I have read three of Ron Chernow’s massive biographies, the ones on Rockefeller, Washington, and Hamilton. Because they are massive, reading them takes a long time, at least for a slow reader like me. But I learned a lot that is important or useful from them, especially the ones on Rockefeller and Hamilton. Because I am an admirer of both Chernow and Twain, I look forward to also reading Chernow’s biography of Twain.
(p. C7) More than a century after his death, Mark Twain remains one of the most recognizable voices in American literature—the author of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876), “Life on the Mississippi” (1883) and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1884), the latter among the most consequential novels ever written in English and possibly (if you believe Ernest Hemingway) the source of American literature itself.
. . .
In his biography of the famed satirist, Ron Chernow tracks, with patience and care, Twain’s journey over nearly eight tumultuous decades. Mr. Chernow’s tale is enlivened by blazing quotes from Twain’s prodigious interviews, diaries and letters. . . . The quotes tend to burn a hole in the page, and it’s difficult for a biographer to recover. Mr. Chernow, whose lives of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Ulysses S. Grant are revered for their sound scholarship, clear writing and strong narrative drive, weaves Twain’s sizzling remarks almost seamlessly into his own narrative.
We watch as Twain lunges from coast to coast, rolling up and down the Mississippi (as a riverboat pilot in his early days), moving from country to country, writing books and articles, investing large sums in various hair-brained schemes.
. . .
This was, in Twain’s own phrase, the Gilded Age. He admired, even idealized, those who made huge sums of money through their entrepreneurial energy and acumen. He had the same energy, but he didn’t have the right vehicles for speculation nor the business sense to make his investments pay off. As Mr. Chernow observes, Twain could well have enjoyed an easy life of writing and giving lectures, having married a wealthy woman and published several bestsellers. “Instead, he had started a publishing house and financed a typesetter”—the Paige Compositor, which was supposed to replace manual typesetting but failed spectacularly because of engineering flaws—“before he had the expertise or requisite fortune to bring them to completion.” His expenses soon dwarfed his income and he was forced to abandon his Hartford mansion, never to return.
. . .
Twain was “a man who professed to be chronically lazy,” says Mr. Chernow, yet he left behind him a vast portfolio of writings that included 30 books, several thousand magazine articles and some 12,000 letters. “Mark Twain had not only moved people to laughter and tears with his books,” Mr. Chernow writes, “but had challenged them with unorthodox views as he ventured out from his safe cubbyhole as the avuncular humorist. He had dared to state things that others only thought.” It’s because of this bravery, and his peerless gift for expression, that we still value him and will never stop reading his books, which never grow old.
For the full review see:
Jay Parini. “A Most American Writer.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, May 10, 2025): C7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 9, 2025, and has the title “‘Mark Twain’: The Most American Writer.”)
The book under review is:
Chernow, Ron. Mark Twain. New York: The Penguin Press, 2025.