Roughing It

by Mark Twain

Roughing It is a book of semi-autobiographical travel literature written by American humorist Mark Twain. He wrote it during 1870–71 and published in 1872, as a prequel to his first book The Innocents Abroad (1869). This book tells of Twain's adventures prior to his pleasure cruise related in Innocents Abroad.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Travel, Humor, Literature, Adventure, Westerns

590 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1872

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Reviews

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some great descriptions in this semi-autobiographical Overland stage coach trip to unknown territories “out west”.

Twain’s great sense of humour is something that I wasn’t expecting, but his complete disrespect for certain people such as Native Americans, African Americans, Chinese and Mormons doesn’t show him in a good light.

The first part of “Roughing It” was truly enlightening, but as it progressed it began to drag, and I had to do a fair bit of skimming. Therefore not one of my favourites.

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mark Twain's semi-autobiographical work about the American west in the 1860's.

I know that most every student in most every American Lit 301 class is instructed that Melville's Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is the great American novel, but Twain's works must be high on the list of great American literature. This was like Forrest Gump a hundred years early.

Twain meets Brigham Young, works as a silver miner, explores the Nevada territory, visits San Francisco during the earthquake, and then goes off to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). Twain also tried out the local "surf bathing" - he went surfing. Finally, in the last pages, he meets a drunken man on the streets of San Francisco named Mr. Sawyer.

A fun read.

[Melki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped . . .

Tag along on some travels with Twain as he heads way out west, commenting nonstop on all the new flora and fauna he sees along the way.

Chuckle as he beholds the exotic wholesomeness of Mormons:

Salt Lake City was healthy - an extremely healthy city. They declared there was only one physician in the place and he was arrested every week regularly and held to answer for having "no visible means of support."

Twain was not a big fan of California, bemoaning the lack of changing seasons. I have to agree with him on the last part, and I love this quote:

I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in turn, seems the loveliest.

And though I got a kick out of Twain and his brother gleefully planning the dream houses they would build after striking it rich, there was just TOO MUCH DAMNED MINING in this book.

I did enjoy his visit to the Hawaiian islands, as did he, apparently:

At noon I observed a bevy of nude native young ladies bathing in the sea, and went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen.

Twain, you old horndog, you!


It had been a fine pleasure trip; we had fed fat on wonders every day . . .

Indeed!

Note to self - read more Twain.

[Supineny · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first quarter of Roughing It is really great -- the description of his stage coach trip with to Nevada is great travel writing, laced with irony and sly humor. That it is describing a lost world makes it that much more entertaining. Exquisite.

There's just one 'humorous' episode concerning a bull that interjects during this part of the book and it seems disconcertingly false -- kind of corny and cartoonish in a not terribly clever way. Perhaps the sort of thing he could bring life to in his famous lectures with his drawl and deadpan. But I remembering thinking...'uh oh'.

And 'uh oh' was right. The book continues to have some marvelous episodes as Twain continues his western adventure, but they are stretched out with a prodigious quantity of flimsy material. Comic set pieces with caricature-like characters get stale before they've begun, and he spins them out as if he was being paid by the word. A certain kind of broad, formulaic humor obtains - probably what he needed to write for newspapers at the time, but it seems out of place amidst his more mature writing.

Whereas the parts where he is achingly funny tend to have a certain realness about them - Clemens is making observations about things trivial and profound that he actually sees or concepts he is grappling with in life. There's a certain kind of sincerity beneath the irony and stretching of facts.

Flawed though they are, the middle chapters of Roughing It do, in fits and starts, present a compelling picture of various societies in the wild west and San Francisco, and a shadowy autobiography of Clemens. (Those familiar with Clemens later financial troubles get a glimpse of some of his worst financial impulses early on in his life.)

However, the book finally takes an abysmal dive when he takes a trip to Hawaii. It seems like a tacked-on bonus that doesn't relate to the rest of the book. Where the wild west actually sucked Twain in and conferred some of its insanity on him, Hawaii remains just another location to file travel writing from. He presents a lengthy history of the Hawaiian people, which seems cribbed from a textbook. And then, suddenly, unceremoniously, he ends the book with a dull thought or two about travelling.

