H.L. Mencken
Baltimore Evening Sun/October 18, 1924
Mark Twain’s Autobiography, with an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine.
Two volumes. New York: Harper & Bros.
This work has been awaited with impatience since Mark Twain’s death, and especially since the publication of Mr. Paine’s biography of him. All sorts of dark hints about its contents have been floating about. Mark himself, working upon it back in 1906, wrote to William Dean Howells, his old friend, that his heirs and assigns would be “burned alive” if they ventured to “print it this side of A. D. 2006,” and that even then it would “make a stir.” But what does one actually find in it, now that it is out at last? Simply the harmless garrulities of an aging man. A few of the chapters have a mild sort of historical interest—particularly the one on General Grant’s adventures as an author—but the rest have no importance whatever. Page after page might be torn out without diminishing the value of the two volumes in the slightest.
That they are downright dull, of course, is not true, for Mark was born without any talent for dullness. But he comes nearer it this time than at any other time; one almost begins to suspect that, after a few years’ practice, he might have succeeded. The best parts are those that he wrote back in the early 80’s, and by hand. The worst are the dictated portions. It is interesting to observe how flat his English began to be, once he started to discharge it at the ear of a stenographer. Pen in hand, he wrote clearly and vigorously, with economy of words and a fine ear for their beauties. Dictating, he rattled on and on like a businessman struggling with the morning mail.
In brief, a disappointing book. It has its moments, but they are not many.
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