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The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
These late works of Samuel Langhorne Clemens reveal the darker side of his genius. Includes "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" and "The $30,000 Bequest"; his last posthumous novel The Mysterious Stranger; What Is Man?; & more.
272 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1916
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About the author
Mark Twain
8,872 books18.7k followersLibrarian 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 192 reviews
July 30, 2024
The first time that I read The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories I was just fifteen, and it had an outsized impact. The title tale blew me away. It was dark, and blasphemous, and powerful. The final speech that Satan makes before leaving Theodor, where he admonished him to
”Dream other dreams, and better!”
seemed both frightening and strangely liberating, and, as I shared his name, seemed as if spoken directly to me. Totally trippy!
The remaining stories in the collection are well matched to the title tale. Most of these stories are dark, cynical, and bitter, written in Mark Twain’s later years. The Five Boons of Life could only have been written by a heartsick man. Some details from Was It Heaven? or Hell? came directly from the author’s experiences as his wife lay dying. (He was forbidden to see her so as not to over excite her heart.) The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg is as cynical a tale as ever written, attacking artificial morality and self-righteous hypocrisy. Reading all these at a time when the only other of Twain’s works I had read was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was a little bit shocking, and definitely whetted my interest to read more of this complicated man. Four and a half decades later, that abiding interest in Mark Twain has never slacked.
The Mysterious Stranger: This posthumously published novella is the darkest of Twain’s works. Theodor and Seppi, boys living in Eseldorf (German for Donkeytown), a 16th century Austrian village, are visited by Satan, a boy-like angel who amazes and amuses them. He schools them on the ridiculousness of religion, the meanness of human life, the principles of determinism, and above all, the valuelessness of “the moral sense.” Satan is a transparent mouthpiece delivering Twain’s own skeptical and misanthropic world view, savaging the cultural institutions and hypocrisy of his own time and country.
4 ⭐️
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County: The story that was Mark Twain’s first great success, it consists of a shaggy dog tale about a notorious gambler and his frog, as related by a loquacious Western barkeep to the Eastern narrator. Something of its original humor is lost to the passage of times and changing of tastes.
3 ⭐️
The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut: The author relates an amusing battling with his own misshapen, shrunken conscience — literally.
3 1/2 ⭐️
The Stolen White Elephant: A ludicrous satire parodying a detective tale. An over the top tall tale where the detectives officious, bumbling ineptitude is praised as high talent.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Luck: Relates a story of a wooden-headed fellow who continues failing upward in the British military through pure, stupid luck.
3 ⭐️
The £1,000,000 Bank-Note: A feel good story of a down on his luck American in London who becomes the object of a bet between two wealthy brothers. Given a huge bank-note that can neither be deposited, cashed, or otherwise disposed of, the otherwise penny-less young man must survive and avoid jail for 30 days. Similar in ways to both Brewster’s Millions and Trading Places, this is a light, quick moving and fun tale.
4 ⭐️
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg: Another of Mark Twain’s pitch dark, cynical late works. Hadleyburg was a mean town, but one that reveled in self-righteous glory in the town’s reputation for incorruptible honesty. A vengeful prank from one seeking revenge reveals its staggering hypocrisy.
3 ⭐️
The Five Boons of Life: ”My name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue, and it seemed well with me for a little while — how little a while it was!”
A bitter, nihilistic fairytale/parable. A fairy visits a man with five boons — pleasure, love, fame, riches, and death, and bids him choose wisely. He does not.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Was it Heaven? or Hell?: A story where Twain plays with the ideas of conscience and Victorian morality. Aged twin sisters care for their dying niece and her daughter (also dying). They repeatedly break their strict code of no lying to bring comfort to their dying wards.
3 1/2 ⭐️
”Dream other dreams, and better!”
seemed both frightening and strangely liberating, and, as I shared his name, seemed as if spoken directly to me. Totally trippy!
The remaining stories in the collection are well matched to the title tale. Most of these stories are dark, cynical, and bitter, written in Mark Twain’s later years. The Five Boons of Life could only have been written by a heartsick man. Some details from Was It Heaven? or Hell? came directly from the author’s experiences as his wife lay dying. (He was forbidden to see her so as not to over excite her heart.) The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg is as cynical a tale as ever written, attacking artificial morality and self-righteous hypocrisy. Reading all these at a time when the only other of Twain’s works I had read was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was a little bit shocking, and definitely whetted my interest to read more of this complicated man. Four and a half decades later, that abiding interest in Mark Twain has never slacked.
The Mysterious Stranger: This posthumously published novella is the darkest of Twain’s works. Theodor and Seppi, boys living in Eseldorf (German for Donkeytown), a 16th century Austrian village, are visited by Satan, a boy-like angel who amazes and amuses them. He schools them on the ridiculousness of religion, the meanness of human life, the principles of determinism, and above all, the valuelessness of “the moral sense.” Satan is a transparent mouthpiece delivering Twain’s own skeptical and misanthropic world view, savaging the cultural institutions and hypocrisy of his own time and country.
4 ⭐️
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County: The story that was Mark Twain’s first great success, it consists of a shaggy dog tale about a notorious gambler and his frog, as related by a loquacious Western barkeep to the Eastern narrator. Something of its original humor is lost to the passage of times and changing of tastes.
3 ⭐️
The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut: The author relates an amusing battling with his own misshapen, shrunken conscience — literally.
3 1/2 ⭐️
The Stolen White Elephant: A ludicrous satire parodying a detective tale. An over the top tall tale where the detectives officious, bumbling ineptitude is praised as high talent.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Luck: Relates a story of a wooden-headed fellow who continues failing upward in the British military through pure, stupid luck.
3 ⭐️
The £1,000,000 Bank-Note: A feel good story of a down on his luck American in London who becomes the object of a bet between two wealthy brothers. Given a huge bank-note that can neither be deposited, cashed, or otherwise disposed of, the otherwise penny-less young man must survive and avoid jail for 30 days. Similar in ways to both Brewster’s Millions and Trading Places, this is a light, quick moving and fun tale.
4 ⭐️
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg: Another of Mark Twain’s pitch dark, cynical late works. Hadleyburg was a mean town, but one that reveled in self-righteous glory in the town’s reputation for incorruptible honesty. A vengeful prank from one seeking revenge reveals its staggering hypocrisy.
3 ⭐️
The Five Boons of Life: ”My name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue, and it seemed well with me for a little while — how little a while it was!”
A bitter, nihilistic fairytale/parable. A fairy visits a man with five boons — pleasure, love, fame, riches, and death, and bids him choose wisely. He does not.
3 1/2 ⭐️
Was it Heaven? or Hell?: A story where Twain plays with the ideas of conscience and Victorian morality. Aged twin sisters care for their dying niece and her daughter (also dying). They repeatedly break their strict code of no lying to bring comfort to their dying wards.
3 1/2 ⭐️
January 26, 2016
I've always heard that Twain became increasingly bitter and misanthropic towards the end of his life, but I didn't understand how true that really was until I read The Mysterious Stranger. In this posthumously published novella, a sleepy Austrian village is visited by Satan, an angel who is the nephew of the more famous, evil Satan. Satan in some ways acts as a mouthpiece for Twain, objectively pointing out how the human race is defined by fear, lies, betrayal, suspicion, and cowardice; perhaps most people mean well, but like sheep, they simply follow those who seem the boldest. Sadly, the boldest are usually those who have the worst impulses. Twain presents us with the burning of an innocent woman as a witch, the abandonment of a kind family by their friends, and a drunkard beating his loyal dog until the poor animal's eye is smashed out. As Satan observes, don't use the word brutal because brutes (animals) certainly don't act this way. Towards the end, Satan has this bombshell: he doesn't exist, and neither does God--how could there be a greater power when humanity is as sickening and loathsome as it is?