One has the impression that he was inspired it when he started the book, but that by the end, he was just trying to get through it.

In short, read the first third, and then feel free to skip chapters after that. There's a bunch of really classic Twain here, but it gets pretty patchy after awhile.

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roughing It followed the formula of Mark Twain’s first big success, The Innocents Abroad. In that earlier volume, Twain had entranced his readers with humorous, descriptive tales of his travels in distant lands — the Mediterranean coast of Europe and Palestine. With his second book he reach back into his past to regale his readers with stories of travel in locations nearly as exotic to them — the American West.

Roughing It is part travel book, part fanciful memoir. (The story covers actual events from Twain’s life, but heartily embellished with Western style yarning and tall tales.) In 1861, Twain escaped the Civil War by traveling west, taking an overland stagecoach from Missouri to Nevada. He spent the following several years in Virginia City, Nevada and San Francisco, California, along with a significant visit to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). He made failed attempts at being a silver miner, and more successful ones at becoming a frontier journalist. He first started using his famous pen name, honed his unique voice that would change the face of American literature, and launched his career as a star of the lecture circuit all during this time.

Twain loaded his book with elements sure to be a hit with his contemporary audience. His description of his long stagecoach journey is brilliant. He tells wild tales of Western desperadoes, stories of meeting the famous (or to some, infamous) Mormon leader, Brigham Young, hilarious hijinks of bungled attempts at prospecting, and relates a tragedy in paradise — a shipwreck in the Sandwich Islands.

Roughing It is bursting with anecdotes of Mark Twain’s experiences indiscriminately mingled with tall tales and yarns. It’s a bit uneven, definitely undisciplined, but all delivered in that charming, joking, unique Mark Twain voice.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 3 out of 5]

“There was no Pacific railroad in those fine times of ten or twelve years ago—not a single rail of it. I only proposed to stay in Nevada three months—I had no thought of staying longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was new and strange, and then hurry home to business. I little thought that I would not see the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or seven uncommonly long years!”

Mark Twain's second full-length work takes us back to his adventures out West as a young man, beginning in 1861 shortly after he served a brief stint in a Confederate militia in his home state of Missouri (a period not covered in this book). Boarding a horse-drawn coach, Twain and his brother and other companions traveled into the Wild West, stopping for adventures of various length and interest in Utah (where the misadventures of those wacky, rebellious, polygamous Mormons are described at some length), Nevada during the Silver Rush (mining as a career, as well as the life and times of various mining towns have many, many pages devoted to them), various places in California - including San Francisco, Sacramento, and Lake Tahoe - and when he ran out of room on the continent he hopped on a ship and spent some time in Hawaii, wrapping up just prior to Twain's 1867 cruise to the Mediterranean (which was detailed in his first full-length book: The Innocents Abroad, Or, the New Pilgrims' Progress, making this book almost a "prequel" to that one). Modern readers should be aware that cultural sensitivity in the 1860s was nowhere even remotely close to what it is today and various remarks and stories will seem insensitive although, to be fair, Twain does also make fun of Caucasians to the same degree. Twain was also a bit long in the tooth at times, prone to self-indulgent ramblings and his love of tall tales was certainly more pleasing to the audience of his times than today's readers. But the book serves as a valuable document in many ways; not just a look at the early times and writings of a great author, but also an eye-opening firsthand account of the (in many ways) lawless and freewheeling American West.

“If the reader thinks he is done, now, and that this book has no moral to it, he is in error. The moral of it is this: If you are of any account, stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are "no account," go away from home, and then you will *have* to work, whether you want to or not.”

[Howard · Rating 3 out of 5]

REREAD

Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped; information appears to stew out of me naturally…. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give worlds if I could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I calk up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore, I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not justification. – Mark Twain, from the Preface to Roughing It (1872)

******
In 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, Samuel Langhorne Clemens’s bother Orion was appointed to the position of Secretary of Nevada Territory. Twenty-five year old Sam Clemens went along as the Secretary’s unpaid private secretary. Although it isn’t mentioned in the book, Clemens at the time was a member of a Confederate cavalry militia, but he didn’t let that hinder him from leaving the army and the war behind him in Missouri.

The brothers traveled by stagecoach all the way from Missouri to Nevada and that adventure is how the book begins – and is also the best written and most entertaining part of the book.

Clemens wrote that he had intended to “stay in Nevada three months – I had not thought of staying longer than that. I meant to see all that I could that was new and strange and then hurry home to business.” Instead he spent six years in Nevada, California, and the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).

Silver and gold strikes occurred in Nevada in the years that Clemens was there and he caught the fever. Since his job as secretary paid nothing he became a prospector, but in his case mining also paid nothing.

When he was hard up against it he resorted to journalism in Nevada, and later California, as a way to keep the wolf away from his door. He also began to collect material that would become the stories in Roughing It.

It was in 1863, while working for a newspaper in Nevada, that he adopted the pen name Mark Twain, which was a reference to his earlier experiences working on steamboats. Mark twain was a measure of the depth of the water, meaning two fathoms or twelve feet.

Roughing It is semi-autobiographical in that it is loosely based on actual events that are transformed into tall tales and self-deprecating humor. With mock sincerity he wrote that “I am not given to exaggeration and when I say a thing I mean it.” Of course, he was quoted elsewhere as saying that “a whopper is not a lie if you don’t tell it for the truth.”

The book is uneven. His anecdotal descriptions of the stagecoach trip west are priceless and are indicative of things to come in his later work. Unfortunately, much of what he writes about his experiences after arriving in Nevada – and afterwards – is rather repetitive, and despite gems here and there (especially Jim Blaine and his Grandfather’s Ram and Clemens and two companions lost in a blizzard fifteen steps from a stage station), lacks the deft satirical touch of the stagecoach journey.

In fact, in my opinion the book could have been improved if about 200 of its 560 pages had been cut.

Five years after returning home, Twain published Roughing It. Four years later one of his most famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, was published, and in 1884, the publication of his masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, elevated him to a lofty prominence in American literature.

[Carol Storm · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Turn out, boys! The tarantulas is loose!"

This is probably the funniest work of classic literature I have ever read. Page for page, it has more laugh out loud moments than anything I've ever seen. It even leaves THE PICKWICK PAPERS by Charles Dickens and TOM JONES by Henry Fielding in the dust. It really makes you wonder what it must have been like to listen to Mark Twain on the lecture circuit in his prime from 1875 to 1895. It must have been like seeing Richard Pryor or Lenny Bruce, and then some.

The only problem is, when you read this book a second time, a lot of what Mark Twain actually has to say about the west is really creepy. He hates Native Americans. I mean, he really hates them. And I don't just mean compared to politically correct authors today. Even James Fenimore Cooper (whom Twain ridiculed throughout his career) was capable of more nuance and compassion when writing about his doomed Indian warriors in LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Twain literally laughs at the idea that anyone could imagine Indians as being fully human. It's beyond offensive. It's creepy. (On the other hand, I suspect that Twain's critique of the murderous Mormon elders and their church is still timely, and right on the money. Those old time Mormons had binders full of women, too!)

In spite of the disturbing themes, I give this book five stars, because I can't remember any book that ever made me laugh as much. And it deserves fives stars just for the ruffian they call Arkansas.

Bully old Arkansas!

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, published in 1872, is a fictional account based on Mark Twain’s real experiences traveling to the western US in the 1860s. He accompanied his brother, who was named Secretary of the Nevada Territory. It covers the protagonist’s travels in Nevada Territory, Utah Territory, California, and Hawaii. Adventures and misadventures abound – gold and silver mining, travel by stagecoach, interacting with the Mormons in Salt Lake City, obtaining various jobs including reporter, which leads to further opportunities. Twain’s writing is colloquial, lively, and engaging. He liberally employs humor and self-deprecation, especially regarding his failed “get rich quick” schemes. He tells a few tall tales along the way. This book was selected for my library’s reading program, related to the celebration of “Mark Twain Days.” Since I live in the area, I enjoyed the many descriptions of the local region as it existed in the past, including Lake Tahoe, Virginia City, Carson City, Dayton, and Mono Lake. The only downside is the depiction of native tribes (and several other groups), which includes racial prejudices that were fairly typical of the era.

