About book The Complete Short Stories Of Mark Twain (1984)
When newspapers serials sell by "continues ..", authors yank up guffaws, groans, titters, tears, tack on more, and more. Start silly #54 "My father was a St Bernard, my mother was a colllie, but I am a Presbyterian" p 489. End sad "the humble little friend is gone where go the beasts that perish 1903" p 497. Begin #51 with an abused wife, add bloodhound specially-abled son who writes her letters of vengeance, push chase over the edge of cliff onto wrong target, slap on Sherlock Holmes, string him up by a lynch mob, in rides a sheriff. Likable despite growing like topsy. Better are unpredictable, positive -rare- #43 #46 #50, memorable.Twain questions morality of times, has realistic view of honesty, usually not rewarding goodness. Little girls are angelic #48 #56. Bad boys grow worse #2 #14 #25. Animals can be as narrow-minded as men #22 #28 #59, or smarter #17 #54 #56 #57. Some tales poke fun at foolishness #6 #9 #11, human nature #2 #7 #13 #14, victims of pushy wife #21 #27 #31, con men #1 #4 #5 #12 #32, standard routines #3 #8 #10. Brevity encourages simpleness #1 #11. Is 22-page #40 an excerpt of https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... or smaller font? Most are mixtures; emotions are complicated. #3 sparks when macabre added to boring political hohum. Ghosts are more funny than scary #7 #36. Insanity is more cold than warm #3 #39. Even a basic romance #24 is complicated by telephone wooing and jealousy. Often first person is observer rather than participant - theater scenes, letters, dialect conversation from odd viewpoint. The last century is like another planet, science fiction. Who now would strip to rescue their hat, lose their clothes to a runaway horse #46? Some is full-blown exaggeration #6 #9, credit validity to his experience. Scrape off modern political incorrectness from slave nigger south, and inside we are still the same #2 #4 #5 #8.60 stories, including 13 from "non-fiction" books. 1 The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County - wins owner's bets till filled with gunshot.2 The Story of Bad Little Boy - Unlike in books, he triumphs.3 Cannibalism in the Cars - Madman left in snowstorm imagines democratic senatorial arguments and elections choose meals.4 A Day at Niagara - brings danger from wet and sightseeing purchases. The "awful savage tribe of Indians that do beadwork and moccasins" are from Limerick, Ireland. 5 The Legend of the Capitoline Venus - In theater scenes, poor sculptor can marry when smart pal mutilates statue to appear ancient.6 Journalism in Tennessee - Newcomer gets shot, scalped, thrown from window.7 A Curious Dream - Skeletons leave neglected graveyard.8 The Facts in the Great Beef Contract - Red tape runaround for decades.9 How I Edited an Agricultural Paper - Turnips grow on trees and like.10 A Medieval Romance - 1222 Princess falls in love with girl pretending to be male ruler in Brandenburgh.11 My Watch - runs worse after every repair.12 Political Economy - Salesman cons lecture writer into lightning rods until storm creates fireworks.13 Science vs Luck - Six jurors for Chance win over others in Kentucky sevenup card game. 14 The Story of the Good Little Boy (opposite #2) - all goes wrong.15 Buck Fanshaw's Funeral - His friend Scotty's slang "help plant him" confuses officiating parson.16 The Story of the Old Ram - Drunk narrator rambles over relatives, neighbors, never gets to ram.17 Tom Quartz large grey tomcat 8 "shin out of that hole" to avoid blasts mining quartz.18 A Trial - insists Capt Ned Blakely, can be held after hanging bully Bill Noakes, because everyone saw him kill Ned's nigger first mate unjustly.19 The Trials of Simon Erickson - He goes crazy trying to decipher handwriting of Mr Greeley regarding young William's desire to work only with turnips. 20 A True Story - Aunt Rachel 60 recounts how son sold young, when grown up remembered and recognized her from family favorite expletive "I'se one o' de old Blue Hen's Chickens".21 Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup - Wife insists child fine to chew on pine stick, forces narrator Mortimer to stay up moving furniture, blames croup. (view spoiler)[ Doctor gives cough syrup that expels splinter. (hide spoiler)]
One story in here should be mandatory reading--It was creepy on many levels. But solidly disturbing for those who are grappling with simulated reality issues.The rest of this volume is what you would expect: Mark Twain telling his absurd stories and some of those stories being riotously funny and some of them rather dull, while others are incredibly genius (if not also funny) and still others use some rather dated language (I had to Google "lap robe," for example).But the one piece that shined above them all and was worth any manner of working through the dull stories was The Mysterious Stranger.It's an amazing work about morality but it's an even more amazinger piece viewed within the context of living in a simulated world. It's a story about a few normal boys getting to know an angel named Satan (he's a cousin or something of "the" Satan), and how this angel pretty much views good and bad as arbitrary values. The angel creepily makes little tiny humans, gives them a tiny castle, and then for amusement enacts a mini-earthquake upon them, killing them all. When the boys cry out against it, he's like, "Oh don't worry, I'll just make more." This angel frequently treats everything as inconsequential and thus people suffer and yada yada--he's essentially like a person playing a video game, testing things out and watching the results for fun.As the story is written from the point of view of the