A MYSTERIOUS MANUSCRIPT

July 3, 2001
		How does Mark Twain's "new" story, "A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage," fit into his established body of work?

Did Sam Clemens adopt a different personality when he became Mark Twain? Why didn't any other writers participate in the "blindfold novelette" experiment? How do you handle the subject of race when teaching Twain? Was Twain a spiritual man?     Online Special Mark Twain Online Special Media Watch April 1, 1997 Shelley Fisher Fishkin discusses her Mark Twain book. Online Forum Fishkin responds to viewer questions on Mark Twain. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of arts & entertainment.

When the Atlantic Monthly published "A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage" in its June/July 2001 issue, it opened a new chapter of the writer's legacy. Twain originally wrote the story as part of a scheme for a series of "blindfold novelettes." In his plan, a plot of his own design would be handed out to other noted writers, and each would write his own version of the story. All of the versions would be published in the Atlantic, which was edited by Twain's friend William Dean Howells. Although Twain finished his version in two days, no other writers signed on for the project. Twain's story floated around private collections for the next 125 years until the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library bought the story and sold it to the Atlantic. As Twain intended, the story is also serving as the basis for a writing competition. The Buffalo Library is hosting the competition, which invites writers to read the first two chapters of "A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage" and create their own endings to the story. The competition closed June 25. How does this story fit into Twain's existing catalogue? Why was he so interested in the "blindfold novelette" idea? University of Virginia English professor Stephen Railton responds to your questions below. Jacquelyn Brooks of Magnolia, Texas asks: I have often read that Mark Twain was more than a name. Is it true that Samuel Clemens altered his personality as well to what he believed suited his author alter ego?   Stephen Railton responds: "Mark Twain" was certainly more than a name. Given his enormous popularity with audiences for almost one hundred and fifty years now, he could probably be called Samuel Clemens' most successfully imagined character, his greatest fiction. Did "Mark Twain" in some sense re-create Sam Clemens? I think the two identities had a very complex relationship with each other. Through "Mark Twain" Clemens expressed perhaps the deepest needs of his own personality -- especially the need for love, attention, popularity, status, social success. "Mark Twain," however, could not express all that he felt or wanted to say, so that as time went on he came to feel increasingly trapped inside that alter ego. He never did imagine a way out of it. That may be why identity, twins, impostors and mysterious strangers come to occupy such a prominent place in his writings. By the way, if you want to get a visual sense of how complex Clemens/Twain's identity was, in the Mark Twain In His Times Web site there's a page showing most of the different ways he signed his name, from "Sam" to "Mark" to "S. L. Clemens" to "Mark Twain," etc. Back to top...   Rhonda Hankins of Austin, Texas asks: Why do you think no contemporaries of Mark Twain wrote a version of "A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage"? Did anybody ever say why they didn't do it?   Stephen Railton responds: It's not clear how many writers Howells actually approached with the idea, and I'm not sure the kind of writers Twain had in mind, the kind who were associated with The Atlantic magazine -- Henry James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell -- would ever have been receptive to this kind of story gimmick. In letters to Howells Mark Twain himself offered a couple different explanations for the lack of response: at one point he speculates that other writers were reluctant to march in his procession, and at another he suggests that his plot outline was too complicated. We don't have a copy of that outline, but based on the story Twain wrote, it seems as if it was awfully elaborate. And while it elements are essentially derived from the typical plots of popular fiction -- mystery, murder, marriage, inheritances, thwarted romance, last minute reversals of fortune, and so on -- much of the story also seems to put Mark Twain's own unmistakable signature on the material those other writers were supposed to work with. I haven't seen any comments from other writers, but the one author we know Howells showed the outline to was Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and his response may survive in his letters or notebooks. Back to top...   K.E. Gordon of Orlando, Florida asks: How do you make a story like "Huck Finn" relevant to a largely diverse student body without the numerous "N"-words being perceived as racist?   Stephen Railton responds: To me one of the great sources of "Huck Finn"'s relevance is precisely the way it treats and raises the issue of American racism. Since critics began attacking the novel's language in the 1970s, there has been a lot of controversy about teaching it in secondary schools. As yet there is no sign of interpretive consensus about the novel itself (it's been called "the worst example of racist trash" and "the best anti-racist novel in 19th Century American literature"). I believe it can be taught in high school classrooms, but only if the question of racism is directly discussed. The language of the novel, including "the numerous 'N'-words" you mention, belongs to Huck, a young white boy who has grown up in a slave-owning culture, and who has been conditioned to see African Americans as less than human, as property. In many ways, while the overt narrative concerns Huck helping Jim to escape literal slavery, the story Twain is telling is about whether Jim can help Huck escape the way his mind has been "enslaved" to those ideas about race. On the other hand, there are places where the text itself seems to treat its black characters, including Jim, as less than fully human, as stereotypes or caricatures, and in its last chapters it turns the quest to free Jim into a joke. To me the book is as conflicted as American society and history on this subject -- struggling to leave behind while at the same time perpetuating the racist habits of thought that grew up during slavery (when the story is set), that survived reconstruction, that in fact defeated reconstruction, so that Jim Crow segregation left the black population in a social position that resembled slavery in too many ways (the novel was written in the ten years after reconstruction ended) and that, to return to your idea of "relevance," still haunt our culture today. These are very difficult and disturbing issues, but ones that we still need as a nation to address. I can't imagine a better place for that conversation than a classroom, and I think Twain's novel, with its very divided legacy as one of our classic American books, is a good occasion for such a conversation. Back to top...   Keith from Erie, Penn. asks: Did Mark Twain believe in God, and if so how deeply spiritual was he?   Stephen Railton responds: Any good answer to this short question would have to be very long, and ultimately pretty inconclusive. Like Tom Sawyer, who hears God's voice condemning him in the thunder, Sam Clemens was brought up in a very religious environment. Much of Mark Twain's humor came from making fun of sacred things, but long after he stopped going to any church, he kept going back in his mind and imagination to the topics of God and Christianity. At the end of his life he was working on stories like a diary of Adam, a visit to Heaven, Satan and his son coming to Earth, and so on. As someone who relished whisky, cigars, profanity and billiards, he was not "spiritual" in most of the accepted senses of that word. But he was a great writer in part because he entertained and wrestled with the deepest questions of the human condition. Did Mark Twain believe in God? Do you remember the end of Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!", when Shreve asks Quentin Compson why he hates the South, and he says "I don't! I don't! I don't hate it! I don't hate it!" He can't just say No. I think if you could ask your question to Mark Twain himself, he might say something like: "I don't. I don't. I don't believe in God. I don't." And as he said that you'd realize that there's a lot of anger and hurt and perhaps even some doubt behind the words. Of course, he'd also find a way to make you smile while he said it. Back to top...