Mark Twain, Part 1

     I just finished reading the first half of The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain, and I must say that I’m really not impressed by this book so far. I’ve found a few quotations that I think are witty and another few that made me laugh, but the ratio of quotations I actually found valuable to those I found pointless is greatly out of balance.

     One of the quotations I found witty and funny is about clothes on page 43:

     “Returning from a trip to Europe, Mark Twain grew impatient as a customs official rummaged through his baggage.

     “‘My good friend,’ said the author, as politely as he could, ‘you don’t have to trouble yourself. There are only clothes in there—nothing but clothes.’

     “But the suspicious official continued poking about until he struck something solid. He reached into the suitcase and pulled out a quart of the finest-quality bourbon.

     “‘Just clothes, eh?’ gloated the official. ‘You call this “just clothes”?’

     “‘Sure,’ replied Mark Twain calmly. ‘That is my nightcap.’”

     I found this funny because you don’t expect Twain to come back with such a witty response to the officer’s questioning. The response provides a cognitive shift. This type of humor also plays into the superiority theory because we see how Twain makes his intellect superior to that of the police officer’s.

     I actually laughed out loud when I read the quotation I listed above. However, I didn’t find myself laughing at all at most of the quotations I’ve read in this book. Some of them I’ve even found pointless. An example of this can be found on page 33 under the cats subtitle:

    “Mark Twain was a passionate lover of cats, and this enthusiasm was shared by the rest of his family. Cats were always a major topic of discussion in the Clemens household. Once, when he was away on a lecture tour, Twain wrote playfully to his young daughter Susy: ‘I saw a cat yesterday with 4 legs—and yet it was only a yellow cat, and rather small, too, for its size. They were not all fore legs—several of them were hind legs: indeed almost a majority of them were.’”

     What is the point of this quotation? I have no idea. Why is this funny? Why is this witty? Where is the wisdom in this? I don’t understand why quotations like this were included in this book, because I’m not gaining any knowledge or pleasure from them at all. It frustrates me to have to read them, and unfortunately, the book is mostly full of these (in my opinion).

     In short, I’m not finding this book a valuable read at all. I’ll be back to report if I’ve changed my mind when I reach the end of the novel, but since I’ve already read 130 pages of mostly pointless quotations, I doubt the outlook is good.