All this said, vintage Twain also shows through, in some moments of (dark) humor. My favorite exchange comes when Satan, disguised as a villager, tells a fussy middle-aged woman looking for a husband that his uncle may be interested; when she asks what the uncle does, Satan replies that he has a vast empire down in the tropics! The Mysterious Stranger, as bleak as it is, also has some moments of grace, not letting Satan get in the last word. The boys who hear Satan's pronouncements, do some cowardly things, but their compassion and desire to do right shows through time after time. The fact that they can't understand Satan's objective judgements on humanity is to their credit--their emotions and desire to better themselves are what help them transcend the sordidness around them.
All this said, vintage Twain also shows through, in some moments of (dark) humor. My favorite exchange comes when Satan, disguised as a villager, tells a fussy middle-aged woman looking for a husband that his uncle may be interested; when she asks what the uncle does, Satan replies that he has a vast empire down in the tropics! The Mysterious Stranger, as bleak as it is, also has some moments of grace, not letting Satan get in the last word. The boys who hear Satan's pronouncements, do some cowardly things, but their compassion and desire to do right shows through time after time. The fact that they can't understand Satan's objective judgements on humanity is to their credit--their emotions and desire to better themselves are what help them transcend the sordidness around them.
May 11, 2016
"The Mysterious Stranger," closer in size to a novella, takes up more than half of the book. It is the real gem of this collection and for me, by far, the best piece here.
(The four stories in this Dover Thrift Edition, a very easy to find edition btw, span Twain's earliest popularity to his last days, and have greed as a common theme.)
"The Mysterious Stranger" is a very odd story. Satan (or, at least his minion nephew, a surrogate dark angel as presented here) is more or less the hero; humankind and religion come in for a deserved blistering drubbing for the race's cruelty, ignorance and hypocrisy. The story takes place in Austria in 1590; it's told from the viewpoint of a boy (actually a grown man reminiscing), who along with his friends are dazzled by and befriended by Satan; they come to realize that Satan is more an observer and agent than a purposely malicious being - sort of the way predators are in the wild. It is only man who preaches morality and in the same breath commits malicious, sadistic cruelty with relish.
Morality, ostensibly good, brings with it judgment - and from that rationalizing all manner of righteous brutality. Those with the "moral sense" (humans) are seen as less than beasts, because beasts do not judge.
I was perplexed a bit by a writerly conundrum raised by the piece, and that's that witchcraft is sort of mocked as bogus (and Satan, nee Twain, mocks the torturers of witches), and yet Satan is, in fact, practicing withcraft through the whole village, materializing riches and changing people's fates. There is obviously metaphysical intervention going on, so the townspeople actually have some basis for their belief, even though they really don't know it. Or there are those who do, but chose to deny it when money comes their way. It seems religion takes a back seat when cash enters the picture. Evil being the source matters not to those profiting.
The story has all the satirical strengths of Twain at his best, masterful storytelling chops and some truly weird and wonderful fantasy conceits --- interwoven with perhaps pedantic, but very powerfully stated arguments about the pettiness of humanity. His analysis of the mob mentality that leads to war sounds eerily like the post-911 era.
OK, well the more famous earlier short stories in this collection I found less satisfying.
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," the early work that put Twain on the map, is a bit weak now. The punchline is mild and the lead-up is a bit padded.
"The $1,000,000 Bank Note" is pretty good. The idea of two rich guys pulling a bum off the street and betting how he will behave or survive reminds me of movies such as "Trading Places" that have similar premises. It too has prescience: the idea of being *perceived* as having real wealth, and the access to all privileges engendered is not so dissimilar to the phony perceptions of wealth of Enron and the dotcom era.
"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" has an excellent premise and great ideas, about the deeply rooted corruption of a town whose corruption finally boils to its seemingly pristine surface, but I felt Twain's execution was poor and the story is woefully confusing. I have to admit I bailed on it and may have to retry it another time.
It goes against my stickler policy to mark this as "read" since I did bail on one of the stories, but I must move on...
The real four-star gem here is "Mysterious Stranger."
(The four stories in this Dover Thrift Edition, a very easy to find edition btw, span Twain's earliest popularity to his last days, and have greed as a common theme.)
"The Mysterious Stranger" is a very odd story. Satan (or, at least his minion nephew, a surrogate dark angel as presented here) is more or less the hero; humankind and religion come in for a deserved blistering drubbing for the race's cruelty, ignorance and hypocrisy. The story takes place in Austria in 1590; it's told from the viewpoint of a boy (actually a grown man reminiscing), who along with his friends are dazzled by and befriended by Satan; they come to realize that Satan is more an observer and agent than a purposely malicious being - sort of the way predators are in the wild. It is only man who preaches morality and in the same breath commits malicious, sadistic cruelty with relish.
Morality, ostensibly good, brings with it judgment - and from that rationalizing all manner of righteous brutality. Those with the "moral sense" (humans) are seen as less than beasts, because beasts do not judge.
I was perplexed a bit by a writerly conundrum raised by the piece, and that's that witchcraft is sort of mocked as bogus (and Satan, nee Twain, mocks the torturers of witches), and yet Satan is, in fact, practicing withcraft through the whole village, materializing riches and changing people's fates. There is obviously metaphysical intervention going on, so the townspeople actually have some basis for their belief, even though they really don't know it. Or there are those who do, but chose to deny it when money comes their way. It seems religion takes a back seat when cash enters the picture. Evil being the source matters not to those profiting.
The story has all the satirical strengths of Twain at his best, masterful storytelling chops and some truly weird and wonderful fantasy conceits --- interwoven with perhaps pedantic, but very powerfully stated arguments about the pettiness of humanity. His analysis of the mob mentality that leads to war sounds eerily like the post-911 era.
OK, well the more famous earlier short stories in this collection I found less satisfying.
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," the early work that put Twain on the map, is a bit weak now. The punchline is mild and the lead-up is a bit padded.
"The $1,000,000 Bank Note" is pretty good. The idea of two rich guys pulling a bum off the street and betting how he will behave or survive reminds me of movies such as "Trading Places" that have similar premises. It too has prescience: the idea of being *perceived* as having real wealth, and the access to all privileges engendered is not so dissimilar to the phony perceptions of wealth of Enron and the dotcom era.
"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" has an excellent premise and great ideas, about the deeply rooted corruption of a town whose corruption finally boils to its seemingly pristine surface, but I felt Twain's execution was poor and the story is woefully confusing. I have to admit I bailed on it and may have to retry it another time.
It goes against my stickler policy to mark this as "read" since I did bail on one of the stories, but I must move on...
The real four-star gem here is "Mysterious Stranger."
May 20, 2023
The title story is actually a novella, and it is accompanied by three slight bagatelles, with only the one about burglar alarms showing Twain’s propensity for laugh-out-loud humour.
As the first work I’ve ever read by Mark Twain, ‘The Stranger’ literally floored me with the acerbic, vitriolic, dismissive and overpoweringly negative outlook the writer takes on his species. Human beings are ‘dull, ignorant, trivial, conceited, diseased, rickety, shabby and worthless … a museum of disease, a home of impurities … beginning in dirt and ending in stench … [with] foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sigh and extinction, and they have no sense, only the Moral Sense.’
This ‘Moral Sense’, or judgment as to what they believe to be right and wrong, has allowed them to kill off members of their own species with ever increasingly sophisticated means of destruction from Cain’s club through the ancient Hebrews’ javelins and swords and the Romans and Greeks armour and military organizations to the Christians’ use of guns and gunpowder. All because they knew that they were right and that their enemy/victim was wrong. According, that is, to their Moral Sense.
