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The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature
An extraordinary portrait of a fast-changing America—and the Western writers who gave voice to its emerging identity
At once an intimate portrait of an unforgettable group of writers and a history of a cultural revolution in America, The Bohemians reveals how a brief moment on the far western frontier changed our culture forever. Beginning with Mark Twain’s arrival in San Francisco in 1863, this group biography introduces readers to the other young eccentric writers seeking to create a new American voice at the country’s edge—literary golden boy Bret Harte; struggling gay poet Charles Warren Stoddard; and beautiful, haunted Ina Coolbrith, poet and protector of the group. Ben Tarnoff’s elegant, atmospheric history reveals how these four pioneering writers helped spread the Bohemian movement throughout the world, transforming American literature along the way.
“Tarnoff’s book sings with the humor and expansiveness of his subjects’ prose, capturing the intoxicating atmosphere of possibility that defined, for a time, America’s frontier.” -- The New Yorker
“Rich hauls of historical research, deeply excavated but lightly borne.... Mr. Tarnoff’s ultimate thesis is a strong one, strongly that together these writers ‘helped pry American literature away from its provincial origins in New England and push it into a broader current’.” -- Wall Street Journal
At once an intimate portrait of an unforgettable group of writers and a history of a cultural revolution in America, The Bohemians reveals how a brief moment on the far western frontier changed our culture forever. Beginning with Mark Twain’s arrival in San Francisco in 1863, this group biography introduces readers to the other young eccentric writers seeking to create a new American voice at the country’s edge—literary golden boy Bret Harte; struggling gay poet Charles Warren Stoddard; and beautiful, haunted Ina Coolbrith, poet and protector of the group. Ben Tarnoff’s elegant, atmospheric history reveals how these four pioneering writers helped spread the Bohemian movement throughout the world, transforming American literature along the way.
“Tarnoff’s book sings with the humor and expansiveness of his subjects’ prose, capturing the intoxicating atmosphere of possibility that defined, for a time, America’s frontier.” -- The New Yorker
“Rich hauls of historical research, deeply excavated but lightly borne.... Mr. Tarnoff’s ultimate thesis is a strong one, strongly that together these writers ‘helped pry American literature away from its provincial origins in New England and push it into a broader current’.” -- Wall Street Journal
335 pages, Paperback
First published March 20, 2014
142 people are currently reading
2578 people want to read
About the author
Ben Tarnoff
29 books52 followersBen Tarnoff is a tech worker, writer, and co-founder of Logic Magazine. His most recent book is Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do—and How They Do It, co-authored with Moira Weigel. He has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Republic, and Jacobin.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 150 reviews
June 26, 2024
Ben Tarnoff’s title, The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature, lands somewhere near truth. Mark Twain undoubtedly reinvented American literature. And San Francisco, with its isolation from the conventions of the East Coast literary establishment, definitely played a role in shaping Mark Twain’s unique voice. But beyond that, Tarnoff’s title and book veer away from verisimilitude. Despite decent story telling, Tarnoff simply does not make a case that either Charles Warren Stoddard or Ina Coolbirth had any significant role in the recreation of American literature, nor that Bret Harte had more than a minor role in that enterprise.
What Tarnoff’s book does best is to paint a picture of 1860s San Francisco as an ideal incubator for shaping a new American voice. It was urban, with a higher rate of literacy than the rest of the country, yet still surrounded by frontier and rough mining camps, forming a unique environment for fostering creativity. Tarnoff writes:
”The city held many advantages for the young iconoclast. Its isolation didn’t provide just a refuge from the war, but a safe haven from the conventions of the Eastern establishment. It was a city where eccentricities caused no astonishment.”
Bret Harte, who had taken to speaking of himself and his friends as “bohemians,” put the virtues of the city more poetically:
”Bohemia has never been located geographically, but any clear day when the sun is going down, if you mount Telegraph Hill, you shall see its pleasant valleys and cloud capped hills glittering in the west like Spanish castles.”
Tarnoff’s treatment of Bret Harte seemed more relevant to the story than his inclusion of Stoddard and Coolbirth. Harte actually had a head start on Mark Twain as the literary voice of the West before his star fizzled, and his friendship/rivalry with Mark Twain had some impact on both writers. Harte captured the attention of the East coast establishment before Twain, which both nettled Twain’s competitive instincts and drove him forward. Harte also edited Twain’s first book, The Innocents Abroad, which almost certainly would not have been such a smashing success without his help. I found myself wishing that Tarnoff would have written a book about the relationship of these two fascinating frenemies rather than the one he did write.
What Tarnoff’s book does best is to paint a picture of 1860s San Francisco as an ideal incubator for shaping a new American voice. It was urban, with a higher rate of literacy than the rest of the country, yet still surrounded by frontier and rough mining camps, forming a unique environment for fostering creativity. Tarnoff writes:
”The city held many advantages for the young iconoclast. Its isolation didn’t provide just a refuge from the war, but a safe haven from the conventions of the Eastern establishment. It was a city where eccentricities caused no astonishment.”
Bret Harte, who had taken to speaking of himself and his friends as “bohemians,” put the virtues of the city more poetically:
”Bohemia has never been located geographically, but any clear day when the sun is going down, if you mount Telegraph Hill, you shall see its pleasant valleys and cloud capped hills glittering in the west like Spanish castles.”
