Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow has compiled an exhaustive volume on Samuel Clemens, who as Mark Twain became one of America’s most beloved humorists and witty observers of the human experience. More of a rigorously researched encyclopedia at 1,200 pages and 3½ pounds, Chernow’s book best serves as an almanac or catalog of Twain’s carefully documented minutia about his life rather than a broad, accessible portrait of the author.  Sales prospects should be excellent on this perennially best-selling subject, but recreational reading it is not.

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Were I a more gifted writer, I would compose a review of Ron Chernow’s "Mark Twain" in the style of its subject, a man of sharp humor who lampooned prolix writing and loved nothing more than deflating overblown pretensions with a deftly placed barb.  In "Mark Twain," one of America’s most famous humorists is ill served with a long-winded biography that has a surfeit of details, little humor and less wit.

Above all other things, Twain was a storyteller, and this biography’s main weakness is that it lacks a story. There are people. There are events. There are details. But there is no storytelling.

Like all writers, Twain drew on his life for his characters, was a terrible hoarder of every scrap of paper on which he dolloped ink, was insecure about his place among his contemporaries in American literature, and was a dreadful businessman, investing in countless harebrained schemes of the era. Most Twain aficionados already know this, and will presumably be hoping for a grand portrait of the man rather than a laser sharp focus on each brushstroke. At least that was my expectation.

Chernow says his goal was to “capture both the light and the shadow of a beloved humorist,” but the book languishes in the twilight of dull overcast and clouds of gray prose, lost in the endless banalities of daily life, which Twain dutifully recorded.

In his acknowledgements, Chernow says: “Writing a biography is a long, arduous hike to a very high mountain peak” and his ascent of Mount Twain has taken him to the fabulous Twain collection at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library (which Chernow accessed remotely during Covid and in person), various museums, and landmarks of Twain’s life in the U.S. and abroad. Chernow’s trek takes him past the deep crevasses and rugged spires of Twain’s staggering output: thousands of letters and articles, dozens of notebooks, unpublished manuscripts and the like to reach the summit.

This is the daunting challenge for any biographer, especially when faced with a subject who documented his life so thoroughly: Confronted with decision of what to keep and what to put aside in the “fine-grained detail” of Twain’s life, Chernow habitually errs on the side of inclusion rather than the sin of omission. It could be cut by half and nothing would be left out.

Because this is an exhaustive “important” biography written in the modern style, it begins with a detailed exploration of the oldest limbs of the Clemens family tree, dating to the 1500s, when a few lines would have sufficed. Even more unfortunate, concise writing is not one of Chernow’s gifts. And the combination is deadly.

Consider Chernow’s leisurely approach to the lineage of Twain’s mother, Jane Lampton:

"Her father, Benjamin Lampton, was a prominent local citizen, having served as a lieutenant colonel during the War of 1812. As a skilled brick mason, he had constructed many fine buildings in town."

Chernow’s biography of Twain’s father is even more verbose:

"A political Whig, with an abiding faith in internal improvements, he was appointed president in 1837 of the Salt River Navigation Company, assembled to dredge the nearby river and open it to steamboat commerce from the Mississippi River. He was likewise made a commissioner of the Florida & Paris Railroad, both projects wiped out by the panic of 1837 and a dearth of political support."

Nor can Chernow resist a dreadful pun:

"Jane Lampton proudly claimed ancestry from the British Lambtons of Durban, giving her a dubious connection to a string of earls."

I assume this is the sign of an editor losing a battle with a writer over a favorite bon mot – at least I hope there was a battle rather than abandonment by an editor in a state of exhaustion. As a reviewer (name forgotten) once said: An editor must dislike a writer very much to let a line like this get through.

I flipped ahead several hundred pages in hopes that the book would improve. It did not. Instead, the book bogged down in a catalog of what Twain bought while visiting Venice: brass plates, mirrors, a tapestry, oil paintings, brass bowls, an incense burner and a music box.

At a certain point, I realized that the book was never going to improve, but roll on for a bit more than 1,000 pages, followed by 74 pages of end notes, 15 pages of bibliography, and a 35-page index.

As this is a modern biography, Chernow makes a point of bringing contemporary sensibilities to 19th and early 20th century America, with numerous references to “enslaved people.” He grapples with the “N-word problem” (which appears about 15 times) and explores Twain’s now-discomforting late-life interest in college girls in their teens.

Twain, author of the hilarious critique "Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses," would surely be aghast at this voluminous tome, and it is notable that Chernow robs Twain’s iconoclastic essay of all life in the retelling. It is an achievement of sorts to turn this lively, inventive writer into a dull and ponderous subject, but Chernow has done it.

In the introduction, Chernow notes that Twain was “a waspish man of decided opinions delivering hard and uncomfortable truths." The hard and uncomfortable truth is that given the subject, this book should be far better than it is. A major disappointment.

Ron Chernow has taken on other famous historical people and here he dissects Mark Twain's life. The length of the work can be daunting but this is a comprehensive biography of a great literary figure. Interestingly the brunt of the narrative is about Twain's personality and his rough edges, not so much inspiration of his work. The chronological path takes readers on Twain's travels, his obsessive love of his wife and his role as a lecturer more than as an author. Public library patrons will pick up this book due to the author's reputation but its value might be more academic than casual reading.

My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group The Penguin Press for an advance copy of this biography on a writer only America could produce, one of humor, of empathy, a man who called out the powerful and the hypocritical, and even more importantly changed with the times, and sometimes ahead of them.

When my nephew was born, I thought not only of the future that he would see, but of the past he had no ideas about. Most of my Grandparents have been long dead. My father passed before my brother found love, and that bothered me in a way. I gave my mother a journal to write things down so my nephew someday would know who is Nan was, and who his Grandfather had been. Even twenty years after his dead I still hear stories that are new to me, from cousins, neighbors, even my Mom. Stories that explain much about the man, what made him and what changed him from a Bronx Irish Catholic conservative, to a well liberal person with empathy. The past makes up who we are, and only an understanding of these things can a clearer portrait be made of the person. Growing up in the south, fighting on the Rebel side, changing his mind on race, religion, politics and even women. Writing stories point out those who blaspheme most while pretending piety. A man quick to hold a grudge, to chase a get quick scheme, and with odd ideas about young ladies, and a man whose books still tell us much about life. Mark Twain by acclaimed historian and biographer, Ron Chernow is a warts and all telling of one of America's best writers, one who entered the world and left the world with Haley's Comet, streaking across our imagination and literature.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born into a family whose ups and downs on the social and income scale left a deep impression on the man. Clemens' father was a man who tried much, failed at much, but still held out hope until he died at an early age, that his family would one day be wealthy and worthy of respect. Clemens' older brother had the brains for success, but not the drive or the ambition, leaving Clemens to be not just the bread winner, but the success. Clemens hit the road, taking jobs in printing presses, sweeping quartz, a time in the Missouri militia, one that Clemens fictionalized a bit about, and finally as a river boat captain. Legend says that there is where Clemens found his nom du plume, but as with many tales about Twain, the legend might sound better than the facts. Writing though was his future, even though Twain never saw a quick rich scheme he didn't like, nor a business deal he couldn't mess up. Twain became famous for his first book a sarcastic look at travelers to the Holy Land, and soon became on the foremost men of letters.

This book is not just a doorstop, its a bunker buster of a book. At 1200 pages there is not much of the life of Twain that is not unexamined. For all its heft, and for all the time it covers though it is a very readable and impressive book. There have been many biographies, including one by Twain, this covers not only the life, the writing, the relationships, but also the nasty things. The racism, the failed relationships and friendships, the numerous bad business deals. Also his latter-day thoughts on young woman, after the death of his wife. Chernow covers all this and the mad sad events in Twain's life. The early death of his father and siblings, the death of his children. The fact he never felt equal to the praise he received, though he loved the praise he was given. Chernow has outdone himself in many ways on this, the research, the writing and the way he captures so much about the man, a man who seemed so much different from the writer.