It is this Moral Sense which created the rapacious hunting of witches who were burned and hung because, for instance, instead of bleeding victims of disease, they thought to wash them and feed them a good diet. When the sick person recovered, their benefactor was obviously revealed to be a witch and deserved to be hung. Then, anyone in the village who did not throw a stone at the dead hanging body was obviously in sympathy with the malefactor and deserved a similar fate. This is why ‘our race … duped itself from cradle to grave with shows and deceptions; monarchies, aristocracies and religions all based on the one defect of the human race – the individual distrust of his neighbour and his desire, for safety and comfort’s sake, to stand well within his neighbour’s eyes.’ Thus, almost all humanity are sheep, led by the loud few who follow their twisted, vainglorious and ultimately wrong ‘Moral Sense’ in persecuting others.
The story is set in Austria in the late Middle Ages and is largely a vehicle for the rantings of Satan. No, not him, but rather his nephew. The story itself is inconsequential. It is its diatribe against the oppressive cultural myopia and stupidity of the human race and their cruelties to others of their own kind that Twain allowed to overwhelm his writing. The way people hurt other people is often described by others as ‘brutish’. But Satan corrects this judgement as being excessively harsh on ‘brutes’ – on cows, deer, pigs: none of which would ever torture others of their kind since they feel their Moral Sense compels them to do so.
It is a truly awful vision of our species. It also makes me want to read more of Twain.
Highly recommended.
As the first work I’ve ever read by Mark Twain, ‘The Stranger’ literally floored me with the acerbic, vitriolic, dismissive and overpoweringly negative outlook the writer takes on his species. Human beings are ‘dull, ignorant, trivial, conceited, diseased, rickety, shabby and worthless … a museum of disease, a home of impurities … beginning in dirt and ending in stench … [with] foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sigh and extinction, and they have no sense, only the Moral Sense.’
This ‘Moral Sense’, or judgment as to what they believe to be right and wrong, has allowed them to kill off members of their own species with ever increasingly sophisticated means of destruction from Cain’s club through the ancient Hebrews’ javelins and swords and the Romans and Greeks armour and military organizations to the Christians’ use of guns and gunpowder. All because they knew that they were right and that their enemy/victim was wrong. According, that is, to their Moral Sense.
It is this Moral Sense which created the rapacious hunting of witches who were burned and hung because, for instance, instead of bleeding victims of disease, they thought to wash them and feed them a good diet. When the sick person recovered, their benefactor was obviously revealed to be a witch and deserved to be hung. Then, anyone in the village who did not throw a stone at the dead hanging body was obviously in sympathy with the malefactor and deserved a similar fate. This is why ‘our race … duped itself from cradle to grave with shows and deceptions; monarchies, aristocracies and religions all based on the one defect of the human race – the individual distrust of his neighbour and his desire, for safety and comfort’s sake, to stand well within his neighbour’s eyes.’ Thus, almost all humanity are sheep, led by the loud few who follow their twisted, vainglorious and ultimately wrong ‘Moral Sense’ in persecuting others.
The story is set in Austria in the late Middle Ages and is largely a vehicle for the rantings of Satan. No, not him, but rather his nephew. The story itself is inconsequential. It is its diatribe against the oppressive cultural myopia and stupidity of the human race and their cruelties to others of their own kind that Twain allowed to overwhelm his writing. The way people hurt other people is often described by others as ‘brutish’. But Satan corrects this judgement as being excessively harsh on ‘brutes’ – on cows, deer, pigs: none of which would ever torture others of their kind since they feel their Moral Sense compels them to do so.
It is a truly awful vision of our species. It also makes me want to read more of Twain.
Highly recommended.
December 4, 2025
The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain
Nine out of 10
Being familiar with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and those of Tom Sawyer, a reader might find The Mysterious Stranger intriguing, recognizing the extraordinary talent of the worldwide famous author, but at the same time perhaps being puzzled by the subject of this novel and the more sinister side it has, even if it has been included in the comedy section on The Guardian 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list - https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
The main reason why this novel feels so different from the other masterpieces by Mark Twain is that he has not finished it and what we can read today is based on his creations, but finally the work is a compilation nonetheless.
Theodor, the son of an organist in Middle Age Austria is the narrator and one of the two main characters of the book, the other being a Mysterious Stranger, called Satan, but awkwardly enough, this apparition is …an angel, with some very outré manners – indeed, as the storyteller would observe, the only way that this seraphic creature knows how to help is by killing people.
Theodor has two other friends, Seppi and Nikolaus, and they meet this Stranger, who would astonish them and their fellow villagers, with extraordinary acts, some of them rather petty, even if impossible for human beings to accomplish, like juggling with one hundred balls at the same time, while other actions would take the hero to china, France and other destinations and the villainous astrologer to the cold side of the moon and back.
The main point of the story appears to be underlined by religious fanaticism, witch trials, burnings, hangings, death, mass hysteria which are detailed in the novel, making one puzzle over the labeling of “comedy” attached to it, even if the sarcasm, the irony is evident for most of the time, when Satan indicates the rich in France and the way they oppress the poor women and very small children working on their properties, for wages that only ensure a life of suffering, with barely enough to eat to survive in squalor, working for long hours every day, sleeping only four hours at night, a few families in the same dirty lodging, travelling each day through storms, excruciating heat.
Populated as it is with awfully villainous personages – in the sardonic view of Satan, humankind is loathsome, deplorable and only it can be so mean, due to what he calls the Moral Sense and engage in vile acts that no animal would do – the narrative has a few gentle, brave, kind, even heroic figures, like Father Peter and his niece Marget, who wrongfully become the target of the pettiness and ultimately villainous behavior of the other locals, urged by the enemy of the old man, the astrologer, who wants the honest man destroyed.
Satan helps Father Peter by placing eleven hundred and seven coins in his path, a gesture that is complex for after the initial impulse given to the finances of the household, which was about to be foreclosed on account of accumulated debts, the astrologer enters the scene, claiming that the money was stolen from him, even if the version he proposes is somehow amusing in that he suggests he had found the money, in almost the same manner as the Father.
Nonetheless, the old man is taken to jail, his niece is ostracized, unable to offer music lessons and therefore to support herself and the trusted maid they have, up to the point where the alleged angel intervenes again by providing a special cat that would offer the servant four guldens every day and on top of that the food, fruits, wines that only princes had access to and which would be generously shared with guests from the village, who would initially enjoy them and then suspect foul play and prepare punishment for witchcraft.
Satan is an outré figure indeed, for while he hears all the thoughts of people, can alter his presence, disappear at will, travel with the speed of light or maybe faster, at the same time he appears unable to cope with human feelings, emotions, in that he places all together and despises humanity in its entirety for the atrocities, abominations, genocides committed by many men and much fewer women, extending the blame to all the species and saying he is like the elephant who has no consideration for the spider, he is too large to be concerned by it.
Be that as it may, such a spectacular seraphic character should be able to see things from the point of view of the spider, as opposed to the more limited, if gifted elephant and it appears frustrating at times to follow a supposed demigod who has such vile manners, killing first a few small men he had created, but then using the same technique with other personages, women accused of witchcraft that he murders because he says that would shorten their suffering – this creates the premise of looking at the angelic apparition in a more complex way, seeing it and his name as an indication that he could be both a satanic and a benefic presence.
At one hanging, Satan comes under verbal attack, being suspected of blasphemy and other malfeasance, and he states that one of his accusers would die within five minutes, another during the night and the third within a week, premonitions which come true, for he has the power to influence destinies, even if his perspective is very different – even with Father Peter, he thinks that a life of happiness is the equivalent of a life with a damaged brain – he states that “being smart excludes being happy” .