Tarnoff’s treatment of Bret Harte seemed more relevant to the story than his inclusion of Stoddard and Coolbirth. Harte actually had a head start on Mark Twain as the literary voice of the West before his star fizzled, and his friendship/rivalry with Mark Twain had some impact on both writers. Harte captured the attention of the East coast establishment before Twain, which both nettled Twain’s competitive instincts and drove him forward. Harte also edited Twain’s first book, The Innocents Abroad, which almost certainly would not have been such a smashing success without his help. I found myself wishing that Tarnoff would have written a book about the relationship of these two fascinating frenemies rather than the one he did write.
April 13, 2016
GOODREADS FIRST READS REVIEW
In The Bohemians, Ben Tarnoff describes how Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Ina Coolbrith interacted with and were influenced both personally and professionally by one another in San Francisco during and immediately after the Civil War before transforming American literature. It is not only the story of four writers of cultural significance, but of the shining, optimistic early history of California and Far West in relation to the established East.
The main focus of the book as stated clearly in the subtitle is Twain with Harte as the clear secondary focus. Tarnoff describes the lives of both men before their meeting in San Francisco, their working relationship with one another, their mutual influences on one another, and their at first subtle then overt rivalry. The book’s narrative essentially ends when Harte leaves for Europe in 1878, never to return to the United States. If Tarnoff had written about the two men who brought the western literary tradition into acceptance in the New England-dominated American literary establishment only to veer off into different directions, he would have succeeded.
However the inclusion of and subsequence failure to properly include Stoddard and Coolbrith into the account undermines Tarnoff’s work. Both Stoddard and Coolbrith come off by the end of the book as very minor in their work and accomplishments, which in the case of Coolbrith is literally a slap in the face. While Stoddard had a working relationship in some capacity to both Twain and Harte as well as his own poetry and prose, Coolbrith’s later elevation to California poet laureate as well as her interesting friendships and experiences both inside and outside her domestic cage are ignored. In the end their inclusion comes off as being due to sexual orientation and gender than their actual achievements.
The Bohemians gives an insight into how the western branch of American literature sprung up and was intertwined with that of the Eastern establishment to create the cultural landscape we experience today. Twain, Harte, and the early history of California and the Far West are highlights of the book, however the use of Stoddard and Coolbrith as glorified window-dressing is the major downside. If given the option I would have given 3 ½ stars, after careful consideration I thought 4 would have been too high.
In The Bohemians, Ben Tarnoff describes how Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Ina Coolbrith interacted with and were influenced both personally and professionally by one another in San Francisco during and immediately after the Civil War before transforming American literature. It is not only the story of four writers of cultural significance, but of the shining, optimistic early history of California and Far West in relation to the established East.
The main focus of the book as stated clearly in the subtitle is Twain with Harte as the clear secondary focus. Tarnoff describes the lives of both men before their meeting in San Francisco, their working relationship with one another, their mutual influences on one another, and their at first subtle then overt rivalry. The book’s narrative essentially ends when Harte leaves for Europe in 1878, never to return to the United States. If Tarnoff had written about the two men who brought the western literary tradition into acceptance in the New England-dominated American literary establishment only to veer off into different directions, he would have succeeded.
However the inclusion of and subsequence failure to properly include Stoddard and Coolbrith into the account undermines Tarnoff’s work. Both Stoddard and Coolbrith come off by the end of the book as very minor in their work and accomplishments, which in the case of Coolbrith is literally a slap in the face. While Stoddard had a working relationship in some capacity to both Twain and Harte as well as his own poetry and prose, Coolbrith’s later elevation to California poet laureate as well as her interesting friendships and experiences both inside and outside her domestic cage are ignored. In the end their inclusion comes off as being due to sexual orientation and gender than their actual achievements.
The Bohemians gives an insight into how the western branch of American literature sprung up and was intertwined with that of the Eastern establishment to create the cultural landscape we experience today. Twain, Harte, and the early history of California and the Far West are highlights of the book, however the use of Stoddard and Coolbrith as glorified window-dressing is the major downside. If given the option I would have given 3 ½ stars, after careful consideration I thought 4 would have been too high.
April 22, 2014
The Bohemians includes a young Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Stoddard and Ina Coolbirth, though this book really only gives one an in depth view of Harte and Twain. What I liked most about this book was the wonderful history presented within.
San Francisco, mid eighteen hundreds, many arrive fleeing the Civil War and the need to fight. The changes wrought by the power of the written word as newspapers and literary journals abound, providing unlimited access to the news as well as current literature. The advent of the railroad, making everything so much more accessible and the flock of people who know make their living and lives in the west. So many characters make the west the place to be. The drinking, the parties, gambling and of course prostitution make it easy to fulfill every desire.
Follows the lives of Twain, and Harter from their arrival through to their eventual departure. This stay in San Francisco at this time would forever mark the way they wrote and the things they wrote about. Interesting facts. Entertaining reading.
San Francisco, mid eighteen hundreds, many arrive fleeing the Civil War and the need to fight. The changes wrought by the power of the written word as newspapers and literary journals abound, providing unlimited access to the news as well as current literature. The advent of the railroad, making everything so much more accessible and the flock of people who know make their living and lives in the west. So many characters make the west the place to be. The drinking, the parties, gambling and of course prostitution make it easy to fulfill every desire.
Follows the lives of Twain, and Harter from their arrival through to their eventual departure. This stay in San Francisco at this time would forever mark the way they wrote and the things they wrote about. Interesting facts. Entertaining reading.
