Chasing the Last Laugh
I realize that my United States citizenship may be revoked for saying this, but I am not a fan of Mark Twain's work.* I am, however, eternally fascinated by Mark Twain's career, which was a roiling broth of ambition, depression, and innovation. Consequently, I was much happier to read Richard Zacks' newest book, Chasing the Last Laugh: Mark Twain's Raucous and Redemptive Round-the-World Comedy Tour , than to read Twain himself.
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- Mark Twain ca. 1871 Who knew the younger Twain was a hottie?
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- Mark Twain ca 1907 Looking the way we all picture him
In 1896, Mark Twain was sixty years old, the beloved author of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, and the United State's highest paid writer. He was also on the verge of financial disaster, most of which he had brought on himself through a combination of cock-eyed optimism and impatience with details. Determined to keep a larger percentage of the proceeds from the sale of his books, he had founded his own publishing company, which proved to be a cash drain rather than a source of income. He poured money into James Paige's innovative typesetting machine, which was eclipsed by the Merganthaler Linotype in the nineteenth century's version of the technological duel between Beta and VHS--and encouraged others to do the same. He signed documents he didn't understand. He filed for bankruptcy, but continued to be pursued by creditors who refused to believe the luxury-loving author had nothing. Finally, Twain saw only one solution: to go back on the public speaking circuit, which he had happily left twenty-five years before.
In Chasing the Last Laugh, Zacks turns the circumstances that led Twain to undertake a year-long tour of the English-speaking world and the tour itself into a combination of high drama, black comedy, and occasional tragedy. The result is a lively and insightful study of the claims of celebrity, the value of controlling the public narrative, and the mercurial figure of Twain himself.
*Those of you who are sharp-eyed may remember that I also recently expressed my lack of enthusiasm for Ernest Hemingway. In case anyone is getting the impression that I am uniformly "agin" male American authors from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, I would like to point out that I am a big fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald (the short stories) and Dashiell Hammett. (Choosing two off the top of my head. )
Most of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
James Joyce, the Comic Book
I was a low-grade comic book nerd as a child and well into my teen years. Not a dedicated collector, but an impassioned consumer of the stories and appreciator of the art form. I was equally happy in the Marvel and DC Universes, with an occasional foray into the world of Archie.* It didn't take much of a leap for me to become an adult fan of graphic novels and their non-fiction cousins.**
James Joyce, Portrait of a Dubliner, by Spanish graphic novelist Alfonso Zapico, is a charming addition to the growing body of graphic biographies that explore the lives of cultural icons such as Charles Darwin, the Carter Family and Steve Jobs. Joyce's peripatetic life is particularly well suited to the episodic nature of the form.
Zapico makes no attempt to provide a Classic Comics interpretation of Joyce's famously impenetrable writing. Instead he gives a clear-eyed depiction of the life that created the work. The work is surprisingly comic given Joyce's struggles with poverty, censorship, literary rejection, serious health problems, near blindness and his beloved daughter's mental illness. Zapico treats Joyce with both humor and respect, but does not sugar coat the writer's drunkenness, infidelities, financial irresponsibility, and cheerful willingness to bite any helping hand that came his way. Some of the most powerful portions of the work deal with Joyce's relationships with those closest to him, including his literary frenemy Ezra Pound, his brother Stanislaus, and his lifelong love and muse, Nora Barnacle, who is the most fully realized character in the work outside Joyce himself.
The visual language of the work is sophisticated. The grey-wash backgrounds are drawn with meticulously realized historical detail. Joyce and his contemporaries are rendered with a jaunty, comic book-style line. Taken together, the contrasting styles allow Zapico to move smoothly between the comic and the tragic, ending with a bittersweet homage to Joyce's influence on Dublin in the years since his death.
If you haven't found your way into graphic literature, this is a good place to start.
*What? You didn't like Josie and the Pussycats?
**Not to mention the current run of comic book superheroes on screens large and small. And well, comic books. My current favorites are Ms. Marvel, the Goddess Thor, and Velvet Templeton.
This review, minus the thoughts about comic books and my misspent youth, previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
We Have Winners!
Thanks so much to those of you who threw your name into the middle-sized mixing bowl for the book drawing, and to those of you who read, commented, shared posts, pointed out typos,* and otherwise engaged with History in the Margins over the last five years. If it weren't for you, I'd feel like I was talking to myself in the library stacks.**
Here's the list of lucky winners:
Laurie Blum
Liz Davidson (Just a book. No kittens. Sorry, Liz.)
Bart Ingraldi
Jeannette P
Connie Ruzich
Emily Stahl
Julia Travers
Karin Wetmore
Send me your mailing address.*** I will get the books in the mail next week.
Here's to twelve more months of telling stories, reading Big Fat History Books together, taking road trips and other history nerd high jinks!
*Much appreciated, even though I don't always remember to say thank you.
**Which I sometimes do, now that I think of it. But I don't stand in the stacks and tell stories. Because that would be weird. Unlike, say, threatening the invasive plants in the front yard with bodily harm. There was no need for that dog-walker to look so alarmed this morning.
***By email, people. Do not post your address on the blog. Nothing good will come of that.