He changes the destiny of one of the three friends, who was about to save a girl and then get so ill as to live for many decades in a vegetable state, and kills him, emphasizing often that most of humans have a life of misery ahead and it is much better to end it sooner, rather than later, even if there are some exceptions, in the case of Marget for instance, who is accused by her fellow men, then absolved, sees her beloved uncle released and after a period of infatuation with the devil –perhaps – in the shape of Angel Satan, she returns to the man who worships her.
There is a philosophical, provocative end to the novel, suggesting an atheist message – which a titan of psychology, Nathaniel Branden, purports is the best choice - in his work The Psychological Effects of Religion, he underlines the damage the concept of god can do, with its omniscient presence over our shoulder, the infliction of punishment for original sin, something we have not done, for natural acts, like masturbation, with the concept that we have another, better life after the one which is in reality all there is…
The message that Satan has includes this:
"[T]here is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream – a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought – a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"
Nine out of 10
Being familiar with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and those of Tom Sawyer, a reader might find The Mysterious Stranger intriguing, recognizing the extraordinary talent of the worldwide famous author, but at the same time perhaps being puzzled by the subject of this novel and the more sinister side it has, even if it has been included in the comedy section on The Guardian 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list - https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
The main reason why this novel feels so different from the other masterpieces by Mark Twain is that he has not finished it and what we can read today is based on his creations, but finally the work is a compilation nonetheless.
Theodor, the son of an organist in Middle Age Austria is the narrator and one of the two main characters of the book, the other being a Mysterious Stranger, called Satan, but awkwardly enough, this apparition is …an angel, with some very outré manners – indeed, as the storyteller would observe, the only way that this seraphic creature knows how to help is by killing people.
Theodor has two other friends, Seppi and Nikolaus, and they meet this Stranger, who would astonish them and their fellow villagers, with extraordinary acts, some of them rather petty, even if impossible for human beings to accomplish, like juggling with one hundred balls at the same time, while other actions would take the hero to china, France and other destinations and the villainous astrologer to the cold side of the moon and back.
The main point of the story appears to be underlined by religious fanaticism, witch trials, burnings, hangings, death, mass hysteria which are detailed in the novel, making one puzzle over the labeling of “comedy” attached to it, even if the sarcasm, the irony is evident for most of the time, when Satan indicates the rich in France and the way they oppress the poor women and very small children working on their properties, for wages that only ensure a life of suffering, with barely enough to eat to survive in squalor, working for long hours every day, sleeping only four hours at night, a few families in the same dirty lodging, travelling each day through storms, excruciating heat.
Populated as it is with awfully villainous personages – in the sardonic view of Satan, humankind is loathsome, deplorable and only it can be so mean, due to what he calls the Moral Sense and engage in vile acts that no animal would do – the narrative has a few gentle, brave, kind, even heroic figures, like Father Peter and his niece Marget, who wrongfully become the target of the pettiness and ultimately villainous behavior of the other locals, urged by the enemy of the old man, the astrologer, who wants the honest man destroyed.
Satan helps Father Peter by placing eleven hundred and seven coins in his path, a gesture that is complex for after the initial impulse given to the finances of the household, which was about to be foreclosed on account of accumulated debts, the astrologer enters the scene, claiming that the money was stolen from him, even if the version he proposes is somehow amusing in that he suggests he had found the money, in almost the same manner as the Father.
Nonetheless, the old man is taken to jail, his niece is ostracized, unable to offer music lessons and therefore to support herself and the trusted maid they have, up to the point where the alleged angel intervenes again by providing a special cat that would offer the servant four guldens every day and on top of that the food, fruits, wines that only princes had access to and which would be generously shared with guests from the village, who would initially enjoy them and then suspect foul play and prepare punishment for witchcraft.
Satan is an outré figure indeed, for while he hears all the thoughts of people, can alter his presence, disappear at will, travel with the speed of light or maybe faster, at the same time he appears unable to cope with human feelings, emotions, in that he places all together and despises humanity in its entirety for the atrocities, abominations, genocides committed by many men and much fewer women, extending the blame to all the species and saying he is like the elephant who has no consideration for the spider, he is too large to be concerned by it.
Be that as it may, such a spectacular seraphic character should be able to see things from the point of view of the spider, as opposed to the more limited, if gifted elephant and it appears frustrating at times to follow a supposed demigod who has such vile manners, killing first a few small men he had created, but then using the same technique with other personages, women accused of witchcraft that he murders because he says that would shorten their suffering – this creates the premise of looking at the angelic apparition in a more complex way, seeing it and his name as an indication that he could be both a satanic and a benefic presence.
At one hanging, Satan comes under verbal attack, being suspected of blasphemy and other malfeasance, and he states that one of his accusers would die within five minutes, another during the night and the third within a week, premonitions which come true, for he has the power to influence destinies, even if his perspective is very different – even with Father Peter, he thinks that a life of happiness is the equivalent of a life with a damaged brain – he states that “being smart excludes being happy” .
He changes the destiny of one of the three friends, who was about to save a girl and then get so ill as to live for many decades in a vegetable state, and kills him, emphasizing often that most of humans have a life of misery ahead and it is much better to end it sooner, rather than later, even if there are some exceptions, in the case of Marget for instance, who is accused by her fellow men, then absolved, sees her beloved uncle released and after a period of infatuation with the devil –perhaps – in the shape of Angel Satan, she returns to the man who worships her.
There is a philosophical, provocative end to the novel, suggesting an atheist message – which a titan of psychology, Nathaniel Branden, purports is the best choice - in his work The Psychological Effects of Religion, he underlines the damage the concept of god can do, with its omniscient presence over our shoulder, the infliction of punishment for original sin, something we have not done, for natural acts, like masturbation, with the concept that we have another, better life after the one which is in reality all there is…
The message that Satan has includes this:
"[T]here is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream – a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought – a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"
January 14, 2026
Very well written short stories, I enjoyed them very much.
The last and longest story, "The Mysterious Stranger", is very dark and pessimistic. According to the publisher's note it is "a monument to the misanthropy and pessimism of his later years". I find that very sad.
The last and longest story, "The Mysterious Stranger", is very dark and pessimistic. According to the publisher's note it is "a monument to the misanthropy and pessimism of his later years". I find that very sad.
September 27, 2021
This collection of short stories and novellas has several imaginative and strange tales written in Mark Twain’s humorous style.
I didn’t really enjoy these stories. Most of them don’t have a decent plot line. It’s all atmosphere and setting, with little substance. The characters aren’t that great. The plots meander around and don’t end satisfactorily.
“The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is only a few pages about a man who makes a bet about a frog being able to jump high. The story rambles all around and when the narrator finally gets to the point, it’s not that funny.
“The Million Pound Bank Note” was my favorite in this collection. It’s about a man who is given £1,000,000 bank note, but he can’t make change for it. I thought it was clever and funny, and I liked the characters.
“The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg” is about a man who mysteriously leaves a sack of gold, trusting to the honesty of strangers to get the gold into the right hands. He tries to prove that everyone in this town is dishonest. There were a few plot holes in the story, and things that were left unexplained. I didn’t like any of the characters.
“The Mysterious Stranger” is about three young men who meet Satan and are fascinated by his powers. At first their friendship with him seems innocent, but gradually their family and neighbors begin to suffer because of the supernatural involvement in their lives. There were a lot of strange spiritual ideas regarding God and heaven, ending with the horrifying concept that there is no reality, and all of life is just a dream. This whole story was just awful! The three young men witness people being tortured and going insane, and the violence is graphic and upsetting. What a horrible story!
Out of all these stories, the only one I liked was the “Million Pound Bank Note.” I would much rather read Tom Sawyer.