November 5, 2020
A good literary biography of four young authors “ The Bohemians” who honed their craft and began developing outside the Eastern literary establishment in the 1860s San Francisco area. I’ve read biographies of Twain before, but there is new information here. Harte, Stoddard and Coolbrith are interesting too.
January 17, 2018
I love San Francisco/Bay Area history so when I saw this book was not only about SF history but also about writers, I grabbed it. Overall, I really enjoyed it. Tarnoff struck a good balance between describing the history of the area long with the lives of the Bohemian writers of the mid-19th century who lived and discovered their literary voices there. I also appreciated that Tarnoff wrote a more straight-forward book rather than the more creative nonfiction type of book that seems to be popular these days where authors make up a lot of the dialogue and events that happened as if it were a story (which can sometimes get a little annoying for me). I saw a side of Mark Twain in this book that I didn't realize he had (and it wasn't always a nice one). My only complaint is that the last 30% of the book (at least my version) was all notes and acknowledgements which made for a much shorter book than promised. But definitely worth a read for anyone interested in literary societies of the past or in San Francisco Bay Area history.
Read
June 29, 2017How fitting that I picked this book up in San Francisco at Alexander's Book Company. This is a well-researched look at a point in time in California's history and the beginning of a new kind of American literature. The focus is on Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard and Ina Coolbrith and the main focus is on the 1860s between the Civil War and the depression of 1870s.
January 21, 2023
Fascinating history about Mark Twain’s early years as a writer. He left Missouri to avoid the Civil War and headed west. There he worked for various newspapers and magazines while he figured out who he was as a writer and a man. He was part of a vanguard of the pacific coast frontier literati, which struggled to be taken seriously by the aristocratic east. This book did a great job painting a picture of the self-styled Bohemians, a group which included Twain, but also Bret Harte, Ina Coolbrith, and Charles Warren Stoddard, each of whom contributed to the changing direction of American literature in their own way. I appreciate how the author painted the picture of these creatives, showing us their strengths and weaknesses, and how they played off each other to bring a voice to the frontier. San Francisco just after the civil war ended, but just before the transcontinental railroad was completed, was an utterly unique time and place, and these writers were forged there. I have read my fair share of Mark Twain, but I knew almost nothing about his career trajectory and formative experiences as an up and coming writer, and contextualizing his works with his life experiences has helped my picture of this era come into focus. Mark Twain is perhaps the most consequential novelist in American History, and I loved reading about the relationships that fostered his ascent.
January 18, 2015
I received this book as a digital ARC from the publisher through Net Galley in return for an honest review.
This book describes the lives of Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Ina Coolbrith and Charles Warren Stoddard. They were the main writers of the “Bohemian” movement in San Francisco in the late 19th century.
Location 42:
By the 1860s, the city had spawned on extraordinary literary scene - a band of outsiders called the Bohemians. Twain joined their ranks, and the encounter would shape the entire current of his life.
Despite the fact that the author gave a certain emphasis on Mark Twain’s literary career, their work progressed as well as Twain’s.
About the Bohemians:
Location 54:
The Bohemians were nonconformists by choice or by circumstance, and they eased their isolation by forming intense friendships with one another.
Location 64:
The Bohemians would bring a fresh spirit to American writing, drawn from the new world being formed in the Far West. If the gold guard of American literature was genteel, moralistic, grandiose, then the Bohemians would be ironic and irreverent.
Location 762:
Together they would do more than anyone of the era to put the Far West on the national stage.
Location 3213:
A group called the Bohemian Club started in 1872, had briefly offered hope of keeping San Francisco’s creative energy alive.
Location 3219:
By the time Oscar Wilde stopped by in 1882, the transformation was complete. “I never saw so many well-dressed, welled, business-looking Bohemians in my life,” he remarked.
About Mark Twain:
Location 113:
—“mark twain” meant “two fathoms,” a phrase that could signal safety or danger depending on the ship’s location.
Location 1602:
But Hawaii wasn’t purely a vacation: it also gave Twain invaluable training in travel writing, the genre that would produce his first major book, The Innocents Abroad.
Location 2617:
Roughing It would be part fiction, part fact: the story of the six most formative years of his life, beginning with that fateful day in 1861 when he boarded a stagecoach with his brother Orion and fled the Civil War for the far frontier beyond the plains.
Location 2881:
No wonder Twain loved England: it gave him the legitimacy he always wanted.
Location 2903:
If The Innocents Abroad and Roughing IT showed a young country struggling up to adulthood, The Gilded Age would be the story of its growing pains.
Location 2971-72:
Yet for all its faults, The Gilded Age represented a major step forward for Twain. It was his first novel, and his first published attempt to put his boyhood memories into a full-length work of fiction.
About Bret Harte:
Location 2443:
In the coming years, the The Heathen Chinee would become a rallying cry and a recruiting tool for the crusade against Chinese immigration.
Location 2719:
For years, he had mentored them. He had given them a platform,a Bohemia to belong to. Then he went East and slammed the door shut behind him.
Location 3024-28:
Harte had lost his sense of early California as a cosmic joke. He now eulogized the pruners with the same rhetoric he once ridiculed. In fact, his description of the miners of 1849 - an “Argonaut brotherhood” of “jauntily insolent” young Americans - sounded curiously like another frontier fraternity: the Bohemians of the Pacific coast.
About Ina Coolbrith:
Location 440:
Tragedy changed her. It bred a depressive streak that tempered the wilder impulses of her girlhood, made her reticent, yet also unusually solicitous toward people in pain.
