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Life on the Mississippi

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Fashioned from the same experiences that would inspire the masterpiece Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain’s most brilliant and most personal nonfiction work. It is at once an affectionate evocation of the vital river life in the steamboat era and a melancholy reminiscence of its passing after the Civil War, a priceless collection of humorous anecdotes and folktales, and a unique glimpse into Twain’s life before he began to write.

Written in a prose style that has been hailed as among the greatest in English literature, Life on the Mississippi established Twain as not only the most popular humorist of his time but also America’s most profound chronicler of the human comedy.

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1883

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About the author

Mark Twain

10k books17.5k followers
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), called "the Great American Novel", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876).

Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion's newspaper. After toiling as a printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, before heading west to join Orion. He was a failure at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote a humorous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," which proved to be very popular and brought him nationwide attention. His travelogues were also well-received. Twain had found his calling.

He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit and satire earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

However, he lacked financial acumen. Though he made a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he squandered it on various ventures, in particular the Paige Compositor, and was forced to declare bankruptcy. With the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers, however, he eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain worked hard to ensure that all of his creditors were paid in full, even though his bankruptcy had relieved him of the legal responsibility.

Born during a visit by Halley's Comet, he died on its return. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age", and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature".

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

AKA:
Μαρκ Τουαίν (Greek)

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Profile Image for Ahmad Sharabiani.
9,564 reviews46 followers
November 30, 2021
Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain

Life on the Mississippi (1883) is a memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War, and also a travel book, recounting his trip along the Mississippi River from St. Louis to New Orleans many years after the War.

The book begins with a brief history of the river as reported by Europeans and Americans, beginning with the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1542.

It continues with anecdotes of Twain's training as a steamboat pilot, as the 'cub' (apprentice) of an experienced pilot, Horace E. Bixby.

He describes, with great affection, the science of navigating the ever-changing Mississippi River in a section that was first published in 1876, entitled "Old Times on the Mississippi".

Although Twain was actually 21 when he began his training, he uses artistic license to make himself seem somewhat younger, referring to himself as a "fledgling" and a "boy" who "ran away from home" to seek his fortune on the river, and playing up his own callowness and naivete.

In the second half, Twain narrates his trip many years later on a steamboat from St. Louis to New Orleans.

He describes the competition from railroads, and the new, large cities, and adds his observations on greed, gullibility, tragedy, and bad architecture.

He also tells some stories that are most likely tall tales.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «زندگی بر روی می سی سی پی»؛ «زندگی روی میسی سی پی»؛ نویسنده: مارک تواین؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش ماه فوریه سال1982میلادی

عنوان: زندگی بر روی می سی سی پی؛ نویسنده: مارک تواین؛ مترجم: ابوالقاسم حالت؛ چاپ اول سال1347، در574ص؛ آخرین چاپ، امیرکبیر، سال1380؛ در596ص؛ شابک9643030407؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده19م

عنوان: زندگی روی میسی سی پی؛ نویسنده: مارک تواین؛ مترجم: کیومرث پارسای؛ تهران، ناژ، سال1390؛ در624ص؛ شابک9789649109784؛

بخشی از زندگی «مارک تواین» است، و داستانهایش، بسیار شوخ و خنده دار هستند؛ «زندگی بر روی می.سی.سی.پی» در حقیقت، بخشی از زندگی نویسنده ی همین اثر است؛ ایشان در این کتاب داستان، حکایت، لطیفه و نکته های تازه، خنده دار، و بانمک آورده اند، که خوانشگر در پایان کتاب شگفت زده، از خویش میپرسد: «آیا نویسنده قصد داشته شرحی از زندگی در کناره ی آن رودخانه ی شگفت، به دست دهد، یا آنکه داستان پردازی خود را، از مسائل انسانی به نمایش بگذارد؟»؛ «مارک تواین» از زبان یکی از کشتیرانان بزرگ رودخانه «می سی سی پی» نوشته، که به عنوان بهترین دوره از زندگی یک ملت شناخته شده است؛ نویسنده در این کتاب، به تجربیات کشتی رانی و معاشرتی خود، در آن دوره، اشاره میکنند؛ این نویسنده که «ساموئل لنگهورن کلمس (نامی که مارک تواین با این نام در مجله ها مینوشتند)» نام اصلی ایشان است، شرح ماجراهای هیجان آور زندگی ساکنان سواحل «می سی سی پی» را، به بهترین روش ارائه میدهند

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 23/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 08/09/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Profile Image for Bill Kerwin.
Author 3 books83.2k followers
February 4, 2020

I first read this book fifty years ago when I was in high school, and I recalled Twain's account of his days as a Mississippi steamboat pilot's apprentice as a work of great humor and style with quintessentially American themes, equal in power to Huckleberry Finn. A recent re-reading has left me both gratified and disappointed: gratified because Twain's history and description of the ever-changing Mississippi and his account of his life as a young river pilot are just good as I remembered them, but disappointed because this account occupies only the first third of the book.