One of the biggest biographies I have read, and one of the best. One gets a feeling of the life lived, and the events that went into the writing, and the events that shaped the man. Another brilliant book by Chernow, one that might be hard to adapt for Broadway, but one I would love to see.

This is a challenging book to evaluate. Chernow has undoubtedly done as thorough a job as I can imagine being done to Mark Twain's life. In the end, though, besides the usual Chernow page count, the story drags into tedium. The length and depth Chernow gave to someone like Hamilton works because Hamilton was an extremely dynamic person, whose energy and passions were dramatic and impactful. Twain - aside from writing a clearly influential body of work - filled his days mostly with poor business decisions, financial consequences of those decisions, railing against anyone who was unluckily involved in same, and various other vendettas borne at least in part from his own poor choices. Interspersed were long stretches of dragging his family from pillar to post, dealing with various and repeated health crises for all members of the family, and his gloomy ruminations on the tragedy of life (not that I'm disagreeing, Mark). His two main virtues that stand out from the pack are his obvious devotion to his wife (she sounds like a saint) and his amazing supply of clever one liners. If this book is missing anything, it might be more contemporary commentary to bolster the "why" of Twain's fame - because after 500+ pages of his failure to take responsibility for many of his mistakes, it was hard to remember why he was so beloved. 3 stars for the man, 5 stars for the book.
Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the arc!

As a biographer who has written and co-edited several books related to Mark Twain and his associates, I am absolutely delighted with Ron Chernow’s biography. The weaving of Clemens’s personal, literal, and business life; the departing from chronology when necessary to enlighten; the sheer clarity of the prose; the introduction of telling incident – I learned so much from this book. I think it will satisfy those who famously bought the 2010 autobiography looking for revelations and were disappointed – Chernow provides a real look into this complicated man’s psyche by his skillful investigation into sources, his digging out revelatory quotations from the huge mass of his writings, and his explorations of the lives of so many around him. He does not neglect his literary works, so many of which are masterful, while others are not. Chernow’s account of those final years, which raise so many scholarly hackles, is masterful. This will be the standard biography for many years to come. – Steve Courtney, author of Joseph Hopkins Twichell: The Life and Times of Mark Twain’s Closest Friend (University of Georgia Press, 2008)

Ron Chernow write a comprehensive, interesting biography of Mark Twain that is informative and fascinating.

Sure to be a "talked about" book and a good pick for library programming. Mark Twain holds a meaningful space in both literary and popular culture and Chernow's book gives insights to both Twain readers and those yet unfamililar with his work. Thank you for the ARC.

Mark Twain gets the Chernow treatment and it the entire author's life to light. Not just as an author but as a Southerner, an early nationwide celebrity, a steamboat pilot, a half-hearted Confederate and a flawed champion of equality.

Very fascinating, but looooong!
Anyone who's slightly literate is familiar with Twain and his most popular works, and view him as a rumpled, funny, sarcastic, snarky author who's not afraid to voice his opinion, veiled or not, on controversial subjects such as slavery, racism, and religion, among others.
What I loved about this book was the not-s0-warm-and-fuzzy side of his life that Chernow exposes through what must've been some intense research. Twain, outwardly, adored women, but only when they took on the duties necessary to keep his life worry-free, and allowed him to continue to nurture his sense of youth, and unbridled irresponsibility. His unending string of failed business ventures, and the fact that he obliviously devoured Livy's family fortune was an aspect of his life I never knew about. And his obsession with young girls bordered on pedophilia. Big yuck factor.
My biggest caveat to the author and publisher is this: who takes on a 1200-page book in the days of podcasts, Twitter, and readers with the attention spans of gnats? I hope Chernow has felt satisfied by his work, and isn't expecting brisk sales.