About Charles Warren Stoddard:
Location 1437:
“Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” still reads brilliantly, but it’s not as funny now as it was when it first appeared.
Location 2749:
South-Sea Idyls would be an anti-travelogue in the tradition of Twain’s Roughing It.
Concluding remarks:
Location 3218:
Bt becoming “Bohemians,” California’s postwar parvenus could playact at glamorous poverty. They could pretend that art, not money, was what united them.
Location 3272:
For Harte, Stoddard and Coolbrith, Bohemia had meant the best years of their lives.
I found this book a masterpiece of the American literary criticism, to be read by all fans of American fiction.
October 21, 2014
That the Civil War was a watershed moment in American history goes without saying. It was also a harbinger of many changes, both societal and psychological that helped define the Industrial Era. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature by Ben Tarnoff tells the tale of a revolution that is just as important to people who love books and literature, American or not.
Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens, is one of four people featured in this fascinating piece of history. Lesser known to us now, but not so then, we also get the inter-twined tales of Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard and Ina Coolbrith. Mr. Tarnoff takes us from the early careers and lives of these writers and editors who helped shape the new literary landscape, and shows us the ways that their lives and careers took shape in the crucible of San Francisco, a city that was at once sophisticated and rough-and-tumble at the same time.
Mr. Tarnoff does a great job of sharing time between all of his varied characters, showing their faults and foibles alongside their triumphs, and placing them in their proper context as the leaders of a movement that would shift American literature away from stuffy New England classrooms to the mining camps and raucous cities of the West and mid-West. Despite his fairness and even-handedness Twain ends up dominating the book, and it is no fault of the author's, or the characters about whom he writes. All of the featured characters stories are interesting and often moving, particularly Ms. Coolbrith, but Twain was a once in a lifetime talent, with a personality to match. It is a testament to Mr. Tarnoff's skill that the rest of the Bohemians hold their own with one of America's Great writers.
This book is well-researched but reads like a novel, never letting the story lag so that the author can pontificate about an historical point he wishes to make. Of particular interest are the early days of the forming of the Bohemians, when all of these disparate characters, and many others who the writer brings to life deftly, all come together at the end of the Civil War. The literary scene of that time was to me both stunningly and amusing rowdy, with fact and fiction mingling with an extent that borders on being called Gonzo. The same can be said of the behavior of many of the writers, in particular Twain, who seems to have spent almost as much time fighting and feuding as he did writing. As the book continues Mr. Tarnoff shows us how each of his principle characters left an indelible footprint on the making of modern American Literature, and he makes it all a great deal of fun. They may seem rather undignified for a book about History and Literature to some, but seems perfect for a book about this group of Bohemians.
Review by: Mark Palm
Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens, is one of four people featured in this fascinating piece of history. Lesser known to us now, but not so then, we also get the inter-twined tales of Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard and Ina Coolbrith. Mr. Tarnoff takes us from the early careers and lives of these writers and editors who helped shape the new literary landscape, and shows us the ways that their lives and careers took shape in the crucible of San Francisco, a city that was at once sophisticated and rough-and-tumble at the same time.
Mr. Tarnoff does a great job of sharing time between all of his varied characters, showing their faults and foibles alongside their triumphs, and placing them in their proper context as the leaders of a movement that would shift American literature away from stuffy New England classrooms to the mining camps and raucous cities of the West and mid-West. Despite his fairness and even-handedness Twain ends up dominating the book, and it is no fault of the author's, or the characters about whom he writes. All of the featured characters stories are interesting and often moving, particularly Ms. Coolbrith, but Twain was a once in a lifetime talent, with a personality to match. It is a testament to Mr. Tarnoff's skill that the rest of the Bohemians hold their own with one of America's Great writers.
This book is well-researched but reads like a novel, never letting the story lag so that the author can pontificate about an historical point he wishes to make. Of particular interest are the early days of the forming of the Bohemians, when all of these disparate characters, and many others who the writer brings to life deftly, all come together at the end of the Civil War. The literary scene of that time was to me both stunningly and amusing rowdy, with fact and fiction mingling with an extent that borders on being called Gonzo. The same can be said of the behavior of many of the writers, in particular Twain, who seems to have spent almost as much time fighting and feuding as he did writing. As the book continues Mr. Tarnoff shows us how each of his principle characters left an indelible footprint on the making of modern American Literature, and he makes it all a great deal of fun. They may seem rather undignified for a book about History and Literature to some, but seems perfect for a book about this group of Bohemians.
Review by: Mark Palm
May 28, 2016
What a treat!
A story of San Francisco and its evanescent literary class as it endeavored to become a proper city in the 1860s and 70s, The Bohemians is in so many ways still the story of San Francisco today -- cheeky upstart boom town hustling to eclipse its stodgy East Coast roots and rivals.
The most fun part of the book for me was how successfully Tarnoff brings alive the 19th century streets of San Francisco -- reading this I felt like I was transplanted there, queuing up for one of Mark Twain's sold out lectures, chatting to all hours at Ina Coolbrith's place in Russian Hill, looking east to the countryside of Berkeley.
A story of San Francisco and its evanescent literary class as it endeavored to become a proper city in the 1860s and 70s, The Bohemians is in so many ways still the story of San Francisco today -- cheeky upstart boom town hustling to eclipse its stodgy East Coast roots and rivals.