[Alexw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twain's sarcastic wit is on hilarious display, especially when he unsuccessfully tries to get rich while digging for silver in Nevada.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this, but less than I was expecting. It's been too long ago to write an actual review, so I will instead refer you to Supineny's, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
-- which identifies pretty much what I recall as the best and the weakest parts of the book. It's all worth reading, mind, but skim where your attention is faltering, is my advice. It's a book of its time. But the price is right!

I was amused at another 3-star reviewer who complained about "too much mining" stuff -- since I thought that was some of his best. But that's my field. I can't recall if this is the source of the immortal quote that a mine "is a hole in the ground, with a liar at the top" -- but Twain certainly partook in the exuberant speculation in mining stocks then, that generally had about the same outcomes as today's online day-traders find.

Here's the link to the book, in many formats, at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3177

[Michael Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mark Twain starts a fire in Lake Tahoe.....

https://wildfiretoday.com/2010/09/18/...

===========

“It was a splendid population - for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home - you never find that sort of people among pioneers - you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day - and when she projects a new surprise the grave world smiles as usual and says, "Well, that is California all over.”

[Robert Case · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Roughing It" is a memoir covering a six year span of Mark Twain's years as a young journalist and occasional miner. It might also be classified as his coming of age story. He just happened to come of age during the tumult of the War Between the States, a time when slavery was still the law of half of the land. From his descriptions of Native Americans, African Americans, and Chinese, there can be little doubt that at this stage of his career, he wrote to an exclusively Caucasian audience.

It was also instructive for this reader to read his free flowing blend of hyperbole and irony to engage, entertain, and tell a good story. Sometimes it was funny or educational. Other times it was overstated and redundant. The first half of the book is the best part. His descriptions about what it was like to travel across the western US by stagecoach were fascinating. During his trip he actually stopped and visited Salt Lake City at a time when the state we now call Utah, was an independent country...and by Twain's account...ruled by a not so benevolent dictator.

Most of the book is a travelogue of his journey to Nevada and the years spent there during the silver rush. These chapters form the heart of the book and frankly, author Mark Twain could have ended it there. Instead, he extends the journey to include subsequent travels in the California goldfields, his days as a journalist in San Francisco, and then a travelogue of Hawaii, at a time when they were still called the Sandwich Islands. These later chapters read like extra baggage. This reader was tempted more than once to just put the book away, unfinished. But, I kept coming back.

I recommend this book to students of Mark Twain, readers of western US history, or lovers of memoir.

[Paul Haspel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rough life of the frontier American West, in the era of “local color” literature, made compelling reading for readers back East who were looking for vivid tales from other American regions – and rough-and-tumble tales of the American frontier are exactly what Mark Twain provided in his 1872 book Roughing It. Four years before The Adventures of Tom Sawyer made him a household name and a singularly beloved American author, Twain demonstrated in Roughing It the gifts for careful and ironic observation that would always be hallmarks of his literary career.

As with all of his best works, Twain in Roughing It drew from his own life, and from a dramatic set of episodes that went all the way back to the beginning of the American Civil War. When the war began, closing the Mississippi River and putting an end to Twain’s career as a steamboat pilot, Twain briefly joined a Missouri unit of Confederate militiamen – a period of his life that Twain later fictionalized for his sketch “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” (1885).

Fortunately, however, Twain soon abandoned the doomed rebel cause, looking West rather than South for his future. His brother, Orion Clemens, had been appointed secretary to the governor of Nevada Territory, and Twain chose to accompany his brother on an adventurous excursion out to the Western frontier.

