E-Book Overview
As Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens straddled the conflicts between culture and commerce that characterized the era he named the Gilded Age. In "Littery Man", Richard Lowry examines how Twain used these conflicts in his major texts to fashion an "autobiography of authorship," a narrative of his own claims to literary authority at that moment when the American Writer emerged as a profession. Drawing on wide range of cultural genres--popular boys' fiction, childbearing manuals, travel narratives, autobiography, and criticism and fiction of the period--Lowry reconstructs how Twain participated in remaking the "literary" into a powerful social category of representation. He shows how, as one of our cultures first modern celebrities, Samuel Clemens transformed his life into the artful performance we have come to know as Mark Twain, and his texts into a searching critique of modern identity in a mass-mediated society. "Littery Man" will appeal to both Twain scholars and to scholars and students of nineteenth-century American literature and culture.
E-Book Content
"Littery Man"
The Commonwealth Center Studies in American Culture series is published in cooperation with the Commonwealth Center for the Study of American Culture at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, by Oxford University Press, New York
Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace: New England Crime Literature and the Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674-1860 Daniel A. Cohen "Littery Man": Mark Twain and Modern Authorship Richard S. Lowry
Littery Mark Twain and Modern Authorship
RICHARD S. LOWRY
New York
Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1996
Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1996 by Richard S. Lowry Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lowry, Richard S. "Littery man" : Mark Twain and modern authorship / Richard S. Lowry. p. cm. (Commonwealth Center studies in the history of American culture) ISBN 0-19-510212-6 1. Twain, Mark, 1835-1910—Authorship. 2. Authorship—Social aspects—United States—History—19th century. 3. Autobiographical fiction, American—History and criticism. 4. Authors and readers— United States—History—19th century. 5. Fiction—Authorship— History—19th century. 6. Self in literature. 7. Canon (Literature) I. Title. II. Series. ps1336.L68 1996 818'-409—dc20 95-31814
135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
For Joyce
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
A
s SOLITARY an activity as writing is, no one writes a book alone. After having written this one, I wonder why anyone would want to. From the time I began this project in a very different form as a dissertation, I have benefited from the generosity of a number of friends, mentors, and colleagues. R. W. B. Lewis, Alan Trachtenberg, Jean-Christophe Agnew, and Richard Brodhead not only proved to be model advisors and challenging critics, they also served, long after they had seen the last of my dissertation, as ideal readers. A faculty fellowship from the Commonwealth Center for the Study of American Culture at the College of William and Mary c