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Authors: Azar Nafisi
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Ignorance and Suspicion,” he wrote, “but an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period.” He understood that a certain habit of mind and disposition of character was and would remain the key to America’s greatness.
Farah said, “I told you—you had to use U.S. history. See you tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
5
Two decades before Hemingway’s proclamation that Huck Finn was “the best book we’ve had,” Twain’s friend William Dean Howells wrote, “Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes—I knew them all and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists, they were like one another and like any other literary men; but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.”
When I told Farah about that quote, one of my favorites, she shrugged as if to say, “So what?” Then she turned away and said in a matter-of-fact way, “You might as well say the Jefferson of our literature.”
She meant it facetiously, but maybe she was right, because if there was any figure in the history of American fiction who, through his writing, created a literary declaration of independence, it was Mark Twain. He was the first to deliberately cut himself off from the prevailing traditions of the mother tongue. With
Huck Finn
he helped forge a new national myth, giving us a hero who looked and spoke like one of the tramp protagonists of the European novel, but whose values and principles were more akin to those of the great epic heroes.
Huck was a mongrel, an outcast, uneducated and unmoored, and since his creation countless Americans have recast themselves in his image. He was suspicious of the smothery ways of conventional society, but in his ideals, his moral courage, his determination to open himself up to the lessons of nature and the vagaries of experience, he was as much a product of the Enlightenment as were George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, or so I came to think when I followed Farah’s advice and began reading more American history.
In some respect, Mark Twain started with the same basic premise as the founding fathers: he saw himself participating in a wholly new enterprise, trying to actualize the ideals of democracy culled from Greece and Rome. In doing so, like Adam, he could not help but commit the ultimate sin against his creators: declaring independence. There are wonderful stories about Twain’s disdain for Europe, its aristocracy and vanity. He compared Venice to Arkansas and mocked Europe’s preoccupation with its cultural heritage, but if, unlike his more established peers Henry James, William Dean Howells and James Fenimore Cooper, he did not fawn on Europe, he had far more knowledge and appreciation for the land of his ancestors than he let on. Nor was he ignorant of European culture: he appreciated Shakespeare, Dickens, Balzac and Tocqueville; his favorite character was Joan of Arc, and he passionately hated some of Europe’s most popular novelists, like Sir Walter Scott and (alas) Jane Austen.
Twain himself was much appreciated in Europe. He traveled extensively around the Continent and even lived in Italy for ten years. He was feted by European royalty and by his peers, including a young Rudyard Kipling, but he never sought to compete with European writers on their own terms. The question that seemed to animate him was how to articulate the new reality back home, the distinct new American identity—how to give America its own voice. He could be critical of the affectations of his fellow countrymen, as he was in
The Innocents Abroad
of the ignorant but arrogant type he came across at a restaurant in Marseille, loudly telling everyone how great it was to drink wine with dinner while boasting thathe was a “free-born sovereign, sir, and American, sir, and I want everybody to know it!” (That person, whose arrogance stems from his ignorance, is alive and well in America today, still ranting and raving against
Farah said, “I told you—you had to use U.S. history. See you tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
5
Two decades before Hemingway’s proclamation that Huck Finn was “the best book we’ve had,” Twain’s friend William Dean Howells wrote, “Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes—I knew them all and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists, they were like one another and like any other literary men; but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.”
When I told Farah about that quote, one of my favorites, she shrugged as if to say, “So what?” Then she turned away and said in a matter-of-fact way, “You might as well say the Jefferson of our literature.”
She meant it facetiously, but maybe she was right, because if there was any figure in the history of American fiction who, through his writing, created a literary declaration of independence, it was Mark Twain. He was the first to deliberately cut himself off from the prevailing traditions of the mother tongue. With
Huck Finn
he helped forge a new national myth, giving us a hero who looked and spoke like one of the tramp protagonists of the European novel, but whose values and principles were more akin to those of the great epic heroes.
Huck was a mongrel, an outcast, uneducated and unmoored, and since his creation countless Americans have recast themselves in his image. He was suspicious of the smothery ways of conventional society, but in his ideals, his moral courage, his determination to open himself up to the lessons of nature and the vagaries of experience, he was as much a product of the Enlightenment as were George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, or so I came to think when I followed Farah’s advice and began reading more American history.
In some respect, Mark Twain started with the same basic premise as the founding fathers: he saw himself participating in a wholly new enterprise, trying to actualize the ideals of democracy culled from Greece and Rome. In doing so, like Adam, he could not help but commit the ultimate sin against his creators: declaring independence. There are wonderful stories about Twain’s disdain for Europe, its aristocracy and vanity. He compared Venice to Arkansas and mocked Europe’s preoccupation with its cultural heritage, but if, unlike his more established peers Henry James, William Dean Howells and James Fenimore Cooper, he did not fawn on Europe, he had far more knowledge and appreciation for the land of his ancestors than he let on. Nor was he ignorant of European culture: he appreciated Shakespeare, Dickens, Balzac and Tocqueville; his favorite character was Joan of Arc, and he passionately hated some of Europe’s most popular novelists, like Sir Walter Scott and (alas) Jane Austen.
Twain himself was much appreciated in Europe. He traveled extensively around the Continent and even lived in Italy for ten years. He was feted by European royalty and by his peers, including a young Rudyard Kipling, but he never sought to compete with European writers on their own terms. The question that seemed to animate him was how to articulate the new reality back home, the distinct new American identity—how to give America its own voice. He could be critical of the affectations of his fellow countrymen, as he was in
The Innocents Abroad
of the ignorant but arrogant type he came across at a restaurant in Marseille, loudly telling everyone how great it was to drink wine with dinner while boasting thathe was a “free-born sovereign, sir, and American, sir, and I want everybody to know it!” (That person, whose arrogance stems from his ignorance, is alive and well in America today, still ranting and raving against
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