The other two-thirds has moments of equal power--Twain's account of his return to his boyhood home Hannibal, for example--but most of it is a casually organized travelogue of a trip up the Mississippi by the fifty-year-old Twain, interrupted by random anecdotes and tall tales. This second two-thirds is uneven but entertaining, full of characteristic Twain humor; it is as good as "Roughing It," a book I like and admire.

Nevertheless, it nowhere equals the power of the first hundred pages. And a book the ends worse than it began is always a disappointment.
Profile Image for Lyn.
1,910 reviews16.8k followers
August 9, 2016
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain was first published in 1883 and describes his apprenticeship and success as a Mississippi River pilot and then returning to the river more than twenty years later. At its heart this is a travel book, but really more than that this is a portrait of America in the 19th century. Told with Twain’s inimitable wit and charm, this contains histrionic and speculative facts, half-truths, wild exaggerations and tall tales. Written by anyone else, this would have been unsuccessful, Twain makes it thoroughly enjoyable.

I have wanted to read Life on the Mississippi for over twenty years. Once upon a time I was a young Coast Guardsman assigned to work on the Mississippi River aboard a buoy tender, a vessel tasked with maintaining aids to navigation on the navigable interior waterways. Our home station was Hickman, Kentucky, a once proud but antiquated river town in extreme southwestern Kentucky. I recall cornfields and the river and little else. Twain, writing about the river over a hundred years earlier than when I was there described St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, MO, Cairo, Il, New Madrid and Hickman, KY (he called it a pretty little town) – and even the aids to navigations on the river! He saw the river before and after the advent of the aids to navigation and he remarked that the buoy and lights system diminished the romance of being a pilot.

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Profile Image for Kenny.
522 reviews1,263 followers
February 4, 2023
Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.
Life on the Mississippi ~~ Mark Twain


1

Disjointed ~~ surprisingly so, outrageous ~~ definitely, hilarious ~~ that goes without saying, fascinating ~~ obviously, all of these adjectives describe Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, a meandering tour through a vanished America. Thru a series of autobiographical sketches describing his life on the Mississippi River, Twain both entertains and educates his audience as only Twain can.

Here, Twain details his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before and after the American Civil War. Twain begins with a brief history of the river, continues with anecdotes of his training as a steamboat pilot ~~ the cub of an experienced pilot. He describes, the science of navigating the ever-changing Mississippi River. The second half of the book describes Twain's return, 20 years later, to travel onboard a steamboat from St. Louis to New Orleans. Here he describes the competition from railroads, the changing landscape of new cities, as well as his observations on greed, gullibility, tragedy, and bad architecture. He also tells some engaging stories that are very tall tales.

1
Life on the Mississippi vividly details the story of a young man gaining confidence in the world, and also gives a peek into the prodigious feats and odd habits of the fraternity of steamboat pilots. Most importantly, you'll learn how Samuel Clemons devised his pen name, Mark Twain.

1

This concludes my month-long project of reading Mark Twain. Delving into Twain this month reminds of how rich English language is, and how bland contemporary American writers have made it. Twain has the ability to catch you completely by surprise, as he can transform what starts as a seemingly normal sentence into an utterly unexpected gem.

My advice to you all is to read more Mark Twain. Life on the Mississippi would be a good place to start; it's wonderful and one of the greatest of American books.

1
Profile Image for Theo Logos.
853 reviews143 followers
January 25, 2023
Don’t come to Mark Twain looking for a tightly outlined, focused work. He wasn’t that type of writer. His books are closer to theme and variations — starting with an idea, riffing on it, detouring from it, throwing in another theme, detouring from that with wild, tangentially connected variations, and back around again. And somehow he makes it work with his one of a kind American voice that’s always just barely concealing a chuckle.

Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain’s memoir of his early life learning to be a pilot on a Mississippi River Boat during the glory days of those crafts. It’s also a travel book, recording his trip on the river over twenty years after he had left it. It includes excerpts from his then work in progress, Huckleberry Finn (in a form different than you will find in that novel). It’s full of broad jokes, tall tales, shaggy dog stories, and legends and folklore that Twain satirically deconstructs. He includes a bit of Mississippi River history, takes a few shots at some of his favorite targets (religion and the medieval romances of Sir Walter Scott) and even engages in some touching nostalgia as he visits his childhood home, Hannibal, Missouri.

