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Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography
Delves into the conflict between Clemens the man seeking success and Twain the man bound by morals
424 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1966
52 people are currently reading
870 people want to read
About the author
Justin Kaplan
40 books12 followersJustin Daniel "Joe" Kaplan was an American writer and editor. The general editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, he was best known as a biographer, particularly of Samuel Clemens, Lincoln Steffens, and Walt Whitman.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
September 5, 2022
I am always a bit disappointed when reviewers complain about a book not being the book they expected it to be but being a different book, the one that it in fact is. This book is exactly what it purports to be which is a history of this brilliant troubled man And the strange psychological divisions and byways of his genius and his tragic life. Filled with an intense longing for riches and fame, with a devoted to ration of his wife over whom and over his three daughters he never the less maintained and intense and at times suffocating control. He was plagued by guilt all of his life for a variety of early life misfortunes including the loss of his unsuccessful father and the tragic death of his brother, Henry. Professionally he played the jester and personally often played the fool. It’s a strange and magical history of a prolific writer who managed from the depths of his past to pull the novel which, to this day, is the searing soul of this troubled country: Huckleberry Finn.
September 7, 2010
This was a slog. I "speed-read" several passages. Howard Mumford Jones on the back says, "The richest, most subtle, and best-sustained analysis of Mark Twain anywhere to be found..." He may be right, but that's the trouble - this is a sustained
analysis
. The relentless psychological analysis bogged down the fascinating narrative of a complex life. Some books are written by scholars for other scholars. Others are written by scholars for general readership. This is one of the former. This book could have been half its length and five times more entertaining, if Kaplan had spent more time on the story of a life, rather than psychological underpinnings. A little "why" goes a long way when you're interested in the "who" and "what."
April 19, 2020
As excited as I was to read about Mark Twain, Kaplan's writing feels overtly wordy and unnecessarily flowery. It is as if he were trying to measure his own poetic and literary prowess with Twain himself. It also lacked linear clarity and jumped back and forth through his timeline in a frustrating way. Perhaps it is my own preference, but historical books, especially biographies, should have a chronological flow to them. Lacking this, the narrative of the work gets convoluted and the content suffers. I'm not well versed on Mark Twain, I dont read Mark Twain particularly, but you Justin Kaplan are no Mark Twain.
Long winded, blustery, written almost a half century later, with the same poppycock rambling prose Germain to the turn of the century, this book does less to illustrate the life and times of Twain and more to self satisfaction of the author, to the detriment of the readership.
Also, a glaring falsehood in the books overarching premise is the illusion that you will experience some duality of Twain and Clemens, which does not come across. There is a passing reference sporadically shoehorned in as if the title and premise of this dual tempered person was an afterthought when the manuscript had been completed.
Lastly, it unwittingly paints Twain as an asshole. I'm sure this is true of any turn of the century figures when looked at closely, but this recounting "speaks less to the heart and more to the sphincter" if I may quote Beavis of Beavis and Butthead. He of course was speaking about derivative grunge music and not poorly written biographies, but the comparison is apt and is more concise and descriptive than anything in this 300 some odd page of dribble.
Worth a buy, if you are low on toilet paper during this crisis.
Long winded, blustery, written almost a half century later, with the same poppycock rambling prose Germain to the turn of the century, this book does less to illustrate the life and times of Twain and more to self satisfaction of the author, to the detriment of the readership.
Also, a glaring falsehood in the books overarching premise is the illusion that you will experience some duality of Twain and Clemens, which does not come across. There is a passing reference sporadically shoehorned in as if the title and premise of this dual tempered person was an afterthought when the manuscript had been completed.
Lastly, it unwittingly paints Twain as an asshole. I'm sure this is true of any turn of the century figures when looked at closely, but this recounting "speaks less to the heart and more to the sphincter" if I may quote Beavis of Beavis and Butthead. He of course was speaking about derivative grunge music and not poorly written biographies, but the comparison is apt and is more concise and descriptive than anything in this 300 some odd page of dribble.
Worth a buy, if you are low on toilet paper during this crisis.
November 17, 2025
Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain is certainly one of the most fascinating characters who ever lived in America. I give this 1966 bio only 3 stars as it skips over Clemens' youth and begins with him in his early 20s, on the brink of success. The author is making a point-that were two men, Twain and Clemens-and they were in conflict. We think of Twain, the man who had piloted steamboats on the Mississippi and who satirized society, opposing all hypocrisy and sham. but, then, there was Mr. Clemens, successful Literary man who built his great palace in Hartford and hobnobbed with the rich. He came to symbolize the very Gilded Age that he despised. A contradiction? Yes and a very American one.