I didn’t really enjoy these stories. Most of them don’t have a decent plot line. It’s all atmosphere and setting, with little substance. The characters aren’t that great. The plots meander around and don’t end satisfactorily.
“The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is only a few pages about a man who makes a bet about a frog being able to jump high. The story rambles all around and when the narrator finally gets to the point, it’s not that funny.
“The Million Pound Bank Note” was my favorite in this collection. It’s about a man who is given £1,000,000 bank note, but he can’t make change for it. I thought it was clever and funny, and I liked the characters.
“The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg” is about a man who mysteriously leaves a sack of gold, trusting to the honesty of strangers to get the gold into the right hands. He tries to prove that everyone in this town is dishonest. There were a few plot holes in the story, and things that were left unexplained. I didn’t like any of the characters.
“The Mysterious Stranger” is about three young men who meet Satan and are fascinated by his powers. At first their friendship with him seems innocent, but gradually their family and neighbors begin to suffer because of the supernatural involvement in their lives. There were a lot of strange spiritual ideas regarding God and heaven, ending with the horrifying concept that there is no reality, and all of life is just a dream. This whole story was just awful! The three young men witness people being tortured and going insane, and the violence is graphic and upsetting. What a horrible story!
Out of all these stories, the only one I liked was the “Million Pound Bank Note.” I would much rather read Tom Sawyer.
November 21, 2019
I'm not a big fan of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (though I plan to re-read them at some point) and when I read Mark Twain's critique of James Fenimore Cooper, I began to suspect—Hal Holbrook notwithstanding—that the beloved American author was kind of a douchebag.
This collection of short stories confirms that suspicion.
I was informed recently that he had a wife with cancer whom he abandoned to "look for a cure" (sort of the way O.J. is looking for the real killers), which maybe explains some of the stories in this book. (I did not know this while reading, and it does not change my opinion.)
There are three stories here as part of what should have been officially labeled "The Dover Public Domain Series", of which I own many since I had a relative who worked for them in the '90s.
The first story: The oft-reprinted "Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" which is a nice little short about a gambler who trains a...uh...super frog, I guess. It's a pretty good story, but I noticed the framing device is "Douchebag who doesn't want to be told story does what he can to avoid it and any future stories." I mean, it's mild but it's also unnecessary. You're basically saying, "This story sucks, was told by an idiot and bore, but that's not me even though I'm the author because I'm also telling you how much hate it."
I mean, I guess it's irony, but it struck me what an odd device that was for telling a story.
The second story is "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg": At this point Twain was 64, in the last decade of his life, and he had the moral sense of a teenager. The story is that this "uncorrupted town" teaches its children morality and removes temptation and has a reputation that's so good that all a young man has to do to secure a job in another town is to say he's from Hadleyberg.
But what we learn immediately is that they're all a bunch of shallow hypocrites. And the story is the process of their extended humiliation and the death of two old, poor people from guilt.
Oh, you showed them, Mr. Clemens. With a contrivance more rickety than James F. Cooper's canoe, too. Because the "wisdom" here is that virtue isn't virtue until it's tempted and removing temptation is therefore invalid, since you'll fall for it the first time you encounter it. First of all, that's nonsense: There is such a thing as the virtue of eschewing tempting situations. Second of all, how does that square with the young men being able to get jobs elsewhere on the basis of this virtue? After all, a job that requires trust inherently involves temptation, and they all would've fallen for it at the first opportunity—that's the very "moral" of this story.
No, one gets the idea that Twain (ironically enough) made his bones by feasting on small town hypocrisy, and he wasn't going to let a little logical inconsistency stand in his way.
But if that was nauseating, "The Mysterious Stranger" is a malignant bit of nihilistic ennui which I give some leeway because it was never really finished and I don't know what the editor did to it. (Nor did I care enough to do a side-by-side reading of the versions like I did with Lair of the White Worm.) It's got a nice enough opening with some boys running into Satan—no, not that Satan, but his sinless nephew—and being seduced by his magic and power, though to unfortunate but not apparently malicious ends.
Th Satan part is never resolved to satisfaction, possibly because "Satan" as a character had different roles in the different versions Twain wrote.
But it starts to get morbid in the worst ways: Satan explains that everyone's life is predetermined from some trivial action they took early on, and when he alters this path slightly, lives are radically changed. Sort of a butterfly effect, with no agency for humanity.
The ending? Well, it was all dream. Not just the story, but all existence, including Satan and the narrator.
Whee. At least he never published it.
This collection of short stories confirms that suspicion.
I was informed recently that he had a wife with cancer whom he abandoned to "look for a cure" (sort of the way O.J. is looking for the real killers), which maybe explains some of the stories in this book. (I did not know this while reading, and it does not change my opinion.)
There are three stories here as part of what should have been officially labeled "The Dover Public Domain Series", of which I own many since I had a relative who worked for them in the '90s.
The first story: The oft-reprinted "Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" which is a nice little short about a gambler who trains a...uh...super frog, I guess. It's a pretty good story, but I noticed the framing device is "Douchebag who doesn't want to be told story does what he can to avoid it and any future stories." I mean, it's mild but it's also unnecessary. You're basically saying, "This story sucks, was told by an idiot and bore, but that's not me even though I'm the author because I'm also telling you how much hate it."
I mean, I guess it's irony, but it struck me what an odd device that was for telling a story.
The second story is "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg": At this point Twain was 64, in the last decade of his life, and he had the moral sense of a teenager. The story is that this "uncorrupted town" teaches its children morality and removes temptation and has a reputation that's so good that all a young man has to do to secure a job in another town is to say he's from Hadleyberg.
But what we learn immediately is that they're all a bunch of shallow hypocrites. And the story is the process of their extended humiliation and the death of two old, poor people from guilt.
Oh, you showed them, Mr. Clemens. With a contrivance more rickety than James F. Cooper's canoe, too. Because the "wisdom" here is that virtue isn't virtue until it's tempted and removing temptation is therefore invalid, since you'll fall for it the first time you encounter it. First of all, that's nonsense: There is such a thing as the virtue of eschewing tempting situations. Second of all, how does that square with the young men being able to get jobs elsewhere on the basis of this virtue? After all, a job that requires trust inherently involves temptation, and they all would've fallen for it at the first opportunity—that's the very "moral" of this story.
No, one gets the idea that Twain (ironically enough) made his bones by feasting on small town hypocrisy, and he wasn't going to let a little logical inconsistency stand in his way.
But if that was nauseating, "The Mysterious Stranger" is a malignant bit of nihilistic ennui which I give some leeway because it was never really finished and I don't know what the editor did to it. (Nor did I care enough to do a side-by-side reading of the versions like I did with Lair of the White Worm.) It's got a nice enough opening with some boys running into Satan—no, not that Satan, but his sinless nephew—and being seduced by his magic and power, though to unfortunate but not apparently malicious ends.
Th Satan part is never resolved to satisfaction, possibly because "Satan" as a character had different roles in the different versions Twain wrote.
But it starts to get morbid in the worst ways: Satan explains that everyone's life is predetermined from some trivial action they took early on, and when he alters this path slightly, lives are radically changed. Sort of a butterfly effect, with no agency for humanity.
The ending? Well, it was all dream. Not just the story, but all existence, including Satan and the narrator.
Whee. At least he never published it.
January 12, 2009
Loved "The 1,000,000 Pound Note." Best story of the book.
Didn't know Mark Twain could get so dark about religion as he gets with "The Mysterious Stranger," published after his death. I am sure that in its time it was offensive and likely passed off as rubbish. I think he's onto some stuff there.
I mean, a lot of people do live in herd mentality, otherwise the Spanish Inquisition and Salem Witch Trials (to name a few) would not have happened. More recently, the Red Scare. The point is that people who disagree are often hushed by thinking everyone else supports it when most don't.
