Kathy Ewing

Dwight Garner begins his recent New York Times review of Ron Chernow’s biography Mark Twain with this inelegant simile: the book “squats over Twain’s career like a McMansion.” McMansion typically connotes size, ostentation, and a lack of style. I’ll grant Garner’s merciless pan a few points here and there, but, overall, I’m left wondering exactly what his beef (pun intended) is. I have a theory, which I’ll get to at the end.

As to the book’s size, I have no argument. Chernow’s text runs to 1,033 pages, with over 100 additional pages of notes, acknowledgments, and index. For comparison, Twain’s autobiography is about 400 pages long, Justin Kaplan’s 1966 work Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography was a smidge over 400, and Ron Powers’s Mark Twain: A Life (2005) was roughly 700 pages. If you want a shorter read, pick one of those highly regarded predecessors.

Filling the thousand pages is a ton of detail, some of it repetitious. Chernow tells us over and over again that Twain was a flawed businessman–gullible and impulsive. In Chernow’s defense, Twain made the same mistakes over and over again, trusting in con men and flaky inventors, determined to get rich. In addition, Chernow returns frequently to the “Angelfish” of Twain’s later years, that is, the young girls and women he befriended and became obsessed with. Chernow is at pains to assure us, repeatedly, that no sexual accusations have ever surfaced about these relationships. But he avers, many times, that Twain’s predilections were at best unsettling. Many, many times, these tendencies and qualifiers are restated.

Could the book be shorter? Yes, it could.

At the same time, I chafed at some omissions. Why doesn’t Chernow tell us what year it is? Often, when I shared an anecdote from the book with my husband, he would ask, “When did that happen?” or “How old was Twain then?” I always answered, “Not sure.” In order to know what year, or even what decade I was reading about, I would have to refer to the endnotes to learn when the quoted letter was sent or when the Twain talk was delivered. Mostly, I muddled through and sometimes resorted to referencing Wikipedia on my phone to find out precisely when Pudd’nhead Wilson appeared. This bio is roughly chronological, but chapter headings, at least, should signify the years or decades they’re covering. I’d add to my own criticisms that occasionally Chernow’s prose is clumsy.

But back to Garner’s McMansion jibe. Maybe the heft of Chernow’s book makes it ostentatious, but I can’t think of any other pretensions. The style is straightforward and mostly readable. Maybe Garner finds readability boring, like a cookie-cutter McMansion? I don’t know.

And I can’t comprehend the need for the insulting verb “squats.” In what way could this thorough and interesting book be squatting over Twain’s career? What a mean sentence.

I’m frankly not sure what Garner’s major gripe actually is, but he asserts that Chernow “misses the man.” He assails the emphasis on Twain’s business failures: “his Twain is fundamentally a dupe, not a genius.” I could add also that Chernow dwells on Twain’s failures as a father and husband. He was loving but inept and often shockingly neglectful. He was vindictive and unforgiving to his perceived enemies. My guess, and it’s only that, is that Garner actually wanted less of the man. He wanted more hagiography and less clear-eyed scrutiny.

Chernow makes clear that Twain was, in fact, a genius. He commends his courage in adopting unpopular causes, such as opposing colonialism and providing reparations to African-Americans. He admires most of all Twain’s wit and energy–his astounding literary creativity. “What any biography of Mark Twain demands is his inimitable voice,” he writes, “which sparkled even in his darkest moments.” Chernow provides a satisfying helping of Twain’s brilliant humor. There’s wit on every page, even, as Chernow says, in Twain’s darkest moments. There were many of those, many of them self-inflicted. Garner says only hardy souls will make it through this “air-conditioned edifice” (whatever that means). This hardy soul made it through with a deeper appreciation of Twain’s gifts as well as his flaws. I accept Garner’s compliment.