Interestingly, Clemens reached a high point in the early 1880s with his writing of "HUCKLEBERRY FINN." Then, there was a downward trajectory mainly caused by the failure of his scheme supporting the Paige typesetting machine, which never worked. He sank a fortune into the monster-and it ruined him. But, by the end of his life, Mark Twain became the celebrated figure with white hair and a white suit who was known around the world. He became one of the first great world celebrities and a sage whom the press loved to interview. This is the picture we still retain of the man today.
Interestingly, Clemens reached a high point in the early 1880s with his writing of "HUCKLEBERRY FINN." Then, there was a downward trajectory mainly caused by the failure of his scheme supporting the Paige typesetting machine, which never worked. He sank a fortune into the monster-and it ruined him. But, by the end of his life, Mark Twain became the celebrated figure with white hair and a white suit who was known around the world. He became one of the first great world celebrities and a sage whom the press loved to interview. This is the picture we still retain of the man today.
October 11, 2021
In speaking of a biography he was being urged to read, CS Lewis said in a letter that all lives, if condensed, turn into nearly unbearable tragedy.
The biographic case of the comic genius Mark Twain-- and Mr Clemens, the entity Kaplan will have you thinking is Twain's psychological double-- is perhaps a startling example of that. This is a really touching, interesting, informative, and desperately sad picture of a guy who appears to have had no control over his own emotions, and even very little control over his artistic gifts. Mr Clemens was surrounded by failure and poverty, then success and money, and was crippled by both.
It's kind of a wonder he made it through life without killing himself or someone else.
But since he was a great humorist and in a way a great ethicist, let's end with some advice. Don't, he says, drink, smoke, or marry to excess.
Indeed.
The biographic case of the comic genius Mark Twain-- and Mr Clemens, the entity Kaplan will have you thinking is Twain's psychological double-- is perhaps a startling example of that. This is a really touching, interesting, informative, and desperately sad picture of a guy who appears to have had no control over his own emotions, and even very little control over his artistic gifts. Mr Clemens was surrounded by failure and poverty, then success and money, and was crippled by both.
It's kind of a wonder he made it through life without killing himself or someone else.
But since he was a great humorist and in a way a great ethicist, let's end with some advice. Don't, he says, drink, smoke, or marry to excess.
Indeed.
July 9, 2017
I have to revisit a video of the old Hal Holbrook one man show to better appreciate it. As the book Preface says, this is about the "central drama of his mature literary life"...the "discovery of the usable past". It does not cover his early years in the south, on the river and in the west, but his "self-redefinition" starting in his thirties into Mark Twain, the humorist and writer. Its a great book about the "gilded age" and a very complicated man.
November 5, 2021
Kaplan's writing got me. I was captured by the prose and the skillful portrayal of a life. Directly as a result of this book, I became much more interested in Mark Twain and his amazing 'lived' life. This work was praised by Ron Powers who wrote a much 'fuller' biography than Kaplan. If this doesn't make you want to read more Twain or investigate his life more fully, probably nothing will.
December 3, 2017
B. The story of the literary genius who defined post-Civil War America, a nation finding itself again.
(I don't remember where I stole that sentence from!)
(I don't remember where I stole that sentence from!)
August 14, 2025
Someone said of Mark Twain: “He is traveled and worldly, but he has an air of surprised innocence, and he manages to be a man and a boy at the same time.”
In the throes of composing “The Innocents Abroad” he writes to a friend, “I am going to settle down someday, even if I have to do it in a cemetery.” This was his early blockbuster book with sales in the upper thousands. He received $.19 royalty per copy sold. Door to door salesmen got $1 per book. It sold slow but steadily.
His truthfulness and sarcastic wit was endless. He described France as: “…a country without morals, ruled by prostitutes, and populated by filthy-minded citizens who were the connecting links between man and monkey.”
His description of himself was “born lazy.”
He wrote of Commodore Vanderbilt: “But you! You have got 70 millions and you need 500 millions, and are really suffering for it. Your poverty is something appalling.” The very ugly truth of the wealthy.
He called one lecturer a “perambulating sack of chloroform.”
He opined, “Every man is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”
He supported his mother at $35 per month and his sister, Pamela too, who had 2 children and cared for their mother.
Lamenting his job at the Buffalo “Express” newspaper, “I shall always confine myself to the truth, except when it’s attended with inconvenience.” Clemens and his political editor would swap manuscripts in the middle and finish each other’s piece, when they got “stuck.”