normal boys, it is of course a relevant story for anyone exploring the matter of whether we are living in a simulation right now. And the logical result of someone visiting the virtual world (possibly our world) would potentially play out in a similar fashion to this story, but on the whole it dramatically demonstrates how inconsequential a virtual world is to the "real" people. Shocking and disturbing. And well worth the read.A "3" for most of the stories. A "5" for The Mysterious Stranger.Epilogue: Unrelated to this review, but yet related to the content, here is a tale. I came across this collection of short stories years ago--at least 10, probably more. I've moved it from apartment to apartment, from Denver to Seattle, and on into my current home, without ever reading it despite encouragement from a good friend ("Mark Twain's short stories are the best. You gotta' read them."). Finally after so many years, I took the book out and brought it to work with me.That very day at work, I was discussing the likelihood that we are living in a simulation with a coworker and we began talking about people from the "real" world leaping into this one to try it out. And I postulated that my coworker could actually be from the "real" world running the simulation and checking things out. And she said, "Ooh, like The Mysterious Stranger, that short story by Mark Twain.And I pulled out this book, from my backpack, to check to see if it had that story and it did. And that's very creepy indeed.
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Some of the most difficult reading I have encountered. I would not recommend this volume.I must assume Twain practiced writing through his short stories. His quality results are his novels.Although many stories started with what seemed like a clever or novel premise, most short stories fell short in development, wandered away from the main theme, or became overly wordy in making a point - often many times over. One other difficulty was following his dialogue. Twain can go on for pages without a reference to the speaker in his dialogues. As he meanders away from and back to the main idea it is difficult to follow the speakers in the dialogues, hence hard to follow the story line.I read this in chunks over a long time, interspersed with novels and historical writings of various other authors. Reading this volume "straight through" would not be a good idea. On the other hand, maybe it would be best to get it over with in as short a time as possible.
—richard
Mark Twain was a pretty versatile author, writing everything from the story of Huck Finn to a time-traveling Arthurian satire.And in addition to writing articles, novels and travelogues, he wrote a lot of short stories. Everyman's Library's "The Complete Short Stories" brings together all of Twain's short works, from the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous (there's a story called "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"!).The stories include stories of Jim Smiley and his trained frog, the Capitoline Venus, a missing elephant, the "orneriest-lookin'" cat Tom Quartz, the overwrought romance of Alonzo and Rosannah (via phone), a tragic Inuit maiden, a wild sketch about an odd couple on the Russian border, Captain Elias Stormfield's voyage through the startling expanses of heaven, and countless other tales. It also has some stuff that is not quite as easily classified as short stories, such as the demonic fable "The Mysterious Stranger," a scathing poke at organized religion."The Complete Short Stories" has a lot of different kinds of tales in it, from the tragic ("The Esquimau Maiden's Romance") to the hilarious ("The Belated Russian Passport"). But since Twain was a noted humorist, most of the stories have a wry, biting edge -- sometimes it's gentle, and sometimes it's pretty vicious.Heck, even the romantic stories in it -- such as the tale of Alonzo and Rosannah -- have the vague feeling that you should be laughing at the overwrought emotions and reactions of the lovers.And that edge permeates all the stories, however they are written. Some are conventional 19th-century prose, with splashes of color and clever wordplay. But he experiments with style at times -- sometimes he's being told a story by a fictional third person, sometimes the story is almost all dialogue, and so on.Above all, Twain was a brilliant wordsmith, able to conjure up the mundane with as much color as the ethereal and exotic. His stories tend to be brief, but they pack a lot of punch -- even if they're barely more than sketches (like the membranous croup story), they have clever, colorful writing."The Complete Short Stories" (which isn't QUITE complete -- there are a few stories missing) is a good way of getting Mark Twain's short stories all in one. Vibrant, sharp and witty.
—Ea Solinas
It took months, and I read a few books in between, but I finally finished this one. It amazes me how different today's short stories are compared to those of the past. In some ways, I'm glad for the change, and in others--I'm tending to agree with Bradbury more and more: Many are simply slice-of-life garbage. Twain knew how to tell a story--I would've loved to HEAR him do so. His voice is so strong, yet he can change it with the drop of a hat. He can make you laugh and cry within the same page, and his food for thought is much deeper and more profound than much of what I've been reading from contemporary authors.I never really wanted to read Twain, then I finally took a chance on Huckleberry Finn. Since then, he's quickly becoming one of my favorites. If you haven't read Twain, do yourself a favor, get over your bias and read him. It is good.
—Chris