It's a crime, and it shouldn't happen, but everyone knows that one time they went along with the majority and regretted it. It happens.
We try to live good lives, but occasionally a wierdo walks by and he draws a crowd, so we follow.
I read a psychological study on this once. The scientists were trying to figure out what kind of sick person would commit the terrible crimes and genocide in the Holocaust. They arranged a voluntary test (for $5) where you come down into the basement of a university building, you sit down, and eventually another guy shows up. You don't know it, but he's a paid actor. The researcher tells you both to pick a piece of paper from the box, one will say "teacher" and the other, "student." You hear the other guy say, "Gee, this won't affect my heart condition, will it?" while you are pulling out "teacher." (They all say "teacher.")
Then the test begins. You watch as the other guy (the actor) is tied up to an electric charge. They explain that you teach him a series of words or numbers; if he repeats them back wrong, you press the button that will give him a light shock. You cannot see the shocking process from your test room.
As the test progresses, the shocks get stronger.
You begin, he screws up, and you press the button. He grunts.
He screws up again, he moans this time when you press it.
The 3rd time you press the button, he yells.
Then the 4th , you don't want to press it, but 98% of people do (!!!) even though you can tell he's in pain. The scientists tell you that you CAN NOT STOP the test!
You proceed.
The 5th, he's screaming.
The 6th, he's silent.
You think you killed him. (Of course the paid actor was never hooked up to the electricity in the first place.)
90% of people finished the tests despite his screams. However, that number was reduced to 10% when another human other than the scientist was in the room with you. Apparently strength in numbers also works in this way.
So is humanity as bad as Mark Twain says it is? Well, you can at least say that we are not as humane as we think we are.
Didn't know Mark Twain could get so dark about religion as he gets with "The Mysterious Stranger," published after his death. I am sure that in its time it was offensive and likely passed off as rubbish. I think he's onto some stuff there.
I mean, a lot of people do live in herd mentality, otherwise the Spanish Inquisition and Salem Witch Trials (to name a few) would not have happened. More recently, the Red Scare. The point is that people who disagree are often hushed by thinking everyone else supports it when most don't.
It's a crime, and it shouldn't happen, but everyone knows that one time they went along with the majority and regretted it. It happens.
We try to live good lives, but occasionally a wierdo walks by and he draws a crowd, so we follow.
I read a psychological study on this once. The scientists were trying to figure out what kind of sick person would commit the terrible crimes and genocide in the Holocaust. They arranged a voluntary test (for $5) where you come down into the basement of a university building, you sit down, and eventually another guy shows up. You don't know it, but he's a paid actor. The researcher tells you both to pick a piece of paper from the box, one will say "teacher" and the other, "student." You hear the other guy say, "Gee, this won't affect my heart condition, will it?" while you are pulling out "teacher." (They all say "teacher.")
Then the test begins. You watch as the other guy (the actor) is tied up to an electric charge. They explain that you teach him a series of words or numbers; if he repeats them back wrong, you press the button that will give him a light shock. You cannot see the shocking process from your test room.
As the test progresses, the shocks get stronger.
You begin, he screws up, and you press the button. He grunts.
He screws up again, he moans this time when you press it.
The 3rd time you press the button, he yells.
Then the 4th , you don't want to press it, but 98% of people do (!!!) even though you can tell he's in pain. The scientists tell you that you CAN NOT STOP the test!
You proceed.
The 5th, he's screaming.
The 6th, he's silent.
You think you killed him. (Of course the paid actor was never hooked up to the electricity in the first place.)
90% of people finished the tests despite his screams. However, that number was reduced to 10% when another human other than the scientist was in the room with you. Apparently strength in numbers also works in this way.
So is humanity as bad as Mark Twain says it is? Well, you can at least say that we are not as humane as we think we are.
December 2, 2011
For readers who know Twain only through his often quoted witticisms and works such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer many of the stories in this book will come as a bit of a shock. The volume begins with the folksy "Famous Jumping Frog" and ends with the surreal novella The Mysterious Stranger. Between the writing of the two, Twain would suffer failure and losses which twisted his already cynical view of mankind into a nearly warped vision. Along the way he seemed to lose much of his good-humored empathy for man and his weaknesses. I do not much share the author's view on people or life, but I have over the years found his work to be thought-provoking. In the case of the very, very dark Stranger, as weird as it is, as twisted as I find his assessment of humankind, it is one of my favorite of his works. One I have re-read several times over the years. As for the other stories in this collection, they were, for me, a mixed bag. Too often they veer too closely to the didactic for artistic effectiveness, a complaint that might be made of Stranger, but it's utter oddness and darkness is haunting. "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg though leant too much towards a preachiness to really catch my imagination. However, I found the premise intriguing. "The Carnival of Crime..." again preachy, but amusing. The story of the wishes; Lord save me from becoming that jaded about life as I get older.
July 28, 2021
Best story: The 1,000,000£ Bank Note
Clever and unexpected, it really put a twist on perspective and how to take advantage of a seemingly bad situation.
Also, a couple of his stories were about contrived moral sense, religion (like The Mysterious Stranger) and that must have stuck out during his time. I applaud him for that. They expressed his ideas clearly and made me think.
This book lost a star because, aside from the stories I enjoyed above, quite a few of the stories didn’t appeal to me because they either bored me or were too alike a previous stories message.
Clever and unexpected, it really put a twist on perspective and how to take advantage of a seemingly bad situation.
Also, a couple of his stories were about contrived moral sense, religion (like The Mysterious Stranger) and that must have stuck out during his time. I applaud him for that. They expressed his ideas clearly and made me think.
This book lost a star because, aside from the stories I enjoyed above, quite a few of the stories didn’t appeal to me because they either bored me or were too alike a previous stories message.
March 30, 2009
The Mysterious Stranger is singularly absent of Twain's usual humor, but his wonderful ability to alter the reader's perspective in areas previously taken for granted, such as one's views on good and evil, is patently present. The "other stories" fortunately were humorous and lighthearted and went a long way to lifting the depressions of the Mysterious Stranger.
April 4, 2022
Twain's pessimism about the human race and existence itself is prevalent in this sorry tale. The short stories are of little interest. My wife purchased this book because of the N. C. Wyeth illustrations and was very disappointed to see that only the cover illustration is in color and that details of the black and white illustrations are not very distinct. If you haven't already read these stories, spare yourself. Other Mark Twain works are vastly superior and may be read with profit.
November 14, 2020
I first read this book in high school and remembered that it was one of my favorite books. During the same time period I read a very long book that I did a presentation on (Don Quixoto) but thought the presentation was on another book about life being a just a dream and had been searching for the very book I was reading!
Read
July 29, 2021Sure, "The Mysterious Stranger" was cool. But the highlight of this book, and maybe of all of Mark Twain's writing, was the final story about a burglar alarm. Nothing else that twain has written has been as entertaining.
December 11, 2022
these were average
February 27, 2025
It comes in danger of being TOO cynical(even by Twain's standards) to the point of nihilism, but still a very compelling read and something completely different from Twain.
September 26, 2013
TALES TO TWEAK MAN'S VANITY, HIS SANITY AND HIS SOUL
This interesting anthology presents the gamut of Twains fertile genius in eight tales of varying lengths: from a few pages to a true novella. The editor has chosen both humorous and serious stories: those which satirize and even critiicze. Tales which will entertain and make readers reflect, or cause them to react with anger and even shock.
Whatever the author's goal, his writing will evoke strong emotions.
Either way: gone is the laid-back Missisippi humor of TOM SAWYER days.
