Roughing It

Some great descriptions in this semi-autobiographical Overland stage coach trip to unknown territories “out west”. <br /><br />Twain’s great sense of humour is something that I wasn’t expecting, but his complete disrespect for certain people such as Native Americans, African Americans, Chinese and Mormons doesn’t show him in a good light.<br /><br />The first part of “Roughing It” was truly enlightening, but as it progressed it began to drag, and I had to do a fair bit of skimming. Therefore not one of my favourites.<br />

Mark Twain's semi-autobiographical work about the American west in the 1860's. <br><br>I know that most every student in most every American Lit 301 class is instructed that Melville's <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/153747.Moby_Dick_or__The_Whale" title="Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville" rel="noopener">Moby-Dick; or, The Whale</a> is the great American novel, but Twain's works must be high on the list of great American literature. This was like Forrest Gump a hundred years early. <br><br>Twain meets Brigham Young, works as a silver miner, explores the Nevada territory, visits San Francisco during the earthquake, and then goes off to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). Twain also tried out the local "surf bathing" - he went surfing. Finally, in the last pages, he meets a drunken man on the streets of San Francisco named Mr. Sawyer. <br><br>A fun read.<br><br><img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1515948871i/24875854._SX540_.jpg" width="400" height="385" alt="description" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy">

<b>Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped . . .</b><br /><br />Tag along on some travels with Twain as he heads way out west, commenting nonstop on all the new flora and fauna he sees along the way. <br /><br />Chuckle as he beholds the exotic wholesomeness of Mormons:<br /><br /><b>Salt Lake City was healthy - an extremely healthy city. They declared there was only one physician in the place and he was arrested every week regularly and held to answer for having "no visible means of support."</b><br /><br />Twain was not a big fan of California, bemoaning the lack of changing seasons. I have to agree with him on the last part, and I love this quote:<br /><br /><b>I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in turn, seems the loveliest.</b><br /><br />And though I got a kick out of Twain and his brother gleefully planning the dream houses they would build after striking it rich, there was just TOO MUCH DAMNED MINING in this book.<br /><br />I <i>did</i> enjoy his visit to the Hawaiian islands, as did he, apparently:<br /><br /><b>At noon I observed a bevy of nude native young ladies bathing in the sea, and went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen.</b><br /><br />Twain, you old horndog, you!<br /><br /><br /><b>It had been a fine pleasure trip; we had fed fat on wonders every day . . .</b><br /><br />Indeed!<br /><br />Note to self - read more Twain.

The first quarter of Roughing It is really great -- the description of his stage coach trip with to Nevada is great travel writing, laced with irony and sly humor. That it is describing a lost world makes it that much more entertaining. Exquisite.<br /><br />There's just one 'humorous' episode concerning a bull that interjects during this part of the book and it seems disconcertingly false -- kind of corny and cartoonish in a not terribly clever way. Perhaps the sort of thing he could bring life to in his famous lectures with his drawl and deadpan. But I remembering thinking...'uh oh'. <br /><br />And 'uh oh' was right. The book continues to have some marvelous episodes as Twain continues his western adventure, but they are stretched out with a prodigious quantity of flimsy material. Comic set pieces with caricature-like characters get stale before they've begun, and he spins them out as if he was being paid by the word. A certain kind of broad, formulaic humor obtains - probably what he needed to write for newspapers at the time, but it seems out of place amidst his more mature writing.<br /><br />Whereas the parts where he is achingly funny tend to have a certain realness about them - Clemens is making observations about things trivial and profound that he actually sees or concepts he is grappling with in life. There's a certain kind of sincerity beneath the irony and stretching of facts.<br /><br />Flawed though they are, the middle chapters of Roughing It do, in fits and starts, present a compelling picture of various societies in the wild west and San Francisco, and a shadowy autobiography of Clemens. (Those familiar with Clemens later financial troubles get a glimpse of some of his worst financial impulses early on in his life.) <br /><br />However, the book finally takes an abysmal dive when he takes a trip to Hawaii. It seems like a tacked-on bonus that doesn't relate to the rest of the book. Where the wild west actually sucked Twain in and conferred some of its insanity on him, Hawaii remains just another location to file travel writing from. He presents a lengthy history of the Hawaiian people, which seems cribbed from a textbook. And then, suddenly, unceremoniously, he ends the book with a dull thought or two about travelling. <br /><br />One has the impression that he was inspired it when he started the book, but that by the end, he was just trying to get through it. <br /><br />In short, read the first third, and then feel free to skip chapters after that. There's a bunch of really classic Twain here, but it gets pretty patchy after awhile.