As his Western journey progresses, Twain regales the reader with “tall tales” about the rough-and-tumble quality of life on the Western frontier – as when, traveling past Fort Laramie in the Black Hills, a stagecoach driver tells Twain and his brother not to worry too much:

He said the place to keep a man “huffy” was down on the Southern Overland, among the Apaches, before the company moved the stage-line up on the northern route. He said the Apaches used to annoy him all the time down there, and that he came as near as anything to starving to death in the midst of abundance, because they kept him so leaky with bullet holes that he “couldn’t hold his vittles.” This person’s statements were not generally believed. (p. 100)

Once Twain and his brother have arrived in Nevada Territory, Twain gets the chance to witness the inefficiency of government bureaucracy in action (or inaction). Twain describes with some asperity the anger he felt when Orion Clemens, as Territorial Secretary, sought to save the U.S. government some money by having a Native American saw wood for a reasonable price, rather than letting a white Nevadan overcharge the government. But because Orion Clemens did not forge the Native American’s signature on the voucher, the government made Orion Clemens as territorial secretary pay the costs of the transaction himself. Twain’s reaction:

[T]he next time the Indian sawed wood for us I taught him to make a cross at the bottom of the voucher – it looked like a cross that had been drunk a year – and then I “witnessed” it and it went through all right. The United States never said a word. I was sorry I had not made the voucher for a thousand loads of wood instead of one. The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two. (p. 208)

Twain tries his hand at silver mining, repeatedly and unsuccessfully; but then fate takes a hand, and a literary apprenticeship begins. That new phase of Twain’s life, as Twain recounts it, began with the prospects of a job with Virginia City’s newspaper, the Daily Territorial Enterprise, for which Twain had penned a few contributions, “and had always been surprised when they appeared in print. My good opinion of the editors had steadily declined; for it seemed to me that they might have found something better to fill up with than my literature” (p. 302). But then the impoverished Twain received an offer to become city editor of the Territorial Enterprise for $25.00 a week; and the man who would become widely famed as America’s greatest author thus sets down the ambivalent nature of his response:

I wanted to fall down and worship [the publisher]….Twenty-Five Dollars a week – it looked like bloated luxury – a fortune – a sinful and lavish waste of money. But my transports cooled when I thought of my inexperience and consequent unfitness for the position – and straightway, on top of this, my long array of failures rose up before me. Yet if I refused this place I must presently become dependent upon somebody for my bread, a thing necessarily distasteful to a man who had never experienced such humiliation since he was thirteen years old. Not much to be proud of, since it is so common – but then it was all I had to be proud of. So I was scared into being a city editor. (p. 302)

Part of the virtue of Roughing It consists in seeing the young Mark Twain undergo experiences that would nurture his gifts for careful observation. A newspaper editor or reporter must have a gift for critical thinking, for pointing out the inconsistencies in human behavior, and Twain’s time at the Territorial Enterprise seems to have been helpful in that regard. And a reporter or editor must be able to generate copy – lots of copy – very quickly, as Twain recalls with his customary sardonic wit:

Nobody, except he has tried it, knows what it is to be an editor. It is easy to scribble local rubbish, with the facts all before you; it is easy to string out a correspondence from any locality; but it is unspeakable hardship to write editorials. Subjects are the trouble – the dreary lack of them, I mean. Every day, it is drag, drag, drag – think, and worry and suffer – all the world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns must be filled. Only give the editor a subject, and his work is done – it is no trouble to write it up; but fancy how you would feel if you had to pump your brains dry every day, fifty-two weeks in the year. It makes one low spirited simply to think of it. (p. 400)

I read Roughing It while traveling in Nevada – walking the board sidewalks of C Street, the main street of Virginia City, where the old Territorial Enterprise was transformed into a Mark Twain museum (now closed). The meticulously preserved 19th-century ambience of Virginia City gives one strong insights into how that Wild West boomtown nourished Mark Twain’s literary imagination.

But Roughing It is not all-Nevada, all-the-time. Twain’s travels in the American West eventually took him to San Francisco, where he experienced the same cycle of hope followed by failure and then despair that had characterized much of his time in Nevada. But once again, he was saved by a writing job – in this case, a chance to travel as a correspondent to the Sandwich Islands, the Kingdom of Hawaii.