Opening with the iconic but brief "Celebrated Jumping Frog" yarn, this short story amuses us with its clever game of wits between a local boaster/con man and an equally sly stranger passing though a hick gold mining camp. Twain often develops his tales by employing one or
more first-person narrators. "The Million Pound Bank Note" inspired a Hollywood movie starring Gregory Peck, though not set in the London
original. Twain acutally spoofs himsef (as an author pestered by
aspiring writers and requests for donations) in his "Connecticut Crime Carnival," wherein he does ferocious battle with his implacable con-science. New York City provides yet another setting for his genius: a savvy detective orchestrates the recovery of a "Stolen White Elephant" although the narrator suffers grievous finacial loss.
But Twain's darker side predominates in this anthology; he seems to enjoy placing helpless humans into serious moral conflict--pitting them against stronger wills and evil entities. He takes an almost malicious delight in mankind's inevitable failure. His characters repeatedly struggle against temptation--making futile attempts to outwit evil--either in human form as "The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg" or the devil himself who proves to be the "Mysterious Stranger." In the former tale (which reads like a play and would make a wonderful piece if dramtaized) a bitter stranger contemplates a unique and callous form of revenge for an old, perceived slight. Hell-bent on punishment by humiilation he understands all too well the human weaknesses of vanity and greed.
Human nature is bitiingly scrutinzed and ridiculed in the title novella of 92 pages. Set in a remote Austrian village in the late 16th
century, when women were burned for witchcraft and the village Astrologer was treated with resepctful awe, this grim story proves frankly overlong with its protracted "lectures" by a charmingly youthful Satan--actually the nephew of the famous uncle who is active in Business the world over. The plot is frequently deliberately stalled when atheistic Satan (Twain's unabashed mouthpiece) denounces the senseless stupidity and gullibility of mankind throughout history.
Three village youths who are inseparable friends are the only ones to to whom Satan appears as himself--curiously, not to win their souls this time--but to win them over to his convoluted thinking: employing both sleight of hand as well as his glib tongue. The boys are helpless before his specious logic. Delighting to present a parade of human folly and warlike instict Satan almost predicts the invention of more powerful Weapons of Mass Destruction than Twain himself knew about. Sobering, atheisitic, blatantly antagonistic and spiritually-sinister this tale is Not the Mark Twain we grew up with.
(Setpember 26, 2013. I welcome dialogue with teachers.)
This interesting anthology presents the gamut of Twains fertile genius in eight tales of varying lengths: from a few pages to a true novella. The editor has chosen both humorous and serious stories: those which satirize and even critiicze. Tales which will entertain and make readers reflect, or cause them to react with anger and even shock.
Whatever the author's goal, his writing will evoke strong emotions.
Either way: gone is the laid-back Missisippi humor of TOM SAWYER days.
Opening with the iconic but brief "Celebrated Jumping Frog" yarn, this short story amuses us with its clever game of wits between a local boaster/con man and an equally sly stranger passing though a hick gold mining camp. Twain often develops his tales by employing one or
more first-person narrators. "The Million Pound Bank Note" inspired a Hollywood movie starring Gregory Peck, though not set in the London
original. Twain acutally spoofs himsef (as an author pestered by
aspiring writers and requests for donations) in his "Connecticut Crime Carnival," wherein he does ferocious battle with his implacable con-science. New York City provides yet another setting for his genius: a savvy detective orchestrates the recovery of a "Stolen White Elephant" although the narrator suffers grievous finacial loss.
But Twain's darker side predominates in this anthology; he seems to enjoy placing helpless humans into serious moral conflict--pitting them against stronger wills and evil entities. He takes an almost malicious delight in mankind's inevitable failure. His characters repeatedly struggle against temptation--making futile attempts to outwit evil--either in human form as "The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg" or the devil himself who proves to be the "Mysterious Stranger." In the former tale (which reads like a play and would make a wonderful piece if dramtaized) a bitter stranger contemplates a unique and callous form of revenge for an old, perceived slight. Hell-bent on punishment by humiilation he understands all too well the human weaknesses of vanity and greed.
Human nature is bitiingly scrutinzed and ridiculed in the title novella of 92 pages. Set in a remote Austrian village in the late 16th
century, when women were burned for witchcraft and the village Astrologer was treated with resepctful awe, this grim story proves frankly overlong with its protracted "lectures" by a charmingly youthful Satan--actually the nephew of the famous uncle who is active in Business the world over. The plot is frequently deliberately stalled when atheistic Satan (Twain's unabashed mouthpiece) denounces the senseless stupidity and gullibility of mankind throughout history.
Three village youths who are inseparable friends are the only ones to to whom Satan appears as himself--curiously, not to win their souls this time--but to win them over to his convoluted thinking: employing both sleight of hand as well as his glib tongue. The boys are helpless before his specious logic. Delighting to present a parade of human folly and warlike instict Satan almost predicts the invention of more powerful Weapons of Mass Destruction than Twain himself knew about. Sobering, atheisitic, blatantly antagonistic and spiritually-sinister this tale is Not the Mark Twain we grew up with.
(Setpember 26, 2013. I welcome dialogue with teachers.)
September 3, 2019
Frogs, Angels, and Elephants. Oh my!
Here's Twain's biting humor, running all over the gamut from bitter, to touching, to straight up delightful. Most are punctuated with plenty of death, murder, lynching, and burnings at the stake. The title story involves a hot running witch-hunt, so there's plenty in there.
In both “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” and “The Mysterious Stranger” there arises the theme of conscience and regret for childish misdeeds. With time and distance, I'm not sure how heavy Twain meant to make this theme, but I found myself affected in these parts, which must be taken to his credit either way. You can still chuckle when you remember that one is about a man seeking to weaken his stunted conscience enough to strangle it and the other is about a young man safely unsuspected during a witch-hunt while carrying on a friendship with an angel named Satan.
“The Stolen White Elephant” has a narrator jerked around by a greedy detective while the title animal terrorizes the countryside. P.T. Barnum surfaces and plasters the creature with circus posters, it destroys property and kills people, and there's a discussion of how many Dore bibles the thing would eat in a sitting.
The famous jumping frog story is in there, the million pound bank note story, and “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg”, and they're all good as well, although I sometimes got the sense they were there for padding and included by an editor who wasn't super tight on his target. The bank note story does have that theme so beloved by con artists the world over: many people are more likely to give to people they think don't need it.
It was 1916 and the themes and morals float accessibly on the surface, but they make a pretty picture just there. There's something deft about a bitter yarn spinner who can wear down your defenses and sneak in the feels.
Here's Twain's biting humor, running all over the gamut from bitter, to touching, to straight up delightful. Most are punctuated with plenty of death, murder, lynching, and burnings at the stake. The title story involves a hot running witch-hunt, so there's plenty in there.
In both “The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” and “The Mysterious Stranger” there arises the theme of conscience and regret for childish misdeeds. With time and distance, I'm not sure how heavy Twain meant to make this theme, but I found myself affected in these parts, which must be taken to his credit either way. You can still chuckle when you remember that one is about a man seeking to weaken his stunted conscience enough to strangle it and the other is about a young man safely unsuspected during a witch-hunt while carrying on a friendship with an angel named Satan.
“The Stolen White Elephant” has a narrator jerked around by a greedy detective while the title animal terrorizes the countryside. P.T. Barnum surfaces and plasters the creature with circus posters, it destroys property and kills people, and there's a discussion of how many Dore bibles the thing would eat in a sitting.
The famous jumping frog story is in there, the million pound bank note story, and “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg”, and they're all good as well, although I sometimes got the sense they were there for padding and included by an editor who wasn't super tight on his target. The bank note story does have that theme so beloved by con artists the world over: many people are more likely to give to people they think don't need it.
