I don't consider myself a Twain expert, but I have read lots about him since finding Albert Bigelow Paine's massive authorized biography in the seventies. I was very excited to get an early copy of a book that I expected to be momentous. Spoiler alert - I was not disappointed. Chernow manages to write in a way that does not call attention to itself, but shines a bright light on his subject. When writing about Twain's boyhood, he always manages to tie his subject's actions and personality to what would come later - particularly the boy's craving for an audience.
Chernow describes how Twain lets people into his life, praising them to the heavens, and then the partnership always ruptures and the friend becomes an enemy consigned to the lower reaches of hell. Given that record, his greatest blessing was finding Livy - the unlikely pairing of a wild outspoken cigar chomping Bohemian with a genteel and loving woman who would stand by him through many storms in the next three decades. The key 20 years of Twain's happy life were the times spent at their spectacular house in Hartford, raising three picture perfect, intelligent and talented daughters. Chernow warns us that things are going to get really bad. Even I didn't comprehend just how bad. Due to a steady stream of bad financial choices, the family had to move to a long term exile in Europe. Then the eldest daughter gets seriously ill and dies in the Hartford house. I hadn't realized what a complete mess her life had become, with poor health and a scandalous romance with a female classmate in college. Dark years followed as they spend more time in exile. Then another blow as the youngest daughter Jean gets epilepsy. Livy dies and Twain's life resembles King Lear. For years to come, this will be the seminal book on Twain. I'd have liked a bit more examples of that great wit, but the pathos works here beautifully.
Reviewed by Terry Ballard
May 13, 2025
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