Once again, Twain’s gift for detailed observation of the natural world is combined with his ability to spy out the follies and inconsistencies of human behavior, as when he travels to Kealakekua Bay on what is now called “the Big Island” of Hawaii, and visits the spot where Captain James Cook was killed by indigenous Hawaiians in 1778. It is a striking place in terms of landscape – “[A] little flat plain, on which stands a cocoanut grove and some ruined houses; a steep wall of lava, a thousand feet high at the upper end and three or four hundred at the lower, comes down from the mountain and bounds the inner extremity of it” (p. 511). But Twain warns the reader against romanticizing the death of Captain Cook:

Plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook’s assassination, and renders a deliberate verdict of justified homicide. Wherever he went among the islands, he was cordially received and welcomed by the inhabitants, and his ships lavishly supplied with all manner of food. He returned these kindnesses with insult and ill-treatment….Small blame should attach to the natives for the killing of Cook. They treated him well. In return, he abused them. He and his men inflicted bodily injury upon many of them at different times, and killed at least three of them before they offered any proportionate retaliation. (pp. 512-13)

And indeed, the historical record indicates that Captain Cook’s killing occurred while he was trying to kidnap the Hawaiian monarch Kalani‘opu‘u in order to secure the return of a stolen boat. Twain is right: people around the world do tend to react badly to an attempt to kidnap their head of state.

Anyone who appreciates the literary artistry of Mark Twain’s canonical novels, from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), will enjoy seeing the great Missouri author honing his literary skills in the frontier West in Roughing It.

[Judi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read someone else's comment that this book is not his best... that it is disorganized and the beginning parts are based on his brother's diary entries and not his own. Regardless, I decided to read this after vacationing in Nevada and visiting Virginia City. As a followup to that vacation, it was a good read. In my opinion, the best part of this book is the beginning. I liked reading about life during that time. It seemed to me that it was better written, but that may have been because its style was still new to me... and after awhile the diversions became more annoying. I lost interest about halfway through when he started basically listing info about the gold mines.

Today I decided to read up to 80% of the book and then make a decision as to whether i would finish it or not. I didn't make it to 80%. I left him in Hawaii. As I found throughout the book, I'd be very interested in some sections and then I'd be wondering how long this "little story" would last it get back to descriptions of time and place.

I've decided that I've wasted enough time on this book and will not be finishing it. As much as goes against my nature. But, there are too many books on my "to-read" list to spend anymore time on this one.

[John Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Mark Twain was a young man and not yet a published novelist, he spent seven years rousting about Nevada and California, with a six-month side trip to Hawai'i (then known as the Sandwich Islands)mixed in. What I would give for a chance to see the West when it still largely was an empty landscape, and Hawai'i with no tourists, fou-fou drinks, or fake Hula shows. Unfortunately, I was born about 125 years too late . . . . Roughing It contains much of Twain's signature humor and exaggeration, but describes a society and landscape that is recognizable from history, and maintains his fidelity, for the most part, to the truth. Politically-correct types will applaud Twain's description of nineteenth century American society as mainly attached to grasping the main chance, and hiss his depiction of the Indians as degraded savages lacking all culture and refinement, but that misses the point. Twain, as a humorist, chose to emphasize those traits that were most subject to being lampooned, and did so with even-handed glee.

[Michael P. Clemens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very obviously an early work, and a patchwork of Twain's experiences as he opted to mostly miss the Civil War by traveling into the then-territorial west of North America. This is very much a patchwork, and a long one at that: personal recollections are interwoven with tall tales, and occasionally peppered with some political incorrectness that's uncomfortable to read in these supposedly more enlightened days. The Mormon church and native Hawaiians bear the brunt of this, and Twain was not yet a refined enough writer (or person?) to let it move into parody: it just feels mean.

Still, Twain's embellishing touch is evident, and you can see the celebrated writer through the awkward passages. His travels by stagecoach are particularly enjoyable, and since I live in the area, I was personally pleased to read his impressions and recollections life in of Lake Tahoe and a young San Francisco, including experiencing a destructive earthquake. Like his silver-mining adventures, there are many worthy, entertaining parts to this book, but you must chip through some lesser material to get to it. The edition I read from Project Gutenberg appears to be a full one, including a number of appendices.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take a young Sam Clemens and put him in the Wild West with a bunch of Yahoo gold prospectors and this is what you get. I especially like the Lake Tahoe scene where they're playing an innocent game of euchre when all Hellfire breaks loose.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here we have Mr. Mark Twain's memoirs of his days in the American West, still barely civilized (the West, not Twain), scouring the hillsides for silver, encountering wild gunslingers and traveling by stagecoach, even visiting Hawaii. (Wanna read about Mark Twain trying to surf? This is the book for you.)