He was visited in his new mansion, gifted to him by his father-in-law, by an IRS agent who aimed to claim 5% on anything earned over $1,000.00. Not knowing who he was, Clemens bragged about earning around $214,000.00, from lecturing, newspaper, and book royalties of $190,000.00.
He built a monstrous “gingerbread-like house” in Hartford, Connecticut which a sentence described perfectly. “But to own this house, Clemens soon discovered, was like being chained to a tiger.”
He said his life was “one long apology” and that he spent the greater part on his knees begging forgiveness.
“…he attributed his good health to the fact that he took no exercise, drank in the morning and again in the evening, and smoked continuously, with all his might when he was working.”
His investment in a typesetting machine invention did him in financially. He undermined his wife’s religious faith and told his daughters how vile the human race was. They were unable to live in their gingerbread house again because it was too expensive. Forced to economize they rented it out. In 1900, after becoming financially sound again, he turned down $10,000 for 10 lectures.
In wearing white suits during the final years of his life, “he seemed to be realizing an ambition to be the ‘most conspicuous person on the planet.’”
A man of money for most of his life , Samuel Clemens “was Andrew Carnegie’s crony and dinner companion…”
Twain fought the duplicity of Christianity. He described Christendom, “…with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies…hide the looking-glass.” He said the United States “is a Christian country, and so is hell.”
Alas, when his beloved wife, Livy, was dying he realized he’d taken from her the comfort and solace of religion.
This is not a great “review,” but one cannot nail down Mark Twain. He was clear-eyed about good and evil and called it out, especially negro lynchings. His moral compass was foggy when it came to his rich friends, as we see with everyone nowadays. The rich get a pass, I can’t see why.
Life altering book for me, though badly written. It took me a month to read. A paragraph should not continue for 2 pages.
In the throes of composing “The Innocents Abroad” he writes to a friend, “I am going to settle down someday, even if I have to do it in a cemetery.” This was his early blockbuster book with sales in the upper thousands. He received $.19 royalty per copy sold. Door to door salesmen got $1 per book. It sold slow but steadily.
His truthfulness and sarcastic wit was endless. He described France as: “…a country without morals, ruled by prostitutes, and populated by filthy-minded citizens who were the connecting links between man and monkey.”
His description of himself was “born lazy.”
He wrote of Commodore Vanderbilt: “But you! You have got 70 millions and you need 500 millions, and are really suffering for it. Your poverty is something appalling.” The very ugly truth of the wealthy.
He called one lecturer a “perambulating sack of chloroform.”
He opined, “Every man is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”
He supported his mother at $35 per month and his sister, Pamela too, who had 2 children and cared for their mother.
Lamenting his job at the Buffalo “Express” newspaper, “I shall always confine myself to the truth, except when it’s attended with inconvenience.” Clemens and his political editor would swap manuscripts in the middle and finish each other’s piece, when they got “stuck.”
He was visited in his new mansion, gifted to him by his father-in-law, by an IRS agent who aimed to claim 5% on anything earned over $1,000.00. Not knowing who he was, Clemens bragged about earning around $214,000.00, from lecturing, newspaper, and book royalties of $190,000.00.
He built a monstrous “gingerbread-like house” in Hartford, Connecticut which a sentence described perfectly. “But to own this house, Clemens soon discovered, was like being chained to a tiger.”
He said his life was “one long apology” and that he spent the greater part on his knees begging forgiveness.
“…he attributed his good health to the fact that he took no exercise, drank in the morning and again in the evening, and smoked continuously, with all his might when he was working.”
His investment in a typesetting machine invention did him in financially. He undermined his wife’s religious faith and told his daughters how vile the human race was. They were unable to live in their gingerbread house again because it was too expensive. Forced to economize they rented it out. In 1900, after becoming financially sound again, he turned down $10,000 for 10 lectures.
In wearing white suits during the final years of his life, “he seemed to be realizing an ambition to be the ‘most conspicuous person on the planet.’”
A man of money for most of his life , Samuel Clemens “was Andrew Carnegie’s crony and dinner companion…”
Twain fought the duplicity of Christianity. He described Christendom, “…with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies…hide the looking-glass.” He said the United States “is a Christian country, and so is hell.”
Alas, when his beloved wife, Livy, was dying he realized he’d taken from her the comfort and solace of religion.
This is not a great “review,” but one cannot nail down Mark Twain. He was clear-eyed about good and evil and called it out, especially negro lynchings. His moral compass was foggy when it came to his rich friends, as we see with everyone nowadays. The rich get a pass, I can’t see why.
