Can-Cans, Cats and Cities of Ash

by Mark Twain

One of the great derisive monuments to the imbecilities of the tourist experience, Mark Twain's (1835-1910) account of his tour with a group of fellow Americans around the sights of Europe is both hilarious and touching, Twain's exasperation and dismay at the phoney and exploitative being matched by his excitement and pleasure in the genuinely beautiful. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Classics, Italy, France, Travelogue, Morocco

113 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published February 1, 2007

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

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent primer to get a taste of whether you'd want to read the whole of The Innocents Abroad.

Twain was only 32 when he took on this grand tour and if you're a Twain fan generally you might be a bit taken aback by how callous some of his commentary can be on the people and places he visits and how sometimes he can't shut up about how hot he thinks the local women are. In that respect it's an 1860s LADS Dude Where's My Acropolis adventure. But then he crafts such beautiful prose on Genoa's cliff like buildings reminding him of visiting caves back home in the states he annoyingly reminds you what kind of writer he's gonna turn into.

[Daren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Penguin Great Journeys book is an excerpt from Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, telling his experience on an 1850s cruise or 'grand tour' touching on the Azores islands, Morocco, France, Italy and a little of Greece.

Twain comes across as a smart traveller and a witty commentator who would make an ideal travelling companion. The content is amusing, interesting and remains relevant. His description of Pompeii invoke a real sense of atmosphere for the place. The short visit to Athens is all the more interesting for its clandestine nature - they were refused entry and quarantined on their ship moored offshore, and sneaked ashore to visit the Parthenon.

Of all the Penguin Great Journey books I have read, the one is probably the one that most makes me want to read the original full length book.

[Sunny Driscoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable little read didn’t love it didn’t hate it - reminded of some type of 19th Century lads holiday/stag do vibe

[Nat]

I read this while on vacation myself. Staying at a nice little hotel in Palm Springs, where other tourists sit around the pool and talk about other trips they've taken, Twain's description of the Old Travelers hit home:

But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate, and drivel and lie. We can tell them the moment we see them. They always throw out a few feelers; they never cast themselves adrift till they have sounded every individual and know that he has not traveled. Then they open their throttle-valves, and how they do brag, and sneer, and swell, and soar, and blaspheme the sacred name of Truth! Their central idea, their grand aim, is to subjugate you, keep you down, make you feel insignificant and humble in the blaze of their cosmopolitan glory!...But still I love the Old Travelers. I love them for their witless platitudes; for their supernatural ability to bore; for their delightful asinine vanity; for their luxuriant fertility of imagination; for their startling, their brilliant, their overwhelming mendacity! (p.38)

[Shirley Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovely descriptions of France, made me glad that I live here now. Lovely descriptions of Pompeii, made me want to return. Just have to ignore the total lack of political correctness in the book ... This is, after all, told from the perspective of antebellum American white males on their Grand Tour.

[50andsomething · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious account of journeys around the northern Mediterranean. His description of escaping their quarantined ship to steal ashore and visit the Parthenon by moonlight is a glorious piece of writing.

[eris · Rating 3 out of 5]

american man visits Europe and proceeds to impose his own opinions on everyone who has half an ear to listen.

did bring up a memory of a series of books i read as a child & will now be revisiting as part of my year-long commitment to recovering wonder & whimsy, so i can’t say it was all bad.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the other 2 of his travel books I've read, but his writing is always a joy.

[Maria Stallmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a funny little book!! beautiful, exciting adventures told with twain’s famous wit. thoroughly enjoyable.

[Adam Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a series of extracts from the larger travelogue The Innocents. It is a joy to read as is everything by this author but it is a bit disjointed and you get the feeling that the publisher picked the extracts to fit the uniform size of the book in the series and did not not give much consideration to continuity. As always the writing is extremely witty and erudite.

[Kate Gardner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an abridged version of a longer travelogue, in this case The Innocents Abroad, Twain’s 1869 account of a cruise across the Atlantic and around the Mediterranean.

I love Twain’s writing style – it’s simple language but excitable. He’s super enthusiastic to learn about the places he visits and to see in person places he has elevated to legendary status. His reactions seem to be genuine and honest. Which unfortunately includes some negative thoughts that are kinda racist.

