What do you think?
Rate this book
The Wrong Twin
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
- GenresFiction
332 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1921
7 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 1, 2020
As a twin - and quite possibly the wrong one too, certainly if you ask my mum - I was naturally attracted to this title.
Merle and Wilber Cowan are twins with very different temperaments, separated at the age of nine when the former is adopted by the wealthy Whipple family who want a son to carry on the family line.
Despite the greater maturity of Merle the reader becomes pretty quickly aware that he is actually the wrong twin, it's the reckless Wilber who actually demonstrates that folksy chutzpah so attractive to American authors beholden to the fine traditions of Mark Twain, which Wilson clearly was. This extract from a Whipple family conference is the first tip of the wink:
"Bright little chap no denying that," said Gideon. "Bright as a new penny, smart as a whip. Talks right. Other chap mumbles."
"Got the gumption, though."
That last observation was courtesy of Sharon Whipple, a lively old duffer who cheats at golf and could almost be a literary cousin of Samuel Clemens. Other sundry eccentrics include the twins biological father, a typesetter with wanderlust and a fondness for proselytising about evolution.
The first two chapters were rollicking fun where the young twins pick blackberries in the graveyard and run into the headstrong Patricia Whipple, a tomboy who wants to run away from home. She swaps clothes with Wilber and gives him the money she has stolen. He goes on a spending spree displaying his rashness as well as his generous nature.
As they grow older, Wilber tries his hand at various manly pursuits such as caddie and mechanic while Merle becomes that most unAmerican of all sinners, a socialist. WWI interrupts the pastoral ideal of sleepy Newbern and Wilber enlists. His patriotism was of the best kind in my view:
'you feel differently about a country if once you fight for it. His country had been only a name; he had merely ached to fight. Now he hated fighting; words could never tell how he loathed it; but his country had become more than a name. He would fight again for that.'
Wilson was part of that writer's colony in Carmel which included Jack London and Mary Austen. This is a thoroughly entertaining novel very much in the vein of the former's livelier works.
I really enjoyed it.
Merle and Wilber Cowan are twins with very different temperaments, separated at the age of nine when the former is adopted by the wealthy Whipple family who want a son to carry on the family line.
Despite the greater maturity of Merle the reader becomes pretty quickly aware that he is actually the wrong twin, it's the reckless Wilber who actually demonstrates that folksy chutzpah so attractive to American authors beholden to the fine traditions of Mark Twain, which Wilson clearly was. This extract from a Whipple family conference is the first tip of the wink:
"Bright little chap no denying that," said Gideon. "Bright as a new penny, smart as a whip. Talks right. Other chap mumbles."
"Got the gumption, though."
That last observation was courtesy of Sharon Whipple, a lively old duffer who cheats at golf and could almost be a literary cousin of Samuel Clemens. Other sundry eccentrics include the twins biological father, a typesetter with wanderlust and a fondness for proselytising about evolution.
The first two chapters were rollicking fun where the young twins pick blackberries in the graveyard and run into the headstrong Patricia Whipple, a tomboy who wants to run away from home. She swaps clothes with Wilber and gives him the money she has stolen. He goes on a spending spree displaying his rashness as well as his generous nature.
As they grow older, Wilber tries his hand at various manly pursuits such as caddie and mechanic while Merle becomes that most unAmerican of all sinners, a socialist. WWI interrupts the pastoral ideal of sleepy Newbern and Wilber enlists. His patriotism was of the best kind in my view:
'you feel differently about a country if once you fight for it. His country had been only a name; he had merely ached to fight. Now he hated fighting; words could never tell how he loathed it; but his country had become more than a name. He would fight again for that.'
Wilson was part of that writer's colony in Carmel which included Jack London and Mary Austen. This is a thoroughly entertaining novel very much in the vein of the former's livelier works.
I really enjoyed it.
March 6, 2014
Not bad.
For a time, in the late 1910s through the mid-1920s Harry Leon Wilson was a very popular author, his comic writings in the vein of Mark Twain: sympathetic but slightly-mocking accounts of rural America as it dealt with the coming of industrialized capitalism. This book is in that tradition, but came after a Wilson had undergone a course of reading in philosophy, which the book reflects--and which informs the the best character in the book.
The story tells of twins Wilbur and Merle, sons of Dave Cowan, a vagabond tramp. The two boys catch the attention of their small town's rich family and--in an improbable twist needed to get the plot moving--the family decides to adopt one of the boys. Dave agrees. The boys have no mother, but are instead raised by a family known to Dave, and with whom he stays when he bothers to be in town. The family chooses Merle, who is early revealed to be be something of a conniving snit. That's why Dave agrees to the arrangement--he thinks Wilbur a much better boy, a point agreed upon by the only member of the rich family with any sense: like Dave Cowan, Sharon Whipple is a person who makes his way by work and wit. He knows the Whipple family chose the wrong twin.
The rest of the book sets out to prove this thesis. Merle curdles in the lap of luxury, growing smug and stupid. Wilbur makes do with his own hand, learning golf and boxing and mechanics. With the approach of the Great War, Merle declares himself a socialist and opens a little magazine that attacks the conflict as the restless, inhuman rumblings of capitalism. Wilbur, meanwhile, goes to war--as do a boxer who trained him, the woman who raised him as her own, and the Whipple daughter Patricia. The war strengthens all of them and pairs them off.
On returning home, Wilbur learns from Sharon that his brother is in New York, continuing to agitate against the war and capitalism, a Bohemian manque: it is all a pose because each of the Whipples have been sending him money to support him, disliking his cause but loving him. Wilbur confronts him. Before, he had been cowed by Merle's intellect, but now he knows better: he has seen war, and though he hates the conflict, he has come to love his country and understand the world better than Merle. Showing his true colors, Merle relents and agrees to go home and make something of his life.
