SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 50 (of 78)
Autobiographical Fiction (1876)
Chapter 50
Autobiographical Fiction (1876)
I wrote my book about Tom Sawyer with my Hannibal boyhood in mind. That’s not the whole story, though. The impetus for looking backward in this way was actually rooted in imagining what Langdon’s childhood would have been had he continued his sojourn with us. Even here in Connecticut, much of his boyhood experiences would have been similar to mine, despite the remove of time and place; the motivation and inspiration for the book came less from nostalgia for my own bygone youth than from a profound pining for the lost boyhood of my son.
While Livy tried to escape the constant and nagging pain of the loss by reading novels, my way out of the debilitating grief and crushing guilt was through writing—even if indirectly—of the incalculable loss.
So in 1876, the Centennial of the Country, I published my first novel—that is, first written solely by me—“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” At first I didn’t quite know what I had in the book. What sort of book was it? I had difficulty deciding whether it was a boy’s book, or should it be meant for grown-ups? Or simply for people of all ages and backgrounds? Howells, to whom I gave the manuscript to read, loved it from the outset, and he was adamant: it was a boy’s book. I accepted his judgment, which in such matters was usually fireproof.
The characters in that book were drawn from life. They were based on people I knew and grew up with in Hannibal—many of them members of my own household. Tom Sawyer himself was the exception, for he wasn’t based on just one boy in that village, but was built of the composite order of architecture. It took three boys in the village, combining their idiosyncrasies, to make up Tom Sawyer. Actually, as this is my final autobiography and testimony, I may as well admit here that I, too, contributed something to Tom’s persona, and thus he was actually a quadruplet, boiled down into one audaciously irrepressible child.
And not just the characters, but also the events: most of the incidents in the book had their foundation in actual happenings in which I participated or that I witnessed in my youth in “St. Petersburg.”
EDITOR’S NOTES: Twain had actually previously admitted that he was, not just part, but all of Tom Sawyer. This was in his response to a letter he received in 1907 from a young girl. The correspondent had referred to Tom Sawyer as the “nicest boy I have ever known.” Twain’s response was:
Dear Florence,
Thank you for your nice note.
[Private.] I have always concealed it before, but now I am compelled to confess that I am Tom Sawyer!
However, when Rudyard Kipling tracked Twain down in 1889 to interview him, Twain said the following regarding Tom Sawyer: “He’s all the boys I have known or recollect.”
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Part of the attention Twain garnered from “Tom Sawyer” and a foregleam of what was to come with “Huck Finn” would be more accurately termed infamy than fame, for manifold critics claimed Twain’s novel was a drain on the moral fiber of those who read it, being filled as it was with slang, drunkenness, grave robbery, child abuse (of the physical sort) —indeed of all manner of violence, up to and including murder.
Although Twain apparently began writing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn before he had even finished “Tom Sawyer,” his work on it was spasmodic, and it took him from 1876 to 1883 to complete it. And then it wasn’t published until late 1884 (in Britain) and early 1885 (in the United States).
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Blackbird Crow Raven’s “Rebel With A Cause: Mark Twain’s Hidden Memoirs” is being serialized in this space on substack every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; it is also available in its entirety from here.