This is especially true of the first chapter, about the stop at the Azores, at the small town of Horta on the island of Fayal. The people are poor and Twain is not kind about the state of their clothes and hygiene.

Once the journey reaches Europe it gets less racist and the narrative tends to a sense of wonder that was truly captivating.

Read my full review: www.noseinabook.co.uk/2017/04/23/fore...

[Felicity Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Through 1850's Azores, Morocco, France, Italy and Greece. The author's estimation of the 'American abroad' fascinating.

Like other books in the series this is less travelogue and more, well, an observation of the tourist abroad. However, unlike other books in the series, witty, his writing simple and yet dramatic, I actually found myself rather liking this collection of anecdotes, a collection of excerpts from the author's first major work, The Innocents Abroad.

Copyright: Tracy Terry @ Pen and Paper

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1859 Mark Twain cruised the Atlantic en route to the Mediterranean and Black Sea. His stop-offs included the Azores, Morocco, France and Italy, but the most entertaining part of his observations concerned his fellow Americans, engaged on the ‘Grand Tour’ popular at the time. He gives accounts here of his journeys to Tangiers, Paris, Genoa and Athens – all cities I’ve visited. The Athens trip is memorable for its clandestine nature – he was supposed to have been quarantined in a ship moored off the coast at the time – but his desire to see the Acropolis motivated his law-breaking enterprise.

It is all written in a plain folksy style, suggesting his wanderings around cities and monuments is all done obliviously to what they represent in terms of culture. As he says of his visit to Genoa, a city full of palaces with corridors lined with the great art of ages, “But of course, the folks were all out in the country for the summer, and might not have known enough to ask us to dinner had they been at home.”

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Then thirteen hundred miles of desert solitudes; of limitless panoramas of bewildering perspective; of mimic cities, of pinnacled cathedrals, of massive fortresses, counterfeited in the eternal rocks and splendid with the crimson and gold of the setting sun; of dizzy altitudes among fog-wreathed peaks and never-melting snows, where thunders and lightnings and tempests warred magnificently at our feet and the storm-clouds above swung their shredded banners in our very faces!

"But I forgot. I am in elegant France, now..."

This was a rather fun book. "Can-cans.." is really an excerpt, a couple chapters from Mark Twain's "The Innocents Abroad", telling his experience on an 1850s cruise touching on the Azores islands, Morocco, France, Italy and a little of Greece. Twain offers interesting vignettes of the cultures he finds, interrupts them with amusing anecdotes, facetious, self-aware irritation and even some adventure. Twain also reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut. So yeah, I'd recommend it.

[Ape · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bookcrossing journal 2010:

This was the first book (well, excerpt) by Mark Twain I've ever read. His writing style appeals to me - I love his dry, understated sense of humour. He's a good travel writer as well. This is Europe in the 1800s, so things have changed, but this sense of adventure and experiencing and discovering new things is what travel is all about. And some of the things he goes to see are still there - eg. Pompeii. Really would like to visit that place one day.

This book has a few chapters - The Azores, Morroco, France and Italy. Italy actually includes a brief sneak visit to Greece in it as well. He's travelling by boat and stopping off at various islands and well-known cities. He loved Genoa; didn't think much of the Italiens and their constantly begging and demands for money...

I've said it before but I will said it again - it feels like a bit of a cheat that these books are actually just excerpts.

[Kek-w Kek-w · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Originally published as The Innocents Abroad)

The first American tourists abroad in Europe book??

It's pretty witty and funny as you might expect, but also some beautifully poetic descriptions of time & place when he's not dicking around. Don't much dig his thoughts on the Portuguese tho...

Part of a cool series of Penguin travel books that came outlast year in the UK...picked this up for 25p in a junk shop.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of Penguin’s Great Journey’s collection, this is Twain’s account of his sailing travels through the Mediterranean, specifically Portugal, Morocco, France, and Italy. I love travelogues, and there’s something incredibly romantic about traveling before the time of Lonely Planet, audio-guided tour buses, and planes. Twain is hilarious, politically incorrect, and a joy to read.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Twain is hilarious. I loved that this bite-sized little adventure brought me so personally into the 1850s. I wish we still traveled like this.

[Chiara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liked the Pompeii parts. The rest a little boring, but interesting overall.

[Adam]

He's a very clever asshole, I'll give him that