Twain revels in the type of story that lies somewhere between fact and fiction. His stories are stranger than both fact or fiction; they are of their own breed. They are all tinted with his own brand of wit, cynicism, and lust for life. Exaggeration is his forte. Verily, "...and that's barely an exaggeration" is an oft-used refrain in this book, meant to both caution the reader from whole-hearted belief and to shun for daring to disbelieve.

Truthfully, Twain's journalistic integrity is non-existent. He openly admits that during his tenure as a columnist at a Nevada newspaper, he copied articles straight from the encyclopedia when suffering from writer's block. But his express intent is to entertain, and that he does well. In a passage only Twain could have written, he discusses his reluctance to provide the reader with any experience more valuable than entertainment:

Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped: information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give worlds if I could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I calk up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore, I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not justification.

If you're a bit like Twain, retaining a love for tall tales and able to tolerate a bit of collateral wisdom, my bet is you'd take much delight in this book.

[Jon Ingram · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is by far one of the best books I have ever read. I am particularly prone to wanderlust and adventurous pursuits myself, and you cannot find a better book or a more kindred spirit in this regard. This book is also very funny, and I found myself laughing out loud on many occasions. It is true, as other reviewers have said, that the book lags a little bit around the ¾ mark due to including too much detailed information on various subjects. I think Twain himself recognized this, as he is found apologizing for the great amount of information contained in the book during his introduction. However, I still found Twain’s long descriptions historically interesting, and the book definitely picks up again near the end. Other reviewers have noted that Twain appears racist or mean in sections of the book. In response I would say that many reviewers don’t understand the subtleties of the social critique found in Twains writing. He is often pointing out the flaws in several cultures at once, and to say that he is racist is going too far.

[Simon Robs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tales/vignettes from the western U.S. states of Nevada, Utah & California circa 1861-63.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much more than I expected. There are many "LOL" moments that will in fact have you laughing out loud. And Twain's style of writing is just a joy to read. He strings together some of the most gorgeous sentences like pearls; in many places his word selection is poetic and near perfect, and it never feels affected but very natural and easy. I deduct a star only because in some places the narrative slows a bit and lists to port. But if you enjoy as I do the travelogues of Bill Bryson, you will find those same qualities in Twain and more.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful audiobook, a travelogue of the 1860s that was sometimes serious and sometimes had me laughing out loud. In addition to tall tales and humor, it included his eyewitness reports of an overland trip by stage coach, silver mining, the Gold Rush, and ancient Hawaii, plus a narrated history of the Mormons, and the sad, brutal oppression of the Chinese throughout California and the West. (A story I just read about in "Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans" by Jean Pfaelzer.)

Warning to the modern reader -- there are tinges of racist talk, on occasion, that was typical of the times, such as "Injuns," and some dialog he passed on (not his) using the n-word -- to be excused, of course, as the tale was published in 1872.

I did notice that he decided to head west with his brother at the age of 26 just when the Civil War was breaking out. And thank goodness he did! Or he may not have lived to bless this world with his memorable characters, his humor, his genius!

Recommended!

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is Twain, but not his best effort. It’s like the Energizer Bunny, it just keeps going and going, but not in a good way. The humor, the stories and the sarcasm are all solid, it was just too much. It got a little stale, I wonder if Twain was paid by the page, more pages more money. The book would have been better at half the length.

[Margery · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel inadequate to finding the words to recommend this book. It is one of those books that I have read so many times I can nearly recite it.

Here is the young Sam Clemens heading from Missouri to the unknown territories "out west" by the fastest transportation of the day -- the Overland Stage where horses were changed every 10 miles to keep up the pace. The railway connection from east to west was still years away. His first person account of the trip will resonate with travelers today (he and his brother had to repack before they boarded the stage as they had exceeded the 25 pounds of luggage allowed per passenger), and will add interesting contrast to the memories of anyone who has traveled across country as Twain details what daily life was like "on the road."

