happy here, it was far and away the happiest 17 years of his life," Chernow said. "It was this idyllic period. He had this large expensive house. He had a rich and gorgeous wife. He had three beautiful and smart daughters. It was really a charmed life."

Although Twain became wealthy as a writer and public speaker, he poured his fortune – and his wife's – into ill-fated investments. The most notorious was the Paige Compositor, a typesetting machine that Twain was sure would make him millions.

The themes that run through Twain's life and his work – politics, corruption, money, class, race, get-rich-quick themes – all seem quite relevant to America today. Chernow said, "It's a great American story, and I think that there's so many things that he said – for instance, about politics – that really resonate today. One line that used to drive him crazy was, 'My country right or wrong.' You know, he said that we should support our country always, and our government when it deserves it."

Chernow believes President Trump would be a familiar figure to the humorist, "to the extent that one of the great stock characters in Mark Twain's fiction is the salesman. You can see it in President Trump. You could see it in so many different figures in American life – the big talkers, the big shots."

It's no small irony that Twain was nothing if not a big shot himself – a man who craved attention as much as money. But fame also emboldened Twain to speak truth to power, most enduringly through his masterpiece, "Huckleberry Finn."

Chernow said, "One of the things that I argued in my book was that there was no White author in the late 19th century who engaged more fully, and I think more affectionately, with the Black community than Twain. Now, I had to point out early on, if you read letters that he wrote when he was a teenager, they're full of crude, racist remarks – and not only about Blacks, seems like just about everybody."

By 1884, Twain had published "Huck Finn," which, said Chernow, "whatever its imperfections, is still, I think, the great anti-slavery novel in the language."

For Chernow, Mark Twain is still a vital presence in American life. His words continue to make us think, and almost certainly laugh.

Asked why his works have endured when so many other great authors' books are languishing, Chernow replied, "I think it's a very, very good question. He likened a fine literature to a wine, and he said, 'My writing is water, but everyone drinks water.'"

And they are still drinking it (and still reading Twain).

READ AN EXCERPT: "Mark Twain" by Ron Chernow

For more info:

• "Mark Twain" by Ron Chernow (Penguin Press), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org
• Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum, Hannibal, Mo.
• Mark Twain House & Museum, Hartford, Conn.
• Mark Twain Riverboat, Hannibal, Mo.
• Twain on Main Festival. Hannibal, Mo.
• Mark Twain Papers & Project, University of California, Berkeley Library
• Sixth & I, Washington, D.C.

Story produced by Ed Forgotson. Editor: Carol Ross.

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