In his highly regarded essay on Huckleberry Finn, critic Lionel Trilling wrote that "almost every contemporary American writer who deals conscientiously with the problems and possibility of prose must feel, directly or indirectly, the influence of Mark Twain. He is the master of the style that escapes the fixity of the printed page, that sounds in our ears with the immediacy of the heard voice, the very voice of unpretentious truth."
Our guest blogger on this Labor Day is a writer whose prose still moves with "the greatest simplicity, directness, lucidity, and grace"--Mark Twain.
- The Fourth Dimension
I suppose we all have our foibles. I like the exact word, and clarity of statement, and here and there a touch of good grammar for picturesqueness. . . . [M]y grammar is of a high order, but not at the top. Nobody's is. Perfect grammar--persistent, continuous, sustained--is the fourth dimension, so to speak; many have sought it, but none has found it. . . .
I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules. A generation ago I knew the rules--knew them by heart, word for word, though not their meanings--and I still know one of them: the one which says--which says--but never mind, it will come back to me presently.
(from "Comment on Tautology and Grammar," 1898, in Mark Twain's Autobiography: Part One, edited by Albert Bigelow Paine, 1924) - Bluejays are the Best Talkers
There's more to a bluejay than any other creature. He has got more moods, and more different kinds of feelings than other creatures; and mind you, whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into language. And no mere commonplace language, either, but rattling, out-and-out book talk--and bristling with metaphor, too--just bristling! And as for command of language--why you never see a bluejay get stuck for a word. No man ever did. They just boil out of him! And another thing: I've noticed a good deal, and there's no bird, or cow, or anything that uses as good grammar as a bluejay. You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does--but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use. Now I've never heard a jay use bad grammar but very seldom; and when they do, they are as ashamed as a human; they shut right down and leave.
(from A Tramp Abroad, 1880) - Adjectives
As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
(from Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894) - General Grant's Grammar
General Grant's book is a great and, in its peculiar department, a unique and unapproachable literary masterpiece. In their line there is no higher literature than those modest, simple memoirs. Their style is at least flawless and no man could improve upon it, and great books are weighed and measured by their style and matter, and not by the trimmings and shadings of their grammar. . . .
What do we care for grammar when we think of those thunderous phrases, "Unconditional and immediate surrender," "I propose to move immediately upon your works," " I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." Mr. [Matthew] Arnold would doubtless claim that that last phrase is not strictly grammatical, and yet it did certainly wake up this nation as a hundred million tons of A-number-one fourth-proof, hard-boiled, hide-bound grammar from another mouth could not have done. And finally we have that gentler phrase, that one which shows you another true side of the man, shows you that in his soldier heart there was room for other than gory war mottoes and in his tongue the gift to fitly phrase them: "Let us have peace."
(in response to Matthew Arnold's critical review of the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, from a speech delivered at an Army and Navy Club dinner in New York City, 1886) - Letter to an "Immeasurable Idiot"
Dear Mr. X.,--I have examined the first page of my amended Introduction, & will begin now & jot down some notes upon your corrections. If I find any changes which shall not seem to me to be improvements I will point out my reasons for thinking so. In this way I may chance to be helpful to you, & thus profit you perhaps as much as you have desired to profit me. . . .
Fourth Paragraph. Your word "directly" is misleading; it could be construed to mean "at once." Plain clarity is better than ornate obscurity. . . . It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out & dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it. And you ought to use it sometimes; that would help. If you had done this every now & then along through life it would not have petrified.
Fifth Paragraph. Thus far I regard this as your masterpiece! You are really perfect in the great art of reducing simple & dignified speech to clumsy & vapid commonplace.
Sixth Paragraph. You have a singularly fine & aristocratic disrespect for homely & unpretending English. Every time I use "go back" you get out your polisher & slick it up to "return." "Return" is suited only to the drawing-room--it is ducal, & says itself with a simper & a smirk. . . .
Ninth Paragraph. "Known" history. That word has a polish which is too indelicate for me; there doesn't seem to be any sense in it. This would have surprised me last week.
(letter to a copy editor, reprinted by Albert Bigelow Paine in Mark Twain, a Biography, 1912) - On Italian Verbs
Examination and inquiry showed me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded and straightforward, and did not shuffle; it was the Verb that mixed the hands, it was the Verb that lacked stability, it was the Verb that had no permanent opinion about anything, it was the Verb that was always dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble. . . .
I must catch a Verb and tame it. I must find out its ways, I must spot its eccentricities, I must penetrate its disguises, I must intelligently foresee and forecast at least the commoner of the dodges it was likely to try upon a stranger in given circumstances, I must get in on its main shifts and head them off, I must learn its game and play the limit.
(from "Italian with Grammar," Harper's, August 1904) - The Queen's English
There is no such thing as "the Queen's English." The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares.
(from "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" in Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, 1903)
This November, the University of California Press will mark the centenary of Twain's death with the publication of the first of three volumes of the Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, edited by Harriet E. Smith and the staff of the Mark Twain Project.
More by Mark Twain:
- Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
- Students' Compositions at Tom Sawyer's School
- On the Decay of the Art of Lying
Image: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1, edited by Harriet E. Smith (University of California Press, scheduled for publication in November 2010)
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