The most fun part of the book for me was how successfully Tarnoff brings alive the 19th century streets of San Francisco -- reading this I felt like I was transplanted there, queuing up for one of Mark Twain's sold out lectures, chatting to all hours at Ina Coolbrith's place in Russian Hill, looking east to the countryside of Berkeley.
October 28, 2021
This book details the first flowering of a truly 'Western' style of writing in America. In the 1860s, right after the Civil War and the California gold rush, a group of writers assembled in San Francisco to forge a new voice in literature in reaction to the Old World-style literature of the East Coast. It is a joint biography of four main writers during their formative years in California.
Mark Twain is the best known, and found his first fame writing 'Western' stories such as 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' and 'Roughing It'. He went on to transplant himself in the East and achieve lasting fame when he moved to stories about his early years in Missouri, both real ('Life on the Mississippi') and fictional ('Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn').
Others fared not so well: Bret Harte was the original editor of the pioneering 'Californian' literary journal, but after a brief flourish of success with his own writing, his natural indolence and affection for strong drink led him to alienate friends and literary companions, and end up as an American consul agent in a small town in Germany; he never returned to America.
Charles Stoddard and Ina Coolbrith are lesser known. Stoddard struggled with his homosexuality through the years, achieved a brief success with 'South Sea Idylls' but was not much of a poet. Ina Coolbrith suffered the fate of so many educated women, shackled to household duties and caring for dependent relatives. She outlived her friends and eventually became the Poet Laureate of California, but it was a late-in-life recognition that did nothing to make up for the lost years, locked in California while her friends traveled the country and the world for inspiration.
This is a very readable account of the emergence and acceptance of the 'Western voice' in America, and indeed the world.
Mark Twain is the best known, and found his first fame writing 'Western' stories such as 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County' and 'Roughing It'. He went on to transplant himself in the East and achieve lasting fame when he moved to stories about his early years in Missouri, both real ('Life on the Mississippi') and fictional ('Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn').
Others fared not so well: Bret Harte was the original editor of the pioneering 'Californian' literary journal, but after a brief flourish of success with his own writing, his natural indolence and affection for strong drink led him to alienate friends and literary companions, and end up as an American consul agent in a small town in Germany; he never returned to America.
Charles Stoddard and Ina Coolbrith are lesser known. Stoddard struggled with his homosexuality through the years, achieved a brief success with 'South Sea Idylls' but was not much of a poet. Ina Coolbrith suffered the fate of so many educated women, shackled to household duties and caring for dependent relatives. She outlived her friends and eventually became the Poet Laureate of California, but it was a late-in-life recognition that did nothing to make up for the lost years, locked in California while her friends traveled the country and the world for inspiration.
This is a very readable account of the emergence and acceptance of the 'Western voice' in America, and indeed the world.
December 4, 2021
I thought the book was alright. I enjoyed the early history and how the bohemians came together and helped each other with their development.
I felt the last 1/3 of the book really focuses more on Twain and Harte. Coolbrirth and Stoddard get a few comments.
I will say as soon as I started reading this I decided I needed to add some Mark Twain to my future reading list
I felt the last 1/3 of the book really focuses more on Twain and Harte. Coolbrirth and Stoddard get a few comments.
I will say as soon as I started reading this I decided I needed to add some Mark Twain to my future reading list
September 19, 2017
Interesting book about Twain's early writing career in California. But, basically, not enough Twain and too much Harte and Stoddard.
December 16, 2015
Having lived in San Francisco for several years during my twenties, I was pleasantly surprised to learn of this group of writers who gave voice to the burgeoning American west during the 1860s, when each of them was in his or her twenties. Featuring Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Ina Coolbrith and Charles Warren Stoddard, it focuses primarily on the first two who, in turn, focused on the Golden State and the panoply of migrants and immigrants who made the west home in the years shortly after the Gold Rush.
All four were friends who, unbeknownst to them, would comprise "The Bohemians,"a small clique struggling to give voice to a region heretofore without a literary identity, most of them struggling to support families through more traditional means as well. Of the four, it was only Twain, a former steam boat pilot from Missouri, who didn't have a regular full-time job. As a reporter for various newspapers and magazines based in Nevada and San Francisco, it was his depiction of "Jim Smiley and the Jumping Frog" a tale that he'd heard about in a California mining camp, that captured the attention of readers and publishers near and far. Known for his ability to capture and create an authentic dialect for his characters, this tale was well received on the East Coast as well, as many publishers sought to chronicle--and cash in on--a literary manifest destiny.
Harte, whose name I would've expected to hear more during my years in San Francisco, was Twain's primary foil for attention, and the two engaged in friendly and not-so-friendly competition for publishers and editing positions as they struggled to establish themselves and their places in American Letters. (At times each even served as the editor of the other's work.)
Author Ban Tarnoff does an excellent job of researching and portraying the steps and missteps of all involved. While it would've been easy to concentrate on their successes--which eventually were much more plentiful and rewarding for Twain--he exposes the vulnerabilities and insecurities that all great authors seem to harbor, without prejudice or judgment. In fact, this story pretty much ends before Twain has even authored the two Adventures (of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn) for which he would earn his greatest acclaim (not to mention remuneration).
I am now determined not only to reread those classics, but others authored by this group as well. Frankly, I'm not sure there can be any greater recommendation for this biography than that.
