Dangerous Water: A Biography Of The Boy Who Became Mark Twain - Softcover

Powers, Ron

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0306810867 ISBN 13: 9780306810862

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2001

Synopsis

While Mark Twain remains one of our most quintessentially American writers, the actual boyhood experiences that fueled his most enduring literature remained largely unexplored—until now. Twain's early years were a decidedly un-innocent time, marked by deaths of friends and family and his father's bankruptcy. Twain dealt with those personal tragedies through humor and the tall tale. From the time that a ten-year-old Samuel Clemens lit out on his own and boarded his first Mississippi steamer to his first encounter with a traveling "mesmerizer" (which ignited his lifelong penchant for acting and spectacle), from the brooding sense of guilt and fear of eternal damnation inculcated into him at church to the superstitions and stories of witchcraft he learned from the blacks on his farm, Powers unforgettably shows how Mark Twain was shaped by the distinctly American landscape, culture, and people of Hannibal, Missouri. Jay Parini, the celebrated biographer of Robert Frost, called Dangerous Water "a long-needed evocation of the boyhood of the man who invented boyhood for all time. . . . An immensely shrewd and deeply engaging book, a great gift to all of us who love Twain."

About this title

About the Author

Ron Powers is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, novelist, and nonfiction writer. The coauthor of the best-selling Flags of Our Fathers with James Bradley, and with eight books of his own, he has been a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and commentator for CBS News Sunday Morning. His lives in Middlebury, Vermont.

From Kirkus Reviews

An eloquent portrait of the American Renaissances greatest writer as a young man. Powers is the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of eight books. His expertise in popular culture, mass media, history, and the American small town is in evidence here as in Far from Home: Life and Loss in Two American Towns (1991). Powers, who also grew up in Hannibal, Mo., sees Mark Twain as Americas first popular, media-fed superstar who knew how to dress for the photo op. Powers exposes Clemenss mirth for the flip side of the mans many tragedies. ``Sammy'' was a premature baby and sickly toddler who grew up into the barefoot boy who showed off for the girl wed know as Becky Thatcher. Far from a protected and fanciful Tom Sawyer, Clemens, as a three-year-old sleepwalker, tugged at his sisters blanket a few days before she died. She was one of several siblings Sam would lose. Unsuccessful but not evil like Huck Finns papy, Samuels father was relatively bland, passing on only his tendency toward bad debts and investments. Powers shows that young Sam was fascinated by the spoken word (whether of preachers or slaves) and by books, from the Bible (despite his famous heresy) to Cooper, because his reality was so painful. The biographer notes an inner conflict that is the key to Clemenss appeal: ``the Connecticut literary gent contending with the western roughneck.'' After adolescence, itching to light out for the territories, young Clemens ``made the break from his landlocked life'' and talked himself to the captains wheel on riverboats. Powers feels the Mark Twain pseudonym helped free Clemens to become the ages most celebrated humorist, traveler, lecturer and novelist. There are 20 pages of chapter notes, but this biography is too good to be confused with literary criticism. Powers calls out ``mark twain'' and leads us on Samuel Clemenss dangerous, poignant, and delightful voyage against the current. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0306810867
• ISBN 13: 9780306810862
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 328