I first read this book over twenty years ago, and it rekindled my fascination with Mark Twain. It has a little bit of everything he does well (save only the dark satire of his later years). It’s not a bad place to start exploring this first great American writer.
Profile Image for Diane Barnes.
1,366 reviews449 followers
February 10, 2024
3.5 stars. Twain proved to be a great tour guide on this trip down the Mississippi. I learned a lot about his time as a riverboat trainee and pilot, not to mention the river itself, and the origin and inspiration of his pen name. The last half of the book was a return trip for him 21 years later, and was even more interesting, especially his return to his hometown of Hannibal.
Profile Image for Teresa.
Author 8 books949 followers
August 17, 2017
So often my reading seems to unintentionally reflect upon itself. I’ve been doing a very slow read of the Michael Slater biography of Dickens and had finished the account of his first American tour when I started this after a friend asked me to read it with her. Almost immediately I encountered a mention of Dickens and then references to two earlier British travel writers, Captain Marryat and Captain Basil Hall. Dickens read the works of the two captains in preparation for his own trip to the U.S. And Mark Twain must’ve read the three in preparation for this work. So perhaps that’s why I thought of calling my review A Tale of Two Halves: certainly this holds “the best of times” and “the worst of times” for Twain, encompassing both personal triumph (though spoken of self-deprecatingly) and personal tragedy.

In the book’s first half Twain relates an entertaining history of the river; his love for the river starting from his time as a young boy in Hannibal, Missouri; and, most famously, his experiences as a very young man as a cub pilot on a steamboat. In the second half he describes his return to the river after the war, again on a steamboat but as a passenger; the changes to the steamboat industry; and the towns and cities he passes and visits on the river, from St. Louis to New Orleans to Minneapolis, including a stop in Hannibal. Interspersed are facts, tales, anecdotes and legends, told with hyperbole, humor, wit, and irony— in short, everything we’ve come to associate with Mark Twain. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by several beautiful (though never sentimental) passages.

As I wrote in a comment to a friend (and thank you to another friend for telling me how much he liked the comment): It's a meandering read, but that's ok, it's like a river.
Profile Image for Jan-Maat.
1,591 reviews2,166 followers
Read
January 27, 2019
Back in the day before pesky child labour laws stole the liberty of a hard dreaming child to go forth and make their way in the world, running the risk of boiler explosions, sinking paddle-steamers, and night time collisions. Young Samuel Clemens worked his way up to the dizzying heights of river pilot, stole another pilot's nom de plume, "Mark Twain!" was a depth reading to help the pilot not to run the ship aground and so was well on his way to becoming a writer.

He reflects at one a moment when a traveller looks out over the Mississippi at night and drinks in the romance of the scene, contrasted with how Twain, as a trainee river pilot, sees the river, in his vision every branch on the water to the level of the river is something to be read in order to steer the boat safely - when he started the river was a river, after learning the river was not a river, later he understood again that the river was a river!
Profile Image for Michelle.
1,421 reviews159 followers
March 28, 2022
I really struggled with this one.

It's a long wordy book that is basically about a river and nothing apart from the river. It's a very detailed account of said river.

This wasn't what I was expecting at all, it is however another classic off the list!
Profile Image for Terry.
348 reviews76 followers
February 14, 2024
My interest in this book waned as it devolved from the geography and history lessons which I founded very interesting, to being a boat pilot which went on too long, to storytelling of various characters which was variable, to travelogue to Native American mythology. I may be outgrowing Twain at this stage of my life. I was glad when the book ended.
Profile Image for Roy Lotz.
Author 1 book8,496 followers
September 22, 2018
And, mind you, emotions are among the toughest things in the world to manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier to manufacture seven facts than one emotion.

This is an awkward book to review, since it consists of so many, varied sections. Yet it can be neatly divided between the first third and the remaining portion. After a few brief chapters about the mighty river and its history, the beginning section focuses on Twain’s young days as a steersman aboard Mississippi River steamboats. These are easily the best pages. As evinced by the Huckleberry Finn stories, Twain had a marvelous way of writing from a child’s perspective, naively learning to navigate the world. What is more, Twain does an excellent job in illustrating the extensive knowledge necessary to effectively pilot a steamboat—memorizing hundreds of landmarks, learning how to gauge speed and depth, and dealing with difficult coworkers.