It was 1916 and the themes and morals float accessibly on the surface, but they make a pretty picture just there. There's something deft about a bitter yarn spinner who can wear down your defenses and sneak in the feels.
July 22, 2017
Better known for the Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn novels, Mark Twain was also a very talented short story writer and this collection includes stories encompassing several decades of his literary production, as well as showing the dark changes that took place in his view of humanity. "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras Country" and "The 1,000 Bank-Note" cover the most light-hearted sprecturm of Twain's work, although that does not mean that their humour is any less witty and sharp. "The Man that Corrupted Haddleyburg" is the less fortunate piece in this anthology, and, in many ways, it serves like a more obvious version of the points that he so fiercely makes in "The Mysterious Stranger". And that last tale is certaily the jewel's in this anthology's crown. Published posthumously, this noveletta absorbs the reader with its dismal view of humanity and moral values, and even its structure is quite "modern" and slightly unsettling. Even then, Twain was accutely aware of his responsibility as a writer and as a man of humour, and this last text isn't simply a libel against humanity, but actually quite a mesmerizing text.
March 5, 2010
“There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.” –-- Mark Twain, “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”
Crotchety, and sadly brimming with weltschmerz, the series of stories put together in this little book just drip of that world-weariness. A linear progression: over time, Mark Twain grew cynical, contemplative, and even a bit negative, but seemingly never dull. More than worth a read, but only if one is willing to read them chronologically and consider his life's path in conjunction with that of his work and its lessons; who wouldn't have grow to question the comfort and security of old age? And how could any self-respecting (baby) lawyer not both love and hate the line that begins these thoughts? Precise and true, to the point of discomfort--much like all Twain wrote.
Crotchety, and sadly brimming with weltschmerz, the series of stories put together in this little book just drip of that world-weariness. A linear progression: over time, Mark Twain grew cynical, contemplative, and even a bit negative, but seemingly never dull. More than worth a read, but only if one is willing to read them chronologically and consider his life's path in conjunction with that of his work and its lessons; who wouldn't have grow to question the comfort and security of old age? And how could any self-respecting (baby) lawyer not both love and hate the line that begins these thoughts? Precise and true, to the point of discomfort--much like all Twain wrote.
June 14, 2007
Mark Twain, well-known for Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, is perhaps less well-known by the general populace for his witty and biting commentaries on human nature and society. The Mysterious Stranger is just such a story. Set in 17th century Austria, The Mysterious Stranger tells the story of three teenage boys who encounter a boy named Philip Traum, aka Satan (not THE Satan, Philip claims, but his nephew). Philip is an angel and lacks what he terms "The Moral Sense." Which makes for some interesting adventures in a heavily Catholic community. Twain really forces the reader to question commonly held ideas about religion and what it means to be a human being. A great moral and philosophical work.
January 26, 2018
The Jumping Frog was funny and a very quick read. I just imagine it looking at the man when it looses and going "Gribbet" like it don't care.
The 1 One Million Pound Bank Note was pretty good. I did enjoy seeing how the man reacted to getting it, and how he was treated after he had his fortune.
The Man Who Corrupted Hadlyburg was a pretty scathing satire, but it had some good points with how the people acted.
The Mysterious Stranger was good, if a bit strange at times. I have to say, that was a unique ending!
Mark Twain is a great writer, and his work ages pretty well. This particular edition had really small print however, so maybe try a different edition if that bothers you.
The 1 One Million Pound Bank Note was pretty good. I did enjoy seeing how the man reacted to getting it, and how he was treated after he had his fortune.
The Man Who Corrupted Hadlyburg was a pretty scathing satire, but it had some good points with how the people acted.
The Mysterious Stranger was good, if a bit strange at times. I have to say, that was a unique ending!
Mark Twain is a great writer, and his work ages pretty well. This particular edition had really small print however, so maybe try a different edition if that bothers you.
April 14, 2024
Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer this ain’t, and don’t expect anything particularly down-home, past the classic “Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”. These are some serious Twain, deeper and darker and clearly a product of his time of life. Whether we see his financial woes in “The $30,000 Bequest “ or we sense his cynicism toward his fellow man in “The Mysterious Stranger “, there’s definitely something difficult to enjoy when Twain takes the low road. Kafka, sure, but Mark Twain, he of the Becky Thatcher school? At any rate, I’m glad I read it, because I have a slightly fuller sense of the man now.
June 5, 2009
The short stories are just good, funny, yet dynamic Twain tales. The longer story, The Mysterious Stranger, is a masterpiece, one of the greatest pieces of literature I have ever read. The wonderful writing coupled with the explosive conclusion make this a gem. It carefully guides the reader through a journey of small mental revelations, building upon them until the beautiful realization at the end, bringing them readily to an idea that would ordinarily take a person a lifetime to arrive upon and seriously consider.
Read The Mysterious Stranger next.
Read The Mysterious Stranger next.
November 5, 2014
I've read this book 3x now. This is simply another book I read while'recovering' from gallbladder surgery, etc.
This collection is a little uneven--that is to say-- some of the selections/stories weren't that enjoyable, and I usually really love anything by Mark Twain. I really liked the first story-- 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County', but really disliked the second--- 'The Facts Concerning The Recent Carnival Of Crime in Connecticut'.
Bottom line- this is certainly not a stellar example of Twain, but worth the read.
This collection is a little uneven--that is to say-- some of the selections/stories weren't that enjoyable, and I usually really love anything by Mark Twain. I really liked the first story-- 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County', but really disliked the second--- 'The Facts Concerning The Recent Carnival Of Crime in Connecticut'.
Bottom line- this is certainly not a stellar example of Twain, but worth the read.
April 1, 2021
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (2/5)
The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut (4/5)
The Stolen White Elephant (2/5)
Luck (4/5)
The £1,000,000 Bank-Note (4/5)
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (4/5)
The Five Boons of Life (3/5)
Was It Heaven? Or Hell? (4/5)
The Mysterious Stranger (4/5)
The Frog and Elephant are the low points in an otherwise stellar collection. I couldn't even say either of those stories was bad as much as I didn't understand what the point of either was.
The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut (4/5)
The Stolen White Elephant (2/5)
Luck (4/5)
The £1,000,000 Bank-Note (4/5)
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (4/5)
The Five Boons of Life (3/5)
Was It Heaven? Or Hell? (4/5)
The Mysterious Stranger (4/5)
The Frog and Elephant are the low points in an otherwise stellar collection. I couldn't even say either of those stories was bad as much as I didn't understand what the point of either was.
September 22, 2021
Also, as incident after incident of our comradeship came thronging into my mind out of the past, I noticed that they were mainly cases where I had wronged him or hurt him, and they rebuked me and reproached me, and my heart was wrung with remorse, just as it is when we remember our unkindnesses to friends who have passed beyond the veil, and we wish we could have them back again, if only for a moment, so that we could go on our knees to them and say, “Have pity, and forgive.”
November 11, 2020
"Bitter and anti-religious" is accurate, but as I was reading The Mysterious Stranger I can't say I disagreed too much with Twain. It's not like the eight shorter stories in the book are all cheery and light, though. Humorous, yes, but they certainly have some bite.
Anyway, hadn't read any Twain in years - maybe since high school - so this was a delight.
Anyway, hadn't read any Twain in years - maybe since high school - so this was a delight.
July 6, 2025
Easy 5 ⭐️ to "The Mysterious Stranger" it’s a dark, haunting tale with an overarching theme of the meaninglessness of human existence. It brings up issues with human morality, mortality, and has a bleak nihilistic view of the world. The good storyline helps illustrate the complicated philosophical concepts brought up in the book.
The rest of the story’s in the collection are mid.
The rest of the story’s in the collection are mid.
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