Wilson can be a mordant observer of life, and some of his observations are keen--they might be as good as Twain, though the prose is not up to the same level, and the story is completely forced: the above review contains spoilers, but almost anyone could anticipate the plot's unfolding after the moment Merle is adopted. The chapters also seem arbitrary, situated around scenes that read as though they were what Wilson wanted to write, not what would evolve organically out of the story's structure. Nonetheless, the book is a very quick read, even at over 350 pages.
Weaved through the book, its red thread, is a Spencerian philosophy. (From what I've read of Wilson, his stories combine well-wrought observations and polemic.) Life is competition. Capitalism is necessary. War and such conflicts are horrible, but mere blips in the course of events. Socialism is nonsense. He makes his point three ways: through the structure of the story, which finds Wilbur triumphant and Merle useless, coddled by too much wealth. He makes the point through the subsidiary characters as well: The sole man involved with the day-to-day raising of the Cowan boys is a judge who fakes injury to get financial support. The two women who follow Wilbur to war--through struggle--come out stronger and rewarded. The book is not subtle. At all.
The third way Wilson gets across his point is through lectures given by Dave Cowan. He is the books shining character, although he only appears for a brief bit near the beginning and toward the end. Even the families of the twins get more time devoted to them. Cowan argues that a man needs a "good loose trade"--a job that he can take with him anywhere. He himself sets type--and so is probably somewhat modeled on Wilson himself, who learned to set type at an early age and lived a peripatetic existence until he was well into his forties. Dave Cowan has it all worked out, and is constantly explaining life and world events in Spencerian terms. He is the most fun character, the lightest, and the most ambiguous, because he doesn't have to play a part in the morality play Wilson is telling, only explain it. Which he does, but always with a little self-deprecation: he constantly acknowledges that in his philosophy there is some "catch" he can sense but not quite put his finger on.
Worth a read.
For a time, in the late 1910s through the mid-1920s Harry Leon Wilson was a very popular author, his comic writings in the vein of Mark Twain: sympathetic but slightly-mocking accounts of rural America as it dealt with the coming of industrialized capitalism. This book is in that tradition, but came after a Wilson had undergone a course of reading in philosophy, which the book reflects--and which informs the the best character in the book.
The story tells of twins Wilbur and Merle, sons of Dave Cowan, a vagabond tramp. The two boys catch the attention of their small town's rich family and--in an improbable twist needed to get the plot moving--the family decides to adopt one of the boys. Dave agrees. The boys have no mother, but are instead raised by a family known to Dave, and with whom he stays when he bothers to be in town. The family chooses Merle, who is early revealed to be be something of a conniving snit. That's why Dave agrees to the arrangement--he thinks Wilbur a much better boy, a point agreed upon by the only member of the rich family with any sense: like Dave Cowan, Sharon Whipple is a person who makes his way by work and wit. He knows the Whipple family chose the wrong twin.
The rest of the book sets out to prove this thesis. Merle curdles in the lap of luxury, growing smug and stupid. Wilbur makes do with his own hand, learning golf and boxing and mechanics. With the approach of the Great War, Merle declares himself a socialist and opens a little magazine that attacks the conflict as the restless, inhuman rumblings of capitalism. Wilbur, meanwhile, goes to war--as do a boxer who trained him, the woman who raised him as her own, and the Whipple daughter Patricia. The war strengthens all of them and pairs them off.
On returning home, Wilbur learns from Sharon that his brother is in New York, continuing to agitate against the war and capitalism, a Bohemian manque: it is all a pose because each of the Whipples have been sending him money to support him, disliking his cause but loving him. Wilbur confronts him. Before, he had been cowed by Merle's intellect, but now he knows better: he has seen war, and though he hates the conflict, he has come to love his country and understand the world better than Merle. Showing his true colors, Merle relents and agrees to go home and make something of his life.
Wilson can be a mordant observer of life, and some of his observations are keen--they might be as good as Twain, though the prose is not up to the same level, and the story is completely forced: the above review contains spoilers, but almost anyone could anticipate the plot's unfolding after the moment Merle is adopted. The chapters also seem arbitrary, situated around scenes that read as though they were what Wilson wanted to write, not what would evolve organically out of the story's structure. Nonetheless, the book is a very quick read, even at over 350 pages.
Weaved through the book, its red thread, is a Spencerian philosophy. (From what I've read of Wilson, his stories combine well-wrought observations and polemic.) Life is competition. Capitalism is necessary. War and such conflicts are horrible, but mere blips in the course of events. Socialism is nonsense. He makes his point three ways: through the structure of the story, which finds Wilbur triumphant and Merle useless, coddled by too much wealth. He makes the point through the subsidiary characters as well: The sole man involved with the day-to-day raising of the Cowan boys is a judge who fakes injury to get financial support. The two women who follow Wilbur to war--through struggle--come out stronger and rewarded. The book is not subtle. At all.
The third way Wilson gets across his point is through lectures given by Dave Cowan. He is the books shining character, although he only appears for a brief bit near the beginning and toward the end. Even the families of the twins get more time devoted to them. Cowan argues that a man needs a "good loose trade"--a job that he can take with him anywhere. He himself sets type--and so is probably somewhat modeled on Wilson himself, who learned to set type at an early age and lived a peripatetic existence until he was well into his forties. Dave Cowan has it all worked out, and is constantly explaining life and world events in Spencerian terms. He is the most fun character, the lightest, and the most ambiguous, because he doesn't have to play a part in the morality play Wilson is telling, only explain it. Which he does, but always with a little self-deprecation: he constantly acknowledges that in his philosophy there is some "catch" he can sense but not quite put his finger on.
Worth a read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews