Mainly the Truth: Interviews with Mark Twain

Studies in American Realism and Naturalism

by Mark Twain, Gary Scharnhorst (Editor)

Mainly the Interviews with Mark Twain is a collection of the most colorful and vivacious interviews that Mark Twain gave to newspapers and reporters throughout his career. A master storyteller and raconteur, Twain understood the value of publicity, and these interviews capture Twain both at his most lively and in moments of candor and introspection.

 

In his interviews, Twain discussed such topical issues as hazing and civil service reform, and more enduring concerns, such as his lecture style, his writings, government corruption, humor, his bankruptcy, racism, women’s suffrage, imperialism, international copyright, and his impressions of other writers (Howells, Gorky, George Bernard Shaw, Tennyson, Longfellow, Kipling, Hawthorne, Dickens, Bret Harte, among others). These interviews are both oral performances in their own right and a new basis for evaluating contemporary responses to Twain’s writings.

281 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

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

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

A different collection of Mark Twain, but it is Mark Twain that has been watered down as it isn't quite his own words but as taken down by various reporters of varying ability. Even though this collection is the best extracts from the various interviews Twain gave over his career there is still quite a bit of repetition. Twain obviously had his standard answers to certain questions and some of the questions are vapid, but there is still more than enough genuine original Twain here to make this collection more than worthwhile.

[Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short interviews of Twain by newspaper reporters. A good read for fans of Twain - nice insights about his manerisms, personality and opinions of his day.