Mark Twain on the Loose: A Comic Writer and the American Self

Title: Mark Twain on the Loose: A Comic Writer and the American Self
Author: Bruce Michelson
ISBN: 9780870239670
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Published: 1995
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Edition: First Edition
Number of Pages: 288
Condition Note: Clean, unmarked copy with some edge wear. Good binding. Dust jacket included if issued with one. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Publisher Description:

Can we rediscover the wildness in Mark Twain's humor? Can we understand how that wildness helped make him a national legend and a key figure in the expression of an American self? In Mark Twain on the Loose, Bruce Michelson writes about Twain as a body of literature, as a public personality, and as a myth. Michelson shows that many of Twain's most ambitious and memorable works, from the very beginning to the end of his career, express a drive for absolute liberation from every social, psychological, and artistic limit.

The outrageous and anarchic sides of Twain play a vital role in his art. But these traits are undervalued even by his admirers, who often favor clean shapes and steady affirmations in Twain's writing --not the dangerous comic outbreak, or the deep yearning to free the self from every definition and confinement.

Reviewing works from a wide range of Twain's writings, Michelson brings to light those wild dimensions, their literary consequences, and their cultural importance. He reveals this great author as "the best escape artist in the American canon," a reflexive, paradoxical, rule-shattering comic genius.