Life altering book for me, though badly written. It took me a month to read. A paragraph should not continue for 2 pages.
November 12, 2016
Still reading.
Notes/excerpts:
p 281: The Yankee and his machine "were twinned in his mind. Both were tests of a perfectible world in which, contrary to all his insights and experience, friction and mechanical difficulties were equivalents of ignorance and superstition. ... The ambivalences, disillusions, destructive fury, and finally, homicidal tantrums of the novel were fire drills in his imagination for the actual failure of the machine, machine values, and his dream of capitalist democracy in which he expected to be a tycoon among tycoons."
p 293: Clemens managed to finish Yankee in May 1889, four and a half years after reading Morte d'Arthur
p 298: Working 7 hours a day on his book, Clemens was tense and anxious, unable to sleep at night. He sat up late, smoking and thinking---"not pleasantly." "I want relief of mind," he complained ... "The fun, which was abounding in the Yankee up to 3 days ago, has slumped into funereal sadness, and this will not do---it will not answer at all. The very title of the book requires fun, and it must be furnished. But it can't be done, I see, while this cloud hangs over the [machine] workshop."
Notes/excerpts:
p 281: The Yankee and his machine "were twinned in his mind. Both were tests of a perfectible world in which, contrary to all his insights and experience, friction and mechanical difficulties were equivalents of ignorance and superstition. ... The ambivalences, disillusions, destructive fury, and finally, homicidal tantrums of the novel were fire drills in his imagination for the actual failure of the machine, machine values, and his dream of capitalist democracy in which he expected to be a tycoon among tycoons."
p 293: Clemens managed to finish Yankee in May 1889, four and a half years after reading Morte d'Arthur
p 298: Working 7 hours a day on his book, Clemens was tense and anxious, unable to sleep at night. He sat up late, smoking and thinking---"not pleasantly." "I want relief of mind," he complained ... "The fun, which was abounding in the Yankee up to 3 days ago, has slumped into funereal sadness, and this will not do---it will not answer at all. The very title of the book requires fun, and it must be furnished. But it can't be done, I see, while this cloud hangs over the [machine] workshop."
November 6, 2024
Not my favorite of biographies. Kaplan starts in the middle of Twain's life, assuming that his readers have already read other biographies or Twain's autobiography, and then jumps around through the rest of Twain's life with little heed to chronology, making it challenging to for readers who like to know where they are in the timeline.
Still, it's a respectable biography of a fascinating man who looms large in American literature. Just not one that I would necessary recommend for a casual reader.
Still, it's a respectable biography of a fascinating man who looms large in American literature. Just not one that I would necessary recommend for a casual reader.
April 1, 2018
A biography of Sam Clemens. He was a very street smart reporter who had dreams of being fabulously wealthy, so he invested in a poorly constructed printing press which bankrupted him. He was a strange mix of brilliance and incredible naivete. 6-96
July 29, 2025
Read to page 50 and then abandoned. Just wasn’t interesting to me. Too many extraneous characters and too much emphasis on Twain’s mental health. I might have found it more interesting if it began with more biographical information on Twain’s early years.
February 3, 2025
Written with a lot of heart and understanding.
September 18, 2025
a little boring.
July 10, 2020
Biography about Mark Twain and the differences between the man and the writer.
April 18, 2017
I enjoyed the book, however, I felt that it was almost too flourished to be a proper biography. It was more focused on Samuel Clemen's behavior, and less on what he had actually accomplished. Personally, I had never really had much information on Mark Twain, only the books that he was attributed to, long with the fact that he was born and died on Halley's Comet. As a result of this, I learned about Mark Twain's character, and Mark Twain versus Samuel Clemens. I definitely liked this unique and intimate view of a fascinating and esoteric character. However, the downside of this was that I did not learn as much about what he actually contributed, or what else he released.
Another issue that I had with this book was that there was no focus on his childhood. If this book chose to be a psychological study of Samuel Clemens, then the fact that this is lacking in his childhood makes it almost not as effective as the book could be. I believe that the childhood is almost essential to a psychological analysis of a figure. Also, the events start at a very late age of his life, where he is about prepared to adopt the name Mark Twain, and so on. This also was very bothersome, and even Kaplan's justification for the omission of these did not sway me.
The writing style, although lengthy, was interesting and made it a much more interesting read than having to hear fact after fact after fact. Instead, the decorated descriptions made the read much more compelling.