I visited Carson City and Virginia City, Nevada as well as Twain's beloved Lake Tahoe (which to the end of his life he considered the most beautiful lake in the world). As I passed through these areas the information from "Roughing It" was bright in my mind. It has made my own travel richer, and brought me closer to the soul of an author I love dearly.

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great read. Being a Nevadan, I could truly appreciate many of the stories Twain related in his book. I especially liked his description of a "Washoe zephyr". And it was a treasure to read his description of Lake Tahoe, before it was "developed", and became the congested mess that it is today. What a gem it must have been to be able to see it before there were roads, and casinos, and houses built right by the lake shore. As I was reading that segment of the book, I thought if I closed by eyes, I could really see the true, pristine Lake Tahoe that Twain was describing. I appreciated his stories of the Comstock, and it gave me a new appreciation of what the miners went through. I have been to Virginia City many times, but I will look at it with a better understanding of its' history the next time I am there.

[Julie Mickens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the Nevada quartz described herein, Roughing It contains some really brilliant, valuable stuff but also a hefty load of overburden. Some of this wordy excess and at times hammy humor might bring down the average to a feeble 3 stars, but there's enough memorable Twainian cleverness and historical interest to forgive some skimming and a few skipped chapters.

In my opinion, Twain was at his best when he wasn't trying too hard to be funny (or, in times of weakness, lazily leaning on ethnicity/woman jokes) but just honestly reacting to his circumstance. In Roughing It, it seems like Twain was growing as a writer by fits and starts, slowly mastering the courage to be sincere.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Twain's brand of humour wears thin after awhile.

Probably would've been of more interest to readers of the time period, whose imaginations were fired by stories of the West. Keeping in mind that he exaggerates famously for effect, what a remarkable life Mark Twain led.!

[Mark Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me 6 years to read this book, starting my first night living away from home after highschool and finishing after both the gap year and my undergraduate degree came and went. It is that hard to get through. At this point, though, Stockholm syndrome has long since taken over, and I feel a certain attachment to a book I have on some level been reading for a quarter of my life.

[BJ Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nobody can write like Mark Twain. In a way, this book was already outdated when he first wrote it way back in 1872. By that time, the pony express he describes has already given way to the railroads. The silver rush he was a part of had already dried up and many of those towns had already been ghosted. But in another way, this work is still relevant today. Tom Sawyer was my favorite book growing up and as a child, I probably watched the adventures of Huckleberry Finn as much as any other movie not called Star Wars. But, page for page, Roughing It provides more laughs and wittier commentary than either of those two literary classics.

In typical Mark Twain style, you are often unsure when he is leaving off with the truth and heading into fancy. He skirts the line between the two as deftly as anyone in the game. Sometimes, it is obvious. For example, in his "interview" with Brigham Young, when the guy starts complaining that if he has given a gift to one of his wives, then he will have to give one to each of his 134 other wives. This is clearly an exaggeration. Brigham Young only had fifty-five wives. But other times, like when he was talking about the mining speculation frenzy, what might seem like exaggeration is actually soft playing what we know to be true.

The best moments are those where Twain appears to be taking one side of an argument only to demonstrate how foolish this viewpoint is. Those who would hold that viewpoint would be like, "That's right... hey, wait a minute..." Two examples of this are his "views" on the inferiority of the minority races and his "complementing" the civilizing of the natives on the Hawaiian Islands. Less savvy readers might complain about his racism, but anyone who knows Clemons' body of work knows that he was incredibly progressive for his time. He personally paid for the room and board of one of the first African Americans to attend Yale University and his letter first offering to do so, he wrote: "I do not believe I would very cheerfully help a white student who would ask a benevolence of a stranger, but I do not feel so about the other color. We have ground the manhood out of them, and the shame is ours, not theirs; and we should pay for it.''

So read Mark Twain. If you would like a colorful take on the Old West, then read Roughing It. About halfway through you will read MT as saying, "I am not a person given to exaggeration. If I say a thing, I mean it." Just realize that as he says this, he is lying through his teeth.