SERIALIZATION OF “REBEL WITH A CAUSE: MARK TWAIN’S HIDDEN MEMOIRS” -- CHAPTER 63 (of 78)
Escaping Like a Man Possessed (1897)
Chapter 63
Escaping Like a Man Possessed (1897)
After Susy died, I did not feel like doing anything at all for two months. I needed to write the book about the around-the-world lecture tour, containing my descriptions and impressions of what I saw and experienced, but I could not bring myself to even begin, although sales of the book were needed to finish paying off our debts.
I finally realized that I could bury myself in work and thus avoid some of the anguish of bereavement. By concentrating on something else, and forcing myself to do it, I was able to work like a man possessed and get it done.
The resulting book, Following the Equator, which was published in 1897, was more matter-of-fact than most of my books, and contained far less humor and far fewer forays into flights of fancy or regressions and side routes into unrelated matters and anecdotes.
EDITOR’S NOTES: Due to the enthusiastic reception of his most recent travel book (A Tramp Abroad) in England, Following the Equator was published there with the title More Tramps Abroad.
Laboring under emotional duress (grieving for Susy) and time pressure (in order to pay off debts as quickly as possible), Twain later recounted the experience of writing Following the Equator in a letter to William Dean Howells:
“I wrote my last travel book in hell; but I let on, the best I could, that it was an excursion through heaven. Some day I will read it, and if its lying cheerfulness fools me, then I shall believe it fooled the reader.”
Clara, in My Father, Mark Twain, made this prescient observation:
The pressing need for money was the greatest blessing to Father. He had to make a heroic effort to rise above his sorrow and force himself daily to write. . . . His work occupied him most of the time. He used to rise sometimes as early as four or five o’clock in the morning. Never did he write more continuously. I am sure he felt that it was his only protection against brooding on Susy’s death.
Twain fully realized and embraced his flight from grief through work. He wrote the following, quoting Poe’s The Raven, to Twichell:
I am working, but it is for the sake of the work—the “surcease of sorrow” that is found there. I work all the days, and trouble vanishes away when I use that magic. This book will not long stand between it and me, now; but that is no matter, I have many unwritten books to fly to for my preservation; the interval between the finishing of this one and the beginning of the next will not be more than an hour.
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In 1897, Twain published the story Which Was The Dream?, an obviously autobiographical tale, particularly as regards the family’s money troubles at the time.
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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.