All four were friends who, unbeknownst to them, would comprise "The Bohemians,"a small clique struggling to give voice to a region heretofore without a literary identity, most of them struggling to support families through more traditional means as well. Of the four, it was only Twain, a former steam boat pilot from Missouri, who didn't have a regular full-time job. As a reporter for various newspapers and magazines based in Nevada and San Francisco, it was his depiction of "Jim Smiley and the Jumping Frog" a tale that he'd heard about in a California mining camp, that captured the attention of readers and publishers near and far. Known for his ability to capture and create an authentic dialect for his characters, this tale was well received on the East Coast as well, as many publishers sought to chronicle--and cash in on--a literary manifest destiny.
Harte, whose name I would've expected to hear more during my years in San Francisco, was Twain's primary foil for attention, and the two engaged in friendly and not-so-friendly competition for publishers and editing positions as they struggled to establish themselves and their places in American Letters. (At times each even served as the editor of the other's work.)
Author Ban Tarnoff does an excellent job of researching and portraying the steps and missteps of all involved. While it would've been easy to concentrate on their successes--which eventually were much more plentiful and rewarding for Twain--he exposes the vulnerabilities and insecurities that all great authors seem to harbor, without prejudice or judgment. In fact, this story pretty much ends before Twain has even authored the two Adventures (of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn) for which he would earn his greatest acclaim (not to mention remuneration).
I am now determined not only to reread those classics, but others authored by this group as well. Frankly, I'm not sure there can be any greater recommendation for this biography than that.
March 3, 2014
A New Literature for a unique place and time
The subtitle: “The Bohemians” refers to a group of four writers, two poets Ina Coolbrith and Charles Warren Stoddard and two prose writers, Bret Harte and Mark Twain, who were either born in California or lived there for a large chunk of time. San Francisco was where they met, bonded and formed a group they labeled ‘The Bohemians’. They fashioned themselves after a New York group with the same ideals and goals which were to live their lives through art. They met weekly, encouraged one another, helped one another and in Harte’s and Twain’s case, competed ruthlessly at times. Together they created a unique voice, a voice representative of a new Western way of life and thought. Many of the Eastern Literati looked down on them for being crude and less than intellectual. The East looked to Europe as the ideal in literature and sought to immolate those writers. The West made things up as they went along and as necessity dictated or sometimes simply on a whim or just to have fun. Their writing reflects a unique vernacular. And then the transcontinental railroad was built joining both ends of the country. Regional idiosyncrasies in thought and speech and outlook began to dissolve. Twain and then Harte moved to the Northeast and their innovative group scattered. They took what they learned from one another and the West with them however.
Currently Mark Twain is the undisputed star of this group but to their contemporaries that place was held by Harte. Harte founded journals, helped edit his friends’ work, published their pieces. And personally he was at the peak of his writing ability. Sadly, he began to devote more time to drinking than to his writing and things spectacularly fell apart for him. According to Tarnoff the secret to Twain’s success was his relentlessness. I agree but would also add that Twain had a knack for learning from his abundant mistakes and the ability to reinvent himself. He also knew how to relate to people, to get them on his side, persuade them to publish his work and to back his speaking career. He was lovable and entertaining. He was an undaunted original. Tarnoff’s “The Bohemians” is a biographical, historical, and a literary analysis. It’s also plain fun to read.
This review is based on an Advance Readers Copy furnished by the publisher.
(Disclaimer given as required by the FTC.)
The subtitle: “The Bohemians” refers to a group of four writers, two poets Ina Coolbrith and Charles Warren Stoddard and two prose writers, Bret Harte and Mark Twain, who were either born in California or lived there for a large chunk of time. San Francisco was where they met, bonded and formed a group they labeled ‘The Bohemians’. They fashioned themselves after a New York group with the same ideals and goals which were to live their lives through art. They met weekly, encouraged one another, helped one another and in Harte’s and Twain’s case, competed ruthlessly at times. Together they created a unique voice, a voice representative of a new Western way of life and thought. Many of the Eastern Literati looked down on them for being crude and less than intellectual. The East looked to Europe as the ideal in literature and sought to immolate those writers. The West made things up as they went along and as necessity dictated or sometimes simply on a whim or just to have fun. Their writing reflects a unique vernacular. And then the transcontinental railroad was built joining both ends of the country. Regional idiosyncrasies in thought and speech and outlook began to dissolve. Twain and then Harte moved to the Northeast and their innovative group scattered. They took what they learned from one another and the West with them however.
Currently Mark Twain is the undisputed star of this group but to their contemporaries that place was held by Harte. Harte founded journals, helped edit his friends’ work, published their pieces. And personally he was at the peak of his writing ability. Sadly, he began to devote more time to drinking than to his writing and things spectacularly fell apart for him. According to Tarnoff the secret to Twain’s success was his relentlessness. I agree but would also add that Twain had a knack for learning from his abundant mistakes and the ability to reinvent himself. He also knew how to relate to people, to get them on his side, persuade them to publish his work and to back his speaking career. He was lovable and entertaining. He was an undaunted original. Tarnoff’s “The Bohemians” is a biographical, historical, and a literary analysis. It’s also plain fun to read.
This review is based on an Advance Readers Copy furnished by the publisher.
(Disclaimer given as required by the FTC.)
February 15, 2014
Disclaimer: I received my copy for free as a first reads giveaway.
My biggest complaint about the book is the font chosen to identify the photographs picked in the book. I have scary good vision, but even I had to use a bit of effort to read the descriptions.
Now for the actual material. Overall, I thought it was a good book. The material was interesting. I learned more about Twain than I knew and I honestly knew nothing about the bohemians of San Francisco prior to reading this book.
