Mark Twain: Difference between revisions

Boston, Massachusetts, November 1869. A short, thin man wearing a cheap suit, an [[Fiery Redhead|unkempt mop of red hair]], [[Badass Mustache|a long red mustache]], and brandishing a [[Good Smoking, Evil Smoking|smelly cigar]], ambles up the staircase at 124 Tremont Street to the second story headquarters of Ticknor & Fields, a publishing firm. Settling into the office of William Dean Howells, a junior partner of the firm, he lets fly a ravishing quip, referencing a favorable review of his latest work, 'The Innocents Abroad', in a magazine published by the firm. [[Chocolate Baby|'When I read that review of yours, I felt like the women who was so glad her baby had come white'.]]

 

 

The son of Missouri slaveowners (though an abolitionist himself), he dropped out of school at age twelve and spent his formative years working as a printer's apprentice, before becoming a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi and later a newspaper reporter in the Nevada Territory. His early fame was as a humorist and satirical newspaper writer, before he broke into the American literary landscape as an author and essayist.

* ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]''

* ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]''

* ''[[The Mysterious Stranger]]''

 

=== Partial Bibliography, Related Works, and Related Tropes ===

** [[Take That]]: Against 19th Century travel guides at first; the second half is a [[Author Tract]] against American tourists and Americans in general, as well as Europeans, Arabs, and, well, everybody else he encounters. If there's a message to be found in the book, it's likely to be that people ''in general'' trust authority too much, even when the authority is bugfuck crazy. Whether he's explaining, in detail, why Abelard was a nincompoop, ranting about how the self-appointed [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All]] thought that both of the Pillars of Hercules were on the same side of the Strait of Gilbraltar, crying out in agonized confusion about how he doesn't understand why the Italians ''don't rob their churches'', or mocking the bejeezus out of the aforementioned tour guides (one of whom takes him to four different silk stores ''instead of guiding him to the Louvre as he had asked in the beginning and at every stop along the way''), Twain's authorial character is always attacking ''anyone'' who takes advantage of a position of authority. Oddly enough, he keeps doing it for the rest of his career, too, all the way up through ''[[The Mysterious Stranger]]'', where he has a go at God.

* ''The Gilded Age'' (1873)

* ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]'' (1876)

* ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' (1884)

* ''Puddin' Head Wilson'' (1894)

** [[Fingerprinting Air]]: As the title character basically invents fingerprinting in the course of the story, this qualifies.

** [[Switched At Birth]]: A slave switches her child for a white one so that he'll have a better life.

** [[Tear Jerker]]: Oh yeah.

** [[Complaining About Shows You Don't Like]]

** [[Take That]]

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: So very, very much.

* [[Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe]]

** To be fair to the townspeople, it was a spoof article that Clemens had written during a drunken bender about how the proceeds from a charity ball were being diverted from wounded [[The American Civil War|Union soldiers]] to a [[Dude, Not Funny|pro-miscegenation society.]]

* [[Germans Love David Hasselhoff]]: Of a sort. He's popular among Filipino historians (and Filipino history geeks who've heard of him) because of his outspoken protests against the American colonization of the Philippines. You'll often one or two of his quotes on the subject in many Filipino publications about the Philippine-American War.

* [[Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated]]: [[Trope Namer]] ([[Beam Me Up, Scotty|sort of]]). The actual quote is "The report of my death is an exaggeration."

* [[The Roast]]: Clemens was the inadvertent creator of the celebrity roast, after an attempt to tell a self-deprecating story at a banquet [[Insult Backfire|backfired horribly.]] He was later called on to do the same thing for [[Ulysses S Grant]].

 

=== Appearances in Fiction: ===

* ''Dagger of Kamui'', inexplicably speaking Japanese. (Then again, so did everybody else, including the Native Americans.)

* [[Philip Jose Farmer]]'s ''[[Riverworld]]'' novels see all of humanity resurrected, including Clemens, who is a major character. Farmer freely mixes biographical information with speculation and invention in an attempt to convey his sense of the man. To some readers the trials the character is subjected seem hostile. To others it seems more like a novel kind of hero worship, taken as a whole.

** Actually, he was more like a minor villain, because he thought the crew came back in time for their own amusement. [[Captain Obvious|They didn't.]]

*** He was more than willing to assist them though when they proved to him they their reasons weren't sinister.

* The animated film ''[[The Adventures of Mark Twain]]'', a loving [[Deconstruction]] of his [[Nietzsche Wannabe]] works, has Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Becky Thacher stowing away in Twain's [[Cool Airship]].

* Twain is co-host of ''The American Adventure'' attraction at [[Disney Theme Parks|Epcot]], along with Benjamin Franklin.

* Mark Twain appears as a character in the [[Transformers]] comic ''Hearts of Steel'', helping out the Autobots and even [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|defeating Ravage by himself]].

* Webcomic [[Girly]] had a television show that the characters would watch now and again, in which Victorian authors would kill each other with '''GUNS!!!''' Twain appeared in one episode as the villain (the author remarked "I like to think of Twain as the kind of guy who wouldn't mind me making him evil for NO REASON").

* In [[The Venture Brothers]], Clemens was a founding member of the original [[Weird Trade Union|Guild]] <s>of Calamitous Intent</s> (along with Col. Venture, [[Loin Cloth|Eugen Sandow]], [[Oscar Wilde]], [[Aleister Crowley]] and even [[Fantomas]]) sometime near the turn of the century (before Wilde's death). Oddly, the Guild's enemies included Samuel's real-life friend [[Nikola Tesla]], who may or may not have split from the group for their handling of the [[Artifact of Doom|the ORB]].

* Appears as a friend of [[Kid Detective]] PK Pinkerton in ''[[The Western Mysteries]]''

 

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