The Ghosts of Mark Twain
A Study of Manhood, Race, and the Gothic Imagination
Format:Hardback
Publisher:University of Missouri Press
Publishing:21st Nov '25
£44.00
This title is due to be published on 21st November, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
In his autobiography, Mark Twain confesses that “from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race—never quite sane in the night.” Of all the memories and fears that disturbed Twain’s peace of mind, none are more intractable than those associated with White fathers, Black men, the histories they reflect, and the future they promise. The Ghosts of Mark Twain: A Study of Manhood, Race, and the Gothic Imagination investigates these tense intersections in Twain’s life and work.
Ann M. Ryan maps Twain’s resistance to ideals of white masculinity and his occasional capitulation to them. While Twain reflects upon the history of White men—including the intimate memory of his father’s failures and abuses—he also imagines a future in which Black men will gain an authentic voice and agency. Preferring the messy humanity of Mark Twain, Ryan calls into question the “St. Mark” school of criticism, which celebrates—among other themes—Twain’s easy relation to Black culture. In unpublished works and excised material, Twain conjures memories and specters of Black men that are far from comforting. No longer “friends and allies” like fictive Ol’ Uncle Dan’l; these Black ghosts will settle for revenge if they can’t get justice.
Some of the works considered in The Ghosts of Mark Twain are not widely known: “Which Was It?,” “The United States of Lyncherdom,” No. 44: The Mysterious Stranger, and the Morgan manuscript of Pudd’nhead Wilson. Written into the record of these fragments is Twain’s desire to be a different kind of White man, just as their incomplete nature demonstrates how often he stumbled in that effort. When Jim describes the White and Black spirits hovering over Pap Finn, Twain reveals his own conflicted position in America’s racial history. And as Jim declares to Huck, “A body can’t tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him at de las.’”
“For its depth of research and its commendable lucidity, its command and inventive analyses of Mark Twain's negotiation of personal and cultural memory, The Ghosts of Mark Twain will be of interest to a wide audience as well as a scholarly one.”—Eric Lott, City University of New York, author of Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism.
“With wonderful clarity and coherence, Ann Ryan explores shadows and vexations in Mark Twain’s mind and work, ‘ghosts’ of many kinds that haunt and energize the major fiction, the tales and sketches, the unpublished writings, and the private life. Ryan gives us so much to think about and connect, but she never loses focus on what really matters: how Mark Twain himself remains such a powerful ghost in our own cultural life — a legacy that twelve decades of change and turmoil have not diminished.” —Bruce Michelson, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, author of Printer's Devil: Mark Twain and the American Publishing Revolution
“The Ghosts of Mark Twain is expansive, deeply contextual, timely, and essential as it usefully rethinks Twain’s legacy, speaks to a nation’s persistent ills regarding race and identity, and fills a much-needed gap in current Twain scholarship.”—Chad Rohman, Dominican University, author of Mark Twain: Realism and Naturalism
“The Ghosts of Mark Twain is a creative and compelling act of interpretation. Using unpublished manuscript fragments and excised passages from canonical works, Ryan probes the depths of the writer’s psyche, revealing a pervasive pattern of fears and anxieties that shaped both the stories he told and—more importantly—those he ultimately could not. Her ambitious, thought-provoking analysis is sure to spark lively debate as well as a substantive reassessment of Mark Twain’s identity and iconic stature in American culture.” —Kerry Driscoll, University of California, Berkeley, author of Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples
ISBN: 9780826223425
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 454g
326 pages