There were times the book slogged along and I think that has more to do with a slow point in the history than the writing.
I wish there had been more about the individuals all in one chunk, but that is just because I find it easier to get a feeling for a person that way rather than bits and pieces. It helped to figure of the group dynamic this way, but less about the individuals. Also, perhaps because they had more interesting histories, most of the book seemed to be Twain/Harte.
I would definitely recommend the book for anyone who is a fan of the individuals of the book or the era.
My biggest complaint about the book is the font chosen to identify the photographs picked in the book. I have scary good vision, but even I had to use a bit of effort to read the descriptions.
Now for the actual material. Overall, I thought it was a good book. The material was interesting. I learned more about Twain than I knew and I honestly knew nothing about the bohemians of San Francisco prior to reading this book.
There were times the book slogged along and I think that has more to do with a slow point in the history than the writing.
I wish there had been more about the individuals all in one chunk, but that is just because I find it easier to get a feeling for a person that way rather than bits and pieces. It helped to figure of the group dynamic this way, but less about the individuals. Also, perhaps because they had more interesting histories, most of the book seemed to be Twain/Harte.
I would definitely recommend the book for anyone who is a fan of the individuals of the book or the era.
July 8, 2015
This is a first rate piece of research and writing. I have long been devoted to studying and writing about San Francisco's remarkable history, and it's a pleasure to find a book that is smart, insightful and well written. Ben Tarnoff has done something wonderful: given us fresh insights and understanding into the marvelous character of Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Charles Stoddard and Ina Coolbirth. I can never get enough of Twain, but of particular interest to me was Coolbirth - one of the great names, literally. This is the woman who taught Jack London to become a voracious reader when he was only 10 years old and trying to escape his crazy mother. I have also admired Bret Harte, and learned much from this book. The most revealing was Charles Stoddard; shame on me, but I knew little of him before this book. I cater to the whacky notion that the San Francisco Bay Area is the true literary capital of America: Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Bret Harte, Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, Dashiell Hammett, William Saroyan, Gary Snyder and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Thank you, Mr. Tarnoff.
February 17, 2014
A well-written examination of a fascinating time in the development of our country in so many ways - I learned quite a bit and enjoyed myself while doing so. Getting a different glimpse of Twain in developmental years really opens up how I view what he writes in later years - honestly I did not realize the breadth of world/life experiences he had. I also enjoyed learning about Ina Coolbrith - this book offers a view of a brilliant and talented young woman who had no qualms about not fitting into the mold in a time where that was not easy to do. (Tho honestly, there are so many situations where that could be compared throughout time, including now - books like this reinforce the relevance of the cyclical nature of history/development.)
I received an advance proof of this book through a Goodreads give-away and I am happy to add this great book to my own library!
I received an advance proof of this book through a Goodreads give-away and I am happy to add this great book to my own library!
November 20, 2020
'The Bohemians' was a very interesting & suspenseful read. I enjoyed reading the true life stories of Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard & Ina Coolbrith. It was an engaging book & really brought out in a story form the lives of these four Bohemians of San Francisco (California). I hope to read more non-fiction books about these individuals in the near future. In this book, I was most interested in the personality of Mark Twain but realized the other characters were also equally wonderful writers & deserving of all praise. It was an informative & engaging book. I love to read books about writers who are 'the other' or who don't follow conventional norms in society & this book fit my taste in that category. Kudos to Ben Tarnoff on a job well done. 'The Bohemians' get 5 stars from me.
March 25, 2014
A well done but narrow audience book relevant to American literary history. The book focuses on the story of a cluster of young authors that were friends in San Francisco some of which will become literary icons and others who did not. Mark Twain and Bret Harte and their friendship and rivalry are sketched out in much detail. Also, a principle theme is the difficulty that the Western authors had gaining respect in the East with their more folksy subjects. English majors and teachers will get a lot out of this but there is not a lot of crossover to the general reader.
February 13, 2015
I really wanted to like this book, but I found it to be ho hum. Laden with repetitive details that just didn't interest me and the writing style didn't captivate me. Blah, blah, blah. Glad to know San Francisco was as unique and eccentric in the 1850's as it is today. The rest of the book - whatever. The change agents were Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Charles Stoddard, Ina Coolbrith, Olivia Langdon Clemens, William Dean Howells.
http://blog.sfgate.com/thebigevent/20...
January 6, 2024
Another that I really enjoyed! It's a fascinating history and very interesting story of friends and outsiders who are brought together by their love of literature. I had a hard time at first as I got to know the players and get accustomed to the landscape. Once there, I was there completely, and it became one of those books I wanted to stay immersed in to the total neglect of everything else. It also gave me a much greater appreciation of Mark Twain.
May 23, 2014
I didn't know a lot about that time and place in history (1860-1880 in San Francisco) or those people (Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Ina Coolbrith, Charles Warren Stoddard) so it was very interesting to read about post-Gold Rush California and the amazing people who lived and wrote there. The author mentioned Jessie Benton Frémont briefly and I would love to know more about her too.
July 2, 2017
Ina Coolbrith is the quiet hero in the background, a schoolteacher, a librarian, she had less freedom to roam than the other writers of the West, like Twain, and goes almost unnoticed in this collective biography. She ends up becoming California's first poet laureate, finally staking her claim on the male-dominated frontier.
