Mark Twain’s * GODs FOOL
by
Hamlin Hill
A narrative, based on new material, of the last ten years in the life of an American literary giant.
Harper & Row, Publishers
New York
Copyright 1973
First edition.
Hardcover in very good condition, in very good jacket.
Excerpt from review:
Hamlin Hill
A narrative, based on new material, of the last ten years in the life of an American literary giant.
Harper & Row, Publishers
New York
Copyright 1973
First edition.
Hardcover in very good condition, in very good jacket.
Reviewed by Chris Freeman
“Comedians, in whatever media they work, are supposed to be essentially tragic figures who sublimate their grief in laughter” (Hill ix). With this statement, Hamlin Hill begins his acknowledgements in Mark Twain: God’s Fool–a biography detailing the last ten years of Samuel Clemens’ life. Certainly, the image of Twain as an ultimately tragic figure is neither the one held by popular American culture, nor is it the image on which we have focused in class. Despite his financial troubles in the later years of his life, Twain remains a light-hearted humorist in the eyes of America. His unkempt hair and famous white suits suggest grandfatherly warmth, not the trappings of a misanthropic cynic. However, in Mark Twain: God’s Fool, Hamlin Hill chronicles the last decade of Clemens’ life and reveals the complexity and tragedy that surround his final years: the death of his wife and one of his daughters, his failed business prospects, and the slow end of his literary career.
$19.95