The second section is a meandering account of a voyage he took two decades after leaving the steamboat business, when he was an accomplished author. At this point he was already so famous he had to adopt a pseudonym. Here he pauses so often to lose himself in tributary wanderings that the narrative breaks down into a vaguely connected series of anecdotes, most of which seem obviously inflated or simply fictional. Though there is much to amuse in this section, I found myself growing increasingly restless and bored as I continued on, eager for the end. Though I did not dislike this book as much as I did A Connecticut Yankee, I nevertheless felt that the joke had gone stale and that Twain was merely filling up space.

My reactions to Twain tend to shift violently. Again, in the beginning section of this work, when he is writing from the perspective of his younger self, his writing is energetic and witty and wide-eyed. But when he dons the cap of a raconteur, I tend to find his stories mechanical and dull. His account of the Pilots’ Association is an excellent example of this—proceeding in predictable steps to the inevitable conclusion. And when he shifts away from humor, the results can be pretty grim. His flat-footed tall tale of the man who sought revenge for his murdered family—a mix of the ghoulish and the sentimental—is an excellent example of this.

Even with these faults and lapses, this book is an unforgettable portrait of a time and place that are gone for good, written by an indefatigably mordant pen.
Profile Image for KOMET.
1,146 reviews134 followers
February 13, 2023
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 his younger days working on steamboats from Cairo, Illinois to New Orleans. Only the latter part of the Appendix I felt was a little superfluous and out-of-place. It pains me to say that as a Mark Twain fan, but that was one part of the book that held little appeal for me.
Profile Image for Aaron.
29 reviews3 followers
January 31, 2008
Twain on the river as a kid. Twain back on the river again as a sneaky pete writer. I wanted to like this book, which is why, I suppose, I hung in for 350-odd pages before setting it aside. The book is entertaining intermittantly and occasionally sharp and funny but it meanders. I should probably have my keyboard revoked for using the word 'meander' in a review about a book about a river, but clearly I can't help myself. Seriously, tho, Twain needed an editor with a heavy hand for this one.
Profile Image for Christopher.
673 reviews259 followers
September 27, 2013
What I wish: Oh!, to live my life as a steamboat captain on the Mississippi in the nineteenth century of the year of our Lord!

How I'm living: Alas!, to have been born in Kentucky in the 1980s!

WIW: To float down the Mississippi, smoking a corn cob pipe, piratical, unruly, and barbarous!

HIL: Sitting at a desk, cultivating carpal tunnel as a professional button pusher and microwaving leftovers for lunch.

WIW: To take my turn at the helm, dodging rocks and aiming for smaller crafts, yelling out "quarter twain! half twain! quarter less ta-ree!"

HIL: Still sitting at my desk, still pressing buttons, yelling out "grrrrr! you stupid computer, why are you so slow!"

Profile Image for Cheryl.
10.5k reviews448 followers
November 25, 2019
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

I'm so very glad I read this. I've been meaning to read more by Twain for decades of course, but my move to Missouri motivated me enough to finally choose this one. I thought it might be a bit of a task, leavened by some history and some wit. It was the reverse. Lots of wit, lots of history, very accessible prose (only a few bits of slang were unfamiliar, and only a few sentences were structured in such a way that I had trouble following them), and almost no aspects of the onerous a'tall.

I marked far too many passages, as you see below. But there were lots more that I was tempted to mark. I recommend you read this yourself, and find your own favorite bits!

“For instance, when the Missisippi was first seen by a white man... Margaret of Navarre was writing the “Heptamaron” and some religious books,--the first survives, the others are forgotten, wit and indelicacy being sometimes better literature-preservers than holiness.”

“La Salle set up a cross with the arms of France on it, and took possession of the whole country for the king—the cool fashion of the time—while the priest spiously consecrated the robbery with a hymn.”

“Between La Salle's opening of the river and the time [when it begun to be well-used], seven sovereigns had occupied the throne of England.... Truly, there were snails in those days.”

On the steamboats arriving in town, “... great volumes of the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys—a husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine...”

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

I need to learn about Murel, of Murel's Gang, an evil genius who should be more infamous than he is, given Clemens' lurid but calmly told account.

Mr. H. warns Clemens of another man, “I will not deceive you;he told me such a monstrous lie once, that it swelled my left ear up, and spread it around so that I was not actually able to see around it...”

A survivor of the siege of Vicksburg reveals that even the kinds of stress that the civilians there underwent became, effectively, commonplace, after those several weeks, but does also say, “Mule meat? No, we only got down to that the last day or two. Of course it was good; anything is good when you are starving.”