August 2, 2015
The Bohemians is the kind of history that's easy to read, where hard facts and softer interpretation are interwoven to create an accessible narrative. The book is a love song to San Francisco, the old west, and the writers they produced.
May 30, 2014
I want to go back and read all of Twain again! Learning about his circle of friends in San Francisco was fascinating. Very well done.
August 3, 2014
Lots of incessant jawing without insight to the writers. I really don't care how often Twain traveled from Carson City to San Francisco and back.
November 1, 2014
Thoroughly enjoyable. Well written history of a group of writers and poets who befriended and supported each other during their earliest years in San Francisco.
October 30, 2016
Four literary wannabes meet and interact in San Francisco of the 1860s. One roars to fame, one flames out, and two murmur more quietly.
October 22, 2018
July 2nd of this year, I took a Lyft round-trip from San Jose to Big Sur and back.
My driver was an immigrant from Vietnam, had lived in the Santa Cruz area for nearly his whole adult life but had never been to the Bixby Canyon Bridge.
As I gazed out over the Pacific, I had the distinct thought come to me, "You can do anything you want."
(Yes, I was probably in the midst of some low-level mania.)
Apparently, that was the day I entered this book into my queue. It seems à propos: did you know that Mark Twain was suicidal and debt-ridden when he was 29/30? That one of his closest friends was an ex-Mo woman who worked in a library for half the rate of her male peers?
I'm pretty sure I first picked this up in Boulder, in 2016, when I thought that I would move there and work at their Shakespeare festival and write a thesis on Ina Coolbrith and hike every morning.
I was at an English conference, which has diverged from the great American literary tradition sharply, in that it's mostly arguing about semiotics, and I skipped it to go to Avery Brewing in Gun Barrel.
That was the weekend the Comey letter hit.
That was the beginning of the end.
The nineteenth century was a period where melancholy, decades-long despair, the reality that you might just be single and trapped forever and ever, were very much a part of the fabric of a possible life, not something to be medicated or dismissed or manifested.
In my home stretch of this book, lying on the igneous benches on the East Bench of my hometown bursting randomly into tears (yes I was probably low-key depressed which to paraphrase Joan Didion seems like a reasonable response to 2018), having a description of Salt Lake City engraved by Mark Twain feet away seemed like a small slice of hope.
I was feeling particularly self-pitying about my parents (one dead, one absent) tonight, and snapped at the crisis worker or robot or whatever dystopia we live in (I had a cortado in San Francisco served by a robot, Twain, come save us from our stupidity) and thought about the Stoics' "Open Door" and their stance that if you don't throw yourself from the Golden Gate well, don't complain, you're in the game.
Unlike Ina, being an ex-Mo who's unencumbered by relatives, I should view it as a blessing in disguise.
Maybe I could find a literary community in San Francisco, pitch a memoir, take up the torch of flowery poetry as a singer-songwriter, talk my way into a consular job in Germany and never look back.
I left Great Salt Lake a good deal confused as to what state of things existed there and sometimes even questioning in my own mind whether a state of things existed there at all or not, said Twain. Suicidal or no, he certainly was sane and the writer we need in our blinkered age.
Maybe, just maybe, I Can Do Whatever I Want.
My driver was an immigrant from Vietnam, had lived in the Santa Cruz area for nearly his whole adult life but had never been to the Bixby Canyon Bridge.
As I gazed out over the Pacific, I had the distinct thought come to me, "You can do anything you want."
(Yes, I was probably in the midst of some low-level mania.)
Apparently, that was the day I entered this book into my queue. It seems à propos: did you know that Mark Twain was suicidal and debt-ridden when he was 29/30? That one of his closest friends was an ex-Mo woman who worked in a library for half the rate of her male peers?
I'm pretty sure I first picked this up in Boulder, in 2016, when I thought that I would move there and work at their Shakespeare festival and write a thesis on Ina Coolbrith and hike every morning.
I was at an English conference, which has diverged from the great American literary tradition sharply, in that it's mostly arguing about semiotics, and I skipped it to go to Avery Brewing in Gun Barrel.
That was the weekend the Comey letter hit.
That was the beginning of the end.
The nineteenth century was a period where melancholy, decades-long despair, the reality that you might just be single and trapped forever and ever, were very much a part of the fabric of a possible life, not something to be medicated or dismissed or manifested.
In my home stretch of this book, lying on the igneous benches on the East Bench of my hometown bursting randomly into tears (yes I was probably low-key depressed which to paraphrase Joan Didion seems like a reasonable response to 2018), having a description of Salt Lake City engraved by Mark Twain feet away seemed like a small slice of hope.
I was feeling particularly self-pitying about my parents (one dead, one absent) tonight, and snapped at the crisis worker or robot or whatever dystopia we live in (I had a cortado in San Francisco served by a robot, Twain, come save us from our stupidity) and thought about the Stoics' "Open Door" and their stance that if you don't throw yourself from the Golden Gate well, don't complain, you're in the game.
Unlike Ina, being an ex-Mo who's unencumbered by relatives, I should view it as a blessing in disguise.
Maybe I could find a literary community in San Francisco, pitch a memoir, take up the torch of flowery poetry as a singer-songwriter, talk my way into a consular job in Germany and never look back.
I left Great Salt Lake a good deal confused as to what state of things existed there and sometimes even questioning in my own mind whether a state of things existed there at all or not, said Twain. Suicidal or no, he certainly was sane and the writer we need in our blinkered age.
Maybe, just maybe, I Can Do Whatever I Want.
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