by Mark Twain, John Seelye, Justin Kaplan
Written in 1882, Life on the Mississippi is a product of its time but we need this because it shows us where we come from, hopefully getting better but not always. This is Twain's history as well as a history of steamboats, the Mississippi River, and the growth of the U.S. I enjoyed Twain's tellin...
Recently, I participated in a writers' workshop. It took place in an inn that actually floats on the Missouri River. For five days, I was to be hypnotized by the river's ever-flowing current. I thought of Mark Twain, an author whose books I have never read. What better time could there be to acquain...
It seems to me that Mark Twain is most effective when he is barnstorming or barnburning with a fire and brimstone bastardization of the masses. How can I say that? How can Mark Twain write a long, largely uninspiring account of the life and river which defined him as a steam captain?
The parts I enjoyed, I enjoyed greatly. The parts I did not, I very much did not. My only criticism of this book is it's amazing propensity to ramble. Where Twain rambles into a story, it's captivating. Where he rambles to describe some endless feature of a forgotten passage of the great river, not ...
By turns, this book served as a travelogue, a history of the Mississippi, and as a source for Twain's reminiscences of his life as a steamboat pilot on the same river in the antebellum era. Of all these functions, I enjoyed most reading about Twain's return to the Mississippi in the early 1880s and...
I had such high hopes for this book. It started out being a 4/5 star and held its own about halfway through. There were moments of 'where's he going with this?' but when confronted with his sense of humour, all was forgotten. After all, it was just yesterday I was laughing out-loud in a crowded cafe...
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Life on the Mississippi (Mark Twain, 1883). I didn’t even know if it was fiction or not, but I decided to read it because I now live about five miles from the actual Mississippi, and thought it would be appropriate summer reading material.The book is in two p...
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