Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain

Summary

Justin Kaplan examines the divided self of Samuel Clemens, the man who invented and lived behind the public figure of Mark Twain. Beginning in the middle of Clemens's life rather than at birth, the book studies the tension between the private businessman and family man and the celebrated humorist and lecturer he became. Kaplan's portrait probes the wealth, the failures, and the deepening pessimism that ran beneath the famous wit.