The Authorcat Clemenss Life In Fiction 1st Edition Forrest G Robinson by Forrest G. Robinson 9780823247462, 0823247465 instant download after payment.

At the end of his long life, Samuel Clemens felt driven to write a truthful account of what he regarded as the flaws in his character and the errors of his ways. His attempt to tell the unvarnished truth about himself is preserved in nearly 250 autobiographical dictations. In order to encourage complete veracity, he decided from the outset that these would be published only posthumously. Nevertheless, ClemensGs autobiography is singularly unrevealing. Forrest G. Robinson argues that, by contrast, it is in his fiction that Clemens most fullyGif often inadvertentlyGreveals himself. He was, he confessed, like a cat who labors in vain to bury the waste that he has left behind. Robinson argues that he wrote out of an enduring need to come to terms with his remembered experiencesGnot to memorialize the past, but to transform it. By all accountsGincluding his ownGClemensGs special curse was guilt. He was unable to forgive himself for the deaths of those closest to himGfrom his siblingsG death in childhood to the deaths of his own children. Nor could he reconcile himself to his role in the Civil War, his part in the duel that prompted his departure from Virginia City in 1864, andGworst of allGhis sense of moral complicity in the crimes of slavery. Tracing the theme of bad faith in all of ClemensGs major writing, but with special attention to the late work, Robinson sheds new light on a tormented moral life. His book challenges conventional assumptions about the humoristGs personality and creativity, directing attention to what William Dean Howells describes as Gthe depths of a nature whose tragical seriousness broke in the laughter which the unwise took for the whole of him.G