“... a general conversation which began with talk about horses, drifted into talk about astronomy, then into talk about the lynching about the gamblers in Vicksburg half a century ago, then into talk about dreams and superstitions; and ended, after midnight, in a dispute over free trade and protection

“I hope to be cremated. I made that remark to my pastor once, who said, with what he seemed to think was an impressive manner,--”I wouldn't worry about that, if I had your chances.” Much he knew about it—the family also opposed to it.”

I want to adopt the New Orleans custom of lagniappe, as in “Give me something for lagniappe.”
(pronounced 'lanny-yap' and meaning something akin to baker's dozen)

“Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the sillinesses and emptynesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did measureless harm, more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that ever wrote.”

“A curious exemplification of the power of a single book for good or harm is shown in the effects wrought by Don Quixote and those wrought by Ivanhoe. The first swept the world's admiration for the mediaeval chivalry-silliness out of existence; and the other restored it.”
He noted the effect of the new steamboats' feature on wildlife at night, as they “suddenly inundated the trees with the intense sunburst of the electric light, a certain curious effect was always produced: hundreds of birds flocked instantly out from the masses of shining green foliage and went careering hither and thither through the white rays, and often a song-bird turned up and fell to singing. We judged that they mistoook this superb artificial day for the genuine article.”

Clemens admired manufactured ice. “These big blocks were hard, solid, and crystal-clear. In certain of them, big bouquets of fresh and brilliant tropical flowers had been frozen-in; in others, beautiful silken-clad French dolls, and other pretty objects. These blocks were to be set on end in a platter, in the center of dinner-tables, to cool the tropical air; and also to be ornamental, for the flowers and things imprisoned in them could be seen as through plate glass.”

I highly recommend it. Not as much as I recommend the audiobook of Huck Finn as narrated by Patrick Fraley, but more than I recommend Roughing It. I will continue to read more Twain; maybe The Prince and the Pauper or The Innocents Abroad next.
Profile Image for Dan.
1,195 reviews52 followers
August 16, 2019
Life on the Mississippi is like a time capsule as Twain revisits many of his earlier haunts and remarks on how the towns have changed. The book is equal parts travelogue, history, nostalgia and yarns.

I really love this book even though it was written some 130 years ago.

Twain exhibits his characteristic wit throughout the book but he is more often wistful. I feel that Twain exhibits a great intuition for when his audience might be getting bored with the subject at hand and he is able to quickly wrap it up and advance the story forward.

I am not a fan of Twain novels, such as "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", that may focus heavily on comedy and the absurd. This type of humor seems very dated in retrospect. But this book "Life on the Mississippi" and also "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" are some of the best books ever written. The sentimentality and humanity still hold up well upon re-reading.
Profile Image for Franky.
507 reviews53 followers
March 3, 2024
“I was a traveler! A word had never tasted so good in my mouth before. I had an exultant sense of being bound for mysterious lands and distant climes which I have never felt so uplifting degree since.”

I have mixed feelings of travelogues and, in general, memoir type books where an author injects their own views on life and topics. I feel like these type of books can get too preachy, when all I want is to revel in adventurous or entertaining storytelling.

Twain provides such a yarn here, as Life in the Mississippi has all of the author’s trademark storytelling abilities and, as usual, he adds his own unique style of flavor, wit, and humor. As the title indicates, this book centers around his experiences along the great Mississippi River, and branches off into other recollections of life.

He opens with a historical perspective about the river, including LaSalle’s ventures and discoveries, and then ties the river into his early youth. One of the more remarkable attributes to Twain is just how versed he was in occupations and travel, as he wore so many hats in different jobs, and travelled to so many places. All this knowledge helps to add to his narrative, and he also remarks about how industrialization and technology forever changed the landscape of particular jobs along the river, namely the steamboat profession.

I felt like the most engaging anecdotes and bits were the early chapters dedicated to his experiences as a steamboat cub pilot and the rather eccentric types he met along the way. This is when Twain is in top notch form, on top of his game with witticisms and humor.

That being said, the book has an odd blend of humorous chapters juxtaposed with chapters including stories that are dark, grim, and uncomfortable.

Overall, while there were some less-than-engaging chapters, this was a fun experience, and I was fascinated with some of the descriptions and interactions with Twain and others in his adventures. It was good finally getting back to reading Twain, as it had been quite a while, and I do consider him to be one of my favorite classic authors.
September 8, 2021
From now on when I think of Mark Twain he will have Grover Gardner's voice, no disrespect intended to the late Hal Holbrook who did such a wonderful job portraying him for many years. This is just the second audio book I have listened to by Gardner and his voice has become familiar to me.

I grew up in a Mississippi River state, but nothing was ever made of it. We had another river in our town, The Wisconsin River, "The Hardest Working River in the World," so called because it had more hydro electric plants, paper making facilities, locks and dams, and who knows what all on it than any other river in the 1950's and 60's. So they never even talked about the Mississippi in school.
I was surprised as a 12 year old, on a trip to Minneapolis, to cross it and realize it bordered my own state!

I have now had the joy of living on a Great River town and I am enamored of it. I love as much as I love the sea.
Mark Twain loved it, too.
I don't know if "Life on the Mississippi" is on any of those "read before you die" lists, but UT should be.
There are places along the river that are lost to time, and will never be the same again, but there are places that are the same as they were during Twain's day.
There are river towns that are restored to their 19th Century glory, there are natural wonders that change season to season, but are always glorious.
Read the book. Visit the river. These are both American treasures.
(There is racism in this book. It is a product of its time. I believe if Twain were writing today it would be a different book, but history is painful.)
Profile Image for Daniel Silveyra.
101 reviews3 followers
July 30, 2010
I didn't finish this book - I stopped around page 220 in my edition.

As much as I love Mark Twain, and as much as he can write...the book is about a river. The first few chapters are about Twain's days as an apprentice steamboat pilot, and they are interesting and fun to to read.

After them, however, begin a series of chapters regarding how the towns on the Mississippi have changed, what European travelers of old said of them, what the different prices of shipping through rail or train were, and in general a lot of researched facts about an area in the US from the late 19th century.

If this is your cup of tea, then have at it. I was looking for entertainment.

What is painful about setting this book aside is that, interspersed with the minutiae about the river itself are great "yarns" that Twain picked up from fellow travelers. Those are riveting and well written, but too few and far in between to really endure.
Profile Image for Nandakishore Mridula.
1,261 reviews2,386 followers
September 8, 2017
I have a love-hate relationship with this book. When I read it originally in my schooldays, I couldn't digest half of it. When I read it subsequently as an adult, I loved the steamboat experience but hated the patently untruthful yarns and the rather long-winded expositions. I will rate Mark Twain's fiction above his factual prose anytime.
Profile Image for Craig Childs.
858 reviews11 followers
September 24, 2023
“One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver—not aloud, but to himself—that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at.”

This American classic from the pen of Samuel Clemens is more than just a memoir of his days as a steamship pilot. In fact, the autobiographical section in which he details his five years boating between St. Louis and New Orleans makes up less than half the book. It is also part travelogue, history lesson, and geography primer. It is an often rambling potpourri of anecdotes about Southern culture, industrial progress, and aging.

It is a book of myth-making with a healthy dose of tall tales sprinkled throughout. My favorites are the pilot who navigated his steamship through a treacherous stretch of water while sleepwalking, and a treasure hunt that begins in a Bavarian death house and ends on the bluffs of Napolean, Arkansas.

The core of the narrative is a series of Atlantic Monthly magazine articles that were originally published in book form as Old Times on the Mississippi (1875). Twain later updated and supplemented this content with ancillary material including excerpts from then-unpublished Huckleberry Finn, the short story "The Professor's Yarn", and 11,000 words quoted from other 19th century travel writers. There is even a chapter of tables memorializing various steamboat races with the distances, times, and winners set down for posterity.

Twain's grasp of economics, commerce, and politics is unexpected if you've only read his novels.

He waxes rhapsodic about his "cub" training under the pilot Horace Bixby, the formation of a powerful pilots union, steamboat racing, meeting Joel Chandler Harris, and debunking spiritualists. He reminisces about the tragic death of his brother in a boiler explosion, the Great Flood of 1882, and the decline of the steamboat after the Civil War caused by railroad expansion. He provides eyewitness testimony from noncombatants at the Battle of Vicksburg. He recounts Native American folk stories. He offers opinions on everything from the cost of funerals to appropriate Mardi Gras costumes. One of his oft-recurring topics is the writing of Sir Walter Scott and its deleterious effect on Southern thinking.

Some of the book’s memorable lines include:

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

“I had a bet on a mule which would have won if the procession had been reversed.“

I alternated between paperback and audiobook, preferring the latter. The narrator Grover Gardner is excellent, and I did not have to struggle with Twain's phonetic spellings of Southern and Black accents. I wish my paperback edition included the 300 illustrations from the first 1883 edition.
Profile Image for Hannah.
44 reviews248 followers
Read
March 1, 2024
like most Americans my age I read Tom Sawyer in middle school, Huck Finn in high school, and encountered Mark Twain afterwards mainly via pithy quotes, with the exception of a class on Arthuriana that I took in college, in which we read Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and were all roughly as insulted by it and dismissive of it and annoyed by its wrong armor facts as I imagine Tennyson must have been (assuming, of course, that Tennyson gave a damn about Mark Twain). it seemed very plain to us that he had missed the entire point of Arthuriana, and indeed of satire, by asking "imagine a world... of true love and high adventure... but it smells bad." well, I'm imagining it, Mark! realism is sure providing piercing insights into human nature here!

as a result the most interesting passage to me in this book is the one where Mark Twain states, in more or less these exact words, that he blames Sir Walter Scott completely for the Civil War. the argument he makes is borne of experience in antebellum white society, and lines up with thoughts I often kick around on the romanticization of feudalism and the legacy of the 19th century ~invention of the Middle Ages~ especially in settler colonies. it makes me much more thoughtful about Connecticut Yankee ("oh," I said to myself, "the TITLE"), and it only really falls apart when one asks oneself such questions as "Did Sir Walter Scott make enslavers do the Civil War."

I understand from the grapevine that Huck Finn is being broadly phased out of high school American Lit curricula, in favor of books that are not quite so much in the line of "the most starkly human thing you can be, in a slave society, is a white boy with feelings". if Life on the Mississippi is any indication, "historical artifact literature" rather than "literary value literature" is entirely the right place for Mark Twain. he is inarguably funny. he is visibly striving, with the whole of his body, to have access to quote-retweets. halfway through this book, he quietly and without fanfare tells the story of how his little brother died, in a way that makes it very obvious that he believes it to be his fault, and will believe this until he goes into his grave, at which I wept. there are certain moments in life that intentionally or unintentionally cut through the depth & quantity of postbellum bullshit and provide a horrifying moral and factual clarity. one of these came for me toward the end of the book, when Twain visits his hometown, notes the people who now own his boyhood home, quite casually and offhandedly estimates what their market price would have been, and moves on. I'm glad I revisited him as an adult; I'll probably visit him again, if only to watch him dunk on Mormons. I had him classed as a writer who can be easily dismissed as an antiquity—one of those writers who cares too much about being "modern", in his time, to be relevant out of it—and I think that was a mistake. I think his writing shows more than he means it to.
Profile Image for Greta Nettleton.
Author 1 book4 followers
May 22, 2013
Another book I've read over and over--It's free on Kindle in the old edition, which is fun to read because of its authentic touches. America's 1880s are my current decade of choice, having spent years mired in research about the period, and Life on the Mississippi captures the rapid change in this country that took place after the Civil War, as it changed from a land of bucolic wilderness filled with independent workingmen to one of safer, duller regulated organized industrialization and automation. Twain, who grew up among Southerners in Missouri, can't resist skewering his former slave-owning fellow citizens, but reports vividly about the horrors of the disastrous Mississippi floods that devastated Louisiana in 1882--evoking Beasts of the Southern Wild & Hurricane Katrina for modern readers. A visit after 25 years to his childhood hometown of Hannibal is a perfect meditation on the ravages of time that mixes comedy with profound insight. And who can resist stories about boats? Steamboats, sailboats, rowboats, any boats--i love 'em all.
Profile Image for Nancy.
398 reviews85 followers
January 31, 2019
Memoir, travel, history, humor, fiction served up in deceptively folksy prose (which is in fact as sharp as it is funny) to evoke the 19th century Mississippi in all its glory and heartbreak. Admittedly there were a few too many tall tales for my taste or they went on too long, yarns not being my favorite reading, but I concede their necessity in creating the larger truth here. Evocative and endlessly gripping and droll.
Profile Image for George.
2,510 reviews
February 4, 2023
An interesting, easy to read, sometimes humorous, historical, mostly non fiction book about the Mississippi River since the river was first discovered by European settlers, the author’s life working as a pilot on the Mississippi river, and the formation of the pilot’s union. Mark Twain quit being a river pilot, pursuing other occupations including casual employments, newspaper reporter, being a miner and a “scribbler of books”.

Twenty one years after Twain stopped working as a river pilot, he undertook to visit the Mississippi river, writing about all the changes that had occurred to the river, transportation and the settlements along the river. He includes a number of accounts of the people he met and the stories they had to tell, mainly about their lives.

An informative, pleasant reading experience.

This book was first published in 1883.
May 19, 2022
I know that there are certain pieces of literature that are a victim of the times they were published, but this book was just a TAD too racist for me to overlook. Like second to Huck Finn racist. And that crap is just (god why do I pick words that I misspell so badly even autocorrect is like gf what the hell) too unacceptable (I'll use that word) for me. I think it's because Twain just holds these conversations and throes those words around like mouth candy.
Profile Image for Ryan Lawson.
65 reviews6 followers
October 8, 2008
I love Mark Twain, I really do. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as well as the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are just classic. He was a satirist (a brilliant one at that). He was a story-teller. He was so good at being a satirical orator that he made a living of it! He travelled the world. He was a celebrity if there ever was one.

Maybe it was because I read his fiction first, maybe it was because I idolized him, but good god this was a hard book to get through for me. This wasn't his first book. In fact, this wasn't his first work of non-fiction. However, this was his first work of non-fiction that I have read. The Gilded Age, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and many, many more came before Life; and a ton more came afterwards, though, none more important than the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (Life actually presents a chapter from Huck Finn, which was his next major published work after the aforementioned.)

Life absolutely excels in characterization. All of the people that influenced Twain's piloting career of steamboats on the great Mississippi River were not only influential in terms of him becoming a somewhat successful pilot but they also impacted his personality.

I adored all of the stories throughout this piece. I craved them, actually; but therein is the problem with this book. It leaves the reader starving for human interaction. My major issue is with the exposition Twain presents, which is grueling to say the least. I felt suffocated at times with steamboat statistics, town population counts, and distances between islands of the vast river. It's lacking the episodic substance that could make it more interesting!

Life actually reminded me of Herman Melville's Moby Dick because of the way it saturates the texts with facts upon facts upon stats upon stats.

I'm not saying that all of the nautical know-how of the steamboat industry is useless, but I am saying that it's a bit much. It ruins the progression of this book (if there really is any at all).

I had difficulty with the like of linear progress as well. I expected for the book to start at one end of the river and end at another. Twain tries to portray this progression in the final chapter, but I didn't buy into it. Life is disjointed. It bounces to and fro between years past and present with entire decades being left out at times. It just isn't congruent enough for my attention span.

Perhaps, this was Twain's intention. There is a lot of detail given at the beginning of Life that explains how hard piloting on the Mississippi used to be before significant markers were actually put into place to help guide steamboats down the river and allow them to know where they were. Parts of this book collapse and disappear much like the fragile banks of the river do whenever it becomes mighty.

It is worth reading, however. I would just suggest reading a lot of his fiction first because this is a poor example of Twain's true genius.
Profile Image for Ulysse.
315 reviews149 followers
February 12, 2021
Like the river it commemorates, this book has its long stretches, its vistas of tedium, its drowsy numbness-inducing disquisitions on the life nautical; but every once in a while you come across a passage like this:

"The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparklingly renewed with every re-perusal. The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions when he did not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was an italicized passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of the largest capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it; for it meant a wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous to a pilot's eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it, painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading-matter."
Profile Image for Thom Swennes.
1,822 reviews56 followers
March 18, 2012
Starting with a humorous and informative history of the river, Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain continues to describe piloting that waterway. In the same home-down style established by all of his more well known works, Twain paints a brightly-colored portrait of that long river with all its twists, turns, rapids, shallows and landmarks. The book traces river travel from the time that the river pilot was almost a god to their downfall with the building of levees, dykes and the placing of light and floating markers, making the navigation of the river immensely easier. Halfway through the sketches (I use this word as the book sometimes lacks in unity) the author moves away from a direct connection with the Mississippi River and continues with colorful accounts that take the reader around the world. Life on the Mississippi was the start of Mark Twain’s (Samuel Clements) fame as a writer. This introduction to a great writer and a great mind is a true diamond; not in the rough but shining as a lighthouse in the misty night.
Profile Image for Katy Harris.
5 reviews3 followers
June 8, 2009
This book sparked my love for the Mississipi River a few years back. As a person whose eyes glaze over when someone talks about science, Twain's very detailed description of geological aspects of the Mississippi River was surprisingly fascinating. His stories about the people on the steamboats of the river are hilarious, and there is a great appendix of a few beautiful Native American stories that I will never forget. I also love the historical bend to the book, but I love so many things...
One last thing: Twain changes subjects often and the chapters are divided into short little vignettes, so reading the book is easy like floating down the river on a sunny day. I highly recommended this book!
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