Books in Brief: Papa

Papa: An Intimate Biography of Mark Twain, by Susan Clemens, edited and with an introduction by Charles Neider (Doubleday, 236 pp., $15.95)

Ernest Hemingway was not the only “Papa” in the annals of our literary culture. It was in fact one of his own literary heroes, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a/k/a Mark Twain, who was also known as Papa, though in a more familial and private sense of that endearing term. The endearment was especially pronounced, in this case, because it came from Twain’s 13-year-old daughter Susy. She was an unusually bright and sensitive child and very much the natural offspring of the beloved “Livy” and our first truly indigenous storyteller of world rank. This is simply an astonishing book, in several ways at once, and one that must become a necessary reference for all Mark Twain enthusiasts and scholars. It gives Susy’s biography of her father for the first time in its entirety, usefully set in largeprint type in order to distinguish it from the rest of the text, and introduced by Mark Twain along with his predictably amusing and copious comments. Then there is editor Charles Neider’s introduction, with its revelations of Susy as someone rather more complex than an adoring daughter in thrall to the father-genius. More than anything else, however, Papa is an intensely human document, which appeared in the great celebratory year of 1985: the 150th anniversary of Mark Twain’s birth (1835); the 75th of his death (1910); and the centenary of both the American publication of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and Susy Clemens’s charming biography of her father. She died at age 24 of spinal meningitis.

TM

About the Author

Thomas P. McDonnell

Featured Tags

Manage following

Literature

Writing

Papa: An Intimate Biography of Mark Twain, by Susan Clemens, edited and with an introduction by Charles Neider (Doubleday, 236 pp., $15.95)

Ernest Hemingway was not the only “Papa” in the annals of our literary culture. It was in fact one of his own literary heroes, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a/k/a Mark Twain, who was also known as Papa, though in a more familial and private sense of that endearing term. The endearment was especially pronounced, in this case, because it came from Twain’s 13-year-old daughter Susy. She was an unusually bright and sensitive child and very much the natural offspring of the beloved “Livy” and our first truly indigenous storyteller of world rank. This is simply an astonishing book, in several ways at once, and one that must become a necessary reference for all Mark Twain enthusiasts and scholars. It gives Susy’s biography of her father for the first time in its entirety, usefully set in largeprint type in order to distinguish it from the rest of the text, and introduced by Mark Twain along with his predictably amusing and copious comments. Then there is editor Charles Neider’s introduction, with its revelations of Susy as someone rather more complex than an adoring daughter in thrall to the father-genius. More than anything else, however, Papa is an intensely human document, which appeared in the great celebratory year of 1985: the 150th anniversary of Mark Twain’s birth (1835); the 75th of his death (1910); and the centenary of both the American publication of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and Susy Clemens’s charming biography of her father. She died at age 24 of spinal meningitis.