Another issue that I had with this book was that there was no focus on his childhood. If this book chose to be a psychological study of Samuel Clemens, then the fact that this is lacking in his childhood makes it almost not as effective as the book could be. I believe that the childhood is almost essential to a psychological analysis of a figure. Also, the events start at a very late age of his life, where he is about prepared to adopt the name Mark Twain, and so on. This also was very bothersome, and even Kaplan's justification for the omission of these did not sway me.
The writing style, although lengthy, was interesting and made it a much more interesting read than having to hear fact after fact after fact. Instead, the decorated descriptions made the read much more compelling.
November 19, 2014
Very interesting examination of Twain's literary life. The biography begins when he started writing so there's nothing about his childhood in Missouri. It did a good job portraying a life lived in the tension between the Southern, non-conformist, backwoods, voice of the people and the celebrity writer who desired all that the gilded age had to offer. The book ends with the lines "To the end he remained as much an enigma and prodigy to himself as he was to the thousands at the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York who filed past the casket, topped with a single wreath of laurel, where he lay in a white suit." He was a complicated man who lived in a world of incongruity and paradox and this book communicates this well.
May 2, 2011
Written in 1966, it reads a little dry these days. I wish Kaplan had delved more into Clemens' personal demons and/or the content of his literature and its impact on Gilded Age culture and spent less time on his finances and correspondence with friends and confederates regarding same. The center of Clemens' story, in Kaplan's telling, is his obsessive and utterly doomed investment in an invention that he saw as revolutionary but was in fact outdated before it could even be perfected (which it never was), the Paige typesetter. This emphasis, even more than the premature deaths of 3 of Clemens' 4 children, gives the book a tragic tone that sprinklings of Clemens' wit can't really alleviate.
June 17, 2014
Finally finished. It was one of the most difficult books I've ever read. It was so anecdotal and full of detail that you had to read it almost word for word.
It was interesting in parts but dragged in others.I never realized what a "tormented" soul Clemens was. His critical decision making was at best suspect. The author tries to show the fine line between the real man Samuel Clemens and his alter ego, Mark Twain the humorist. The reader must decide and after plowing through a book like this I'm not quite sure I can. My favorite part was the Grant memoirs and Twain's role in their publication.
It was interesting in parts but dragged in others.I never realized what a "tormented" soul Clemens was. His critical decision making was at best suspect. The author tries to show the fine line between the real man Samuel Clemens and his alter ego, Mark Twain the humorist. The reader must decide and after plowing through a book like this I'm not quite sure I can. My favorite part was the Grant memoirs and Twain's role in their publication.
February 17, 2009
Interesting bio in that it starts in medias res, with Twain already grown into his pseudonym and his vocation as a humorist, writing and working in San Francisco. Twain came to his vocation late, so this means that many years are skipped over. But it allows the biographer to focus more on the Twain we care about, and the one who in any event, mined his earlier years thoroughly for his stories. Still, if you were looking for a cradle-to-grave account, this ain't it.
July 26, 2014
This is a fascinating biography of the two characters invented by their author: Samuel Clemens & Mark Twain---and the Jekyll and Hyde relationship between the two. Clemens/Twain was a great humorist and at his best in some of his writings or onstage, something Hal Holbrook seems to capture well. But he was a bitter and angry man, too. If you want to read behind the personae created by Twain, this is a good and deep exploration.
July 5, 2011
A brilliantly written analysis of an author's life--a life that has to be closely studied to be believed. Twain was truly one of a kind--eccentric yet conformist, a southerner yet a northerner, in myriad ways a paradox of a human being. I just finished reading this book (7/3/11), and I recommend it to anyone who wants to get a greater appreciation for the art of biography.
July 7, 2013
A Mark Twain biography with most of its emphasis on the dollars and cents of his career; eg, goes on and on about his bad investment in a typesetting machine but the only thing he has to say about *Tom Sawyer* is that it didn't sell well. The writing and research level is top notch, but little to nothing about Twains's art.
March 5, 2008
If you like Twain, read this biography. It is excellent.
March 21, 2009
Kind of a sad story. He goes bankrupt after he spends all his money on a typesetting machine. KEY LESSON: WRITERS SHOULD WRITE AND NOT GET DISTRACTED.
February 14, 2010
Decent biography; a bit more objective and far less Freudian than anything Van Wyck Brooks ever wrote.
August 27, 2013
Kind of old school.
There are better books out on Twain.
But props to Justin Kaplan for being one of the first to tell the truth about Twain.
There are better books out on Twain.
But props to Justin Kaplan for being one of the first to tell the truth about Twain.
April 10, 2014
Very Enjoyable
July 3, 2015
The book is well researched but so ponderous and dry that I could not help feeling that it shared none of the passion that animated its subject and made him so beloved.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews