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美國100位歷史名人榜(16)：Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),well known by his pen name Mark Twain

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Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),well known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has been called "the Great American Novel", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He is extensively quoted. Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

Twain was very popular, and his keen wit and incisive satire earned praise from critics and peers. Upon his death he was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age", and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature".

Writing
Overview
Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse, but evolved into a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism. Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. Many of Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been repeatedly restricted in American high schools, not least for its frequent use of the word "nigger", which was in common usage in the pre-Civil War period in which the novel was set.

A complete bibliography of his works is nearly impossible to compile because of the vast number of pieces written by Twain (often in obscure newspapers) and his use of several different pen names. Additionally, a large portion of his speeches and lectures have been lost or were not written down; thus, the collection of Twain's works is an ongoing process. Researchers rediscovered published material by Twain as recently as 1995.

Early journalism and travelogues
Cabin in which Twain wrote Jumping Frog of Calaveras, located on Jackass Hill in Tuolumne County. Historical marker and interior view available.Twain's first important work, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was first published in the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. The only reason it was published there was that his story arrived too late to be included in a book Artemus Ward was compiling featuring sketches of the wild American West.

After this burst of popularity, Twain was commissioned by the Sacramento Union to write letters about his travel experiences for publication in the newspaper, his first of which was to ride the steamer Ajax in its maiden voyage to Hawaii, referred to at the time as the Sandwich Islands. These humorous letters proved the genesis to his work with the San Francisco Alta California newspaper, which designated him a traveling correspondent for a trip from San Francisco to New York City via the Panama isthmus. All the while, Twain was writing letters meant for publishing back and forth, chronicling his experiences with his burlesque humor. On June 8, 1867, Twain set sail on the pleasure cruiser Quaker City for five months. This trip resulted in The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress.

This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a solemn scientific expedition it would have about it the gravity, that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet not withstanding it is only a record of a picnic, it has a purpose, which is, to suggest to the reader how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in those countries before him. I make small pretense of showing anyone how he ought to look at objects of interest beyond the sea – other books do that, and therefore, even if I were competent to do it, there is no need.
In 1872, Twain published a second piece of travel literature, Roughing It, as a semi-sequel to Innocents. Roughing It is a semi-autobiographical account of Twain's journey to Nevada and his subsequent life in the American West. The book lampoons American and Western society in the same way that Innocents critiqued the various countries of Europe and the Middle East. Twain's next work kept Roughing It's focus on American society but focused more on the events of the day. Entitled The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, it was not a travel piece, as his previous two books had been, and it was his first attempt at writing a novel. The book is also notable because it is Twain's only collaboration; it was written with his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner.

Twain's next two works drew on his experiences on the Mississippi River. Old Times on the Mississippi, a series of sketches published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875, featured Twain’s disillusionment with Romanticism. Old Times eventually became the starting point for Life on the Mississippi.

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Twain's next major publication was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which drew on his youth in Hannibal. Tom Sawyer was modeled on Twain as a child, with traces of two schoolmates, John Briggs and Will Bowen. The book also introduced in a supporting role Huckleberry Finn, based on Twain's boyhood friend Tom Blankenship.

The Prince and the Pauper, despite a storyline that is omnipresent in film and literature today, was not as well received. Telling the story of two boys born on the same day who are physically identical, the book acts as a social commentary as the prince and pauper switch places. Pauper was Twain's first attempt at fiction, and blame for its shortcomings is usually put on Twain for having not been experienced enough in English society, and also on the fact that it was produced after a massive hit. In between the writing of Pauper, Twain had started Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (which he consistently had problems completing[48]) and started and completed another travel book, A Tramp Abroad, which follows Twain as he traveled through central and southern Europe.

Twain's next major published work, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, solidified him as a noteworthy American writer. Some have called it the first Great American Novel, and the book has become required reading in many schools throughout the United States. Huckleberry Finn was an offshoot from Tom Sawyer and had a more serious tone than its predecessor. The main premise behind Huckleberry Finn is the young boy's belief in the right thing to do though most believed that it was wrong. Four hundred manuscript pages of Huckleberry Finn were written in mid-1876, right after the publication of Tom Sawyer. Some accounts have Twain taking seven years off after his first burst of creativity, eventually finishing the book in 1883. Other accounts have Twain working on Huckleberry Finn in tandem with The Prince and the Pauper and other works in 1880 and other years. The last fifth of Huckleberry Finn is subject to much controversy. Some say that Twain experienced, as critic Leo Marx puts it, a "failure of nerve". Ernest Hemingway once said of Huckleberry Finn:

If you read it, you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating.

Hemingway also wrote in the same essay:

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Near the completion of Huckleberry Finn, Twain wrote Life on the Mississippi, which is said to have heavily influenced the former book. The work recounts Twain's memories and new experiences after a 22-year absence from the Mississippi. In it, he also states that "Mark Twain" was the call made when the boat was in safe water – two fathoms.

Attitude towards revolutions
As pointed out previously, Twain acknowledged that he originally sympathized with the more moderate Girondins of the French Revolution and then shifted his sympathies to the more radical Sansculottes, indeed identifying as "a Marat".

Twain supported the revolutionaries in Russia against the reformists, arguing that the Tsar must be got rid of, by violent means, because peaceful ones would not work.

Abolition, emancipation, and anti-racism
Twain was an adamant supporter of abolition and emancipation, even going so far to say “Lincoln's Proclamation ... not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also.” He argued that non-whites did not receive justice in the United States, once saying “I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature....but I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done to him.”He paid for at least one black person to attend Yale University Law School and for another black person to attend a southern university to become a minister.

Women's rights
Mark Twain was a staunch supporter of women's rights and an active campaigner for women's suffrage. His "Votes for Women" speech, in which he pressed for the granting of voting rights to women, is considered one of the most famous in history.

Pen names
Twain used different pen names before deciding on Mark Twain. He signed humorous and imaginative sketches Josh until 1863. Additionally, he used the pen name Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass for a series of humorous letters.
He maintained that his primary pen name came from his years working on Mississippi riverboats, where two fathoms, a depth indicating safe water for passage of boat, was measured on the sounding line. A fathom is a maritime unit of depth, equivalent to two yards (1.8 m); twain is an archaic term for "two". The riverboatman's cry was mark twain or, more fully, by the mark twain, meaning "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two [fathoms]", that is, "The water is 12 feet (3.7 m) deep and it is safe to pass".

Twain claimed that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In Life on the Mississippi, he wrote:
Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them "MARK TWAIN", and give them to the New Orleans Picayune. They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; ... At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands – a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.

Twain's version of the story about his nom de plume has been questioned by biographer George Williams III,the Territorial Enterprise newspaper, and Purdue University's Paul Fatout. which claim that mark twain refers to a running bar tab that Twain would regularly incur while drinking at John Piper's saloon in Virginia City, Nevada.

作家生涯
馬克·吐溫的第一部巨著《卡城名蛙》，在1865年11月18日於《紐約週六報刊》首次出版。這作品在那裡出版的唯一原因是因為它完成得太遲，趕不及納入阿特姆斯·沃德收集美國西部特色著作的書中。
　　
這以後，《沙裡緬度聯邦報》派馬克吐溫去當時被稱為三明治群島的夏威夷作通訊記者，給聯邦報寄來關於那裡的事情的信。後來他在三藩市《加利福尼亞大地報》工作時也是根據這些幽默的信件寫出的，因為《加利福尼亞大地報》派了他取道巴拿馬運河從三藩市到紐約市，作巡迴記者。當時他就不斷寄出信件給報紙出版，諷刺而幽默地記錄他的所見所聞。1867年6月8日，吐溫乘遊艇前往費城，要住5個月。這一游導致了《傻子旅行》的誕生。

1872年，吐溫出版了第二部旅行文學著作《艱苦歲月》作為《傻子旅行》的續集。《艱苦歲月》的內容是吐溫到內華達的旅程及在美國西部的後期生馬克·吐溫活的半自傳式描述。這書以“傻子”對歐洲和中東的很多國家的批評來諷刺美國及西方的社會。吐溫的下一作品《艱苦歲月》把焦點放在美國社會上。之後的《鍍金時代》並不是旅行文學作品，因為這以前的兩本書都是旅行文學作品，而這是他第一次寫小說。這本書亦很著名，因為這是吐溫唯一一本與人合作寫成的書；這本書是由吐溫和鄰居查理斯·達德利·沃納寫成的。
　　
吐溫之後的兩本著作均是關於他在密西西比河上的經歷。《密西西比河的舊日時光》一系列的小品在1875年出版於《大西洋月刊》，最具特色的是吐溫對浪漫主義的醒悟。吐溫在《舊日時光》之後更著了《密西西比河上的生活》。之後吐溫寫了《湯姆·索亞歷險記》，這本書描寫了他在漢尼拔的童年。吐溫模仿自己小時候的性格，塑造出湯姆·索亞的性格來。這書亦引入一角色哈克貝利·費恩為配角。　　《王子與乞丐》的故事情節雖然今天常出現於很多電影和文學作品中馬克·吐溫，但其實並不普遍被接納。這是吐溫首次嘗試寫“乞丐”，其缺點是吐溫在英國社會並沒有太足夠的經歷。《王子與乞丐》寫作期間，吐溫亦開始了《頑童流浪記》的寫作，並也把另一部遊記《浪跡海外》完成.《浪跡海外》是馬克·吐溫往中歐及南歐旅行的遊記。　　

吐溫之後的出版著作為《哈克貝利費恩歷險記》，這本書出版以後，令他成為更著名的偉大美國作家。《哈克貝利·費恩歷險記》是《湯姆·索亞歷險記》的續集，嚴肅的氣氛比後者更為濃厚。這書成為了美國大部分學校的必修書，因為哈克放棄服從規矩，而很多這樣年齡的人馬克·吐溫正是這樣想（哈克的故事背景為還有奴隸制的1850年代）。吐溫于1876年夏，《湯姆·索亞歷險記》發行後手寫了約400頁的《頑童流浪記》故事內容。吐溫的妻子死于1904年，這以後他才得以把他的著作審查員及編輯者－－他的妻子不喜歡的書籍出版。這些書中有一本是《神秘陌生人》，這本書並未在吐溫有生之年出版，所以人們找到1897至1905年之間的三種版本的手稿。這三種版本令這部著作的出版情況很混亂，而現在才可得到吐溫最先寫的版本.吐溫最後一部作品是他口述的自傳。一些案卷保管人和編輯者把這自傳重新整理一遍，要令它的格式更符合一般格式，因而一些吐溫的幽默字句被刪掉了。