Why did the most popular humorist in America end his life convinced that man is the meanest of the animals? Van Wyck Brooks argues that Samuel Clemens was a great artist thwarted: by a Calvinist frontier boyhood, by the genteel censorship of his wife and literary friends, and by the money-mad Gilded Age that sent him chasing fortunes like the Paige typesetting machine.
A provocative landmark of American criticism, famous enough to provoke Bernard DeVoto’s rebuttal, for readers who want to argue about Twain. Download the free EPUB.