"Turn out, boys! The tarantulas is loose!"<br /><br />This is probably the funniest work of classic literature I have ever read. Page for page, it has more laugh out loud moments than anything I've ever seen. It even leaves THE PICKWICK PAPERS by Charles Dickens and TOM JONES by Henry Fielding in the dust. It really makes you wonder what it must have been like to listen to Mark Twain on the lecture circuit in his prime from 1875 to 1895. It must have been like seeing Richard Pryor or Lenny Bruce, and then some. <br /><br />The only problem is, when you read this book a second time, a lot of what Mark Twain actually has to say about the west is really creepy. He hates Native Americans. I mean, he really hates them. And I don't just mean compared to politically correct authors today. Even James Fenimore Cooper (whom Twain ridiculed throughout his career) was capable of more nuance and compassion when writing about his doomed Indian warriors in LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Twain literally laughs at the idea that anyone could imagine Indians as being fully human. It's beyond offensive. It's creepy. (On the other hand, I suspect that Twain's critique of the murderous Mormon elders and their church is still timely, and right on the money. Those old time Mormons had binders full of women, too!)<br /><br />In spite of the disturbing themes, I give this book five stars, because I can't remember any book that ever made me laugh as much. And it deserves fives stars just for the ruffian they call Arkansas. <br /><br />Bully old Arkansas!

Who would have thought Mark Twain could actually be funny! It's a shame most students' first exposure to him is through Huck Finn, which I found to be much less accessible than this book, which was entertaining and interesting and to me a much more palatable introduction to his style. This book is delightful and episodic, and some encounters (the "Bemis and the Buffalo" tale and the encounter with Slade in particular) are standalone masterpieces of comedy; even just dipping into this book is a rewarding and entertaining experience. His work ranges from clever wordplay, to absurdity verging on the post-Modern. As a fan of the Western genre, this book is a milestone in the origins of Western fiction. What a joy!

I enjoyed reading this, but less than I was expecting. It's been too long ago to write an actual review, so I will instead refer you to Supineny's, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/140780662">https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...</a><br />-- which identifies pretty much what I recall as the best and the weakest parts of the book. It's all worth reading, mind, but skim where your attention is faltering, is my advice. It's a book of its time. But the price is right!<br /><br />I was amused at another 3-star reviewer who complained about "too much mining" stuff -- since I thought that was some of his best. But that's my field. I can't recall if this is the source of the immortal quote that a mine "is a hole in the ground, with a liar at the top" -- but Twain certainly partook in the exuberant speculation in mining stocks then, that generally had about the same outcomes as today's online day-traders find.<br /><br />Here's the link to the book, in many formats, at Project Gutenberg: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3177">http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3177</a>

"Roughing It" is a memoir covering a six year span of Mark Twain's years as a young journalist and occasional miner. It might also be classified as his coming of age story. He just happened to come of age during the tumult of the War Between the States, a time when slavery was still the law of half of the land. From his descriptions of Native Americans, African Americans, and Chinese, there can be little doubt that at this stage of his career, he wrote to an exclusively Caucasian audience. <br /><br />It was also instructive for this reader to read his free flowing blend of hyperbole and irony to engage, entertain, and tell a good story. Sometimes it was funny or educational. Other times it was overstated and redundant. The first half of the book is the best part. His descriptions about what it was like to travel across the western US by stagecoach were fascinating. During his trip he actually stopped and visited Salt Lake City at a time when the state we now call Utah, was an independent country...and by Twain's account...ruled by a not so benevolent dictator. <br /><br />Most of the book is a travelogue of his journey to Nevada and the years spent there during the silver rush. These chapters form the heart of the book and frankly, author Mark Twain could have ended it there. Instead, he extends the journey to include subsequent travels in the California goldfields, his days as a journalist in San Francisco, and then a travelogue of Hawaii, at a time when they were still called the Sandwich Islands. These later chapters read like extra baggage. This reader was tempted more than once to just put the book away, unfinished. But, I kept coming back. <br /><br />I recommend this book to students of Mark Twain, readers of western US history, or lovers of memoir.

I read someone else's comment that this book is not his best... that it is disorganized and the beginning parts are based on his brother's diary entries and not his own. Regardless, I decided to read this after vacationing in Nevada and visiting Virginia City. As a followup to that vacation, it was a good read. In my opinion, the best part of this book is the beginning. I liked reading about life during that time. It seemed to me that it was better written, but that may have been because its style was still new to me... and after awhile the diversions became more annoying. I lost interest about halfway through when he started basically listing info about the gold mines. <br /><br />Today I decided to read up to 80% of the book and then make a decision as to whether i would finish it or not. I didn't make it to 80%. I left him in Hawaii. As I found throughout the book, I'd be very interested in some sections and then I'd be wondering how long this "little story" would last it get back to descriptions of time and place.<br /><br />I've decided that I've wasted enough time on this book and will not be finishing it. As much as goes against my nature. But, there are too many books on my "to-read" list to spend anymore time on this one.

When Mark Twain was a young man and not yet a published novelist, he spent seven years rousting about Nevada and California, with a six-month side trip to Hawai'i (then known as the Sandwich Islands)mixed in. What I would give for a chance to see the West when it still largely was an empty landscape, and Hawai'i with no tourists, fou-fou drinks, or fake Hula shows. Unfortunately, I was born about 125 years too late . . . . Roughing It contains much of Twain's signature humor and exaggeration, but describes a society and landscape that is recognizable from history, and maintains his fidelity, for the most part, to the truth. Politically-correct types will applaud Twain's description of nineteenth century American society as mainly attached to grasping the main chance, and hiss his depiction of the Indians as degraded savages lacking all culture and refinement, but that misses the point. Twain, as a humorist, chose to emphasize those traits that were most subject to being lampooned, and did so with even-handed glee.