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• W4237935801 abstract "This excellent collection of essays seeks to redress a surprising gap in Twain studies: while the author's investments and bankruptcy are frequently rehearsed in scholarship as a (usually) regrettable distraction from writing, his intriguing and important engagement with money and economics is rarely addressed at any length. This omission is surprising, given that for the past couple of decades late nineteenth-century literature in particular has been understood “in relation to the market culture” (236) and given the relevance and at times centrality of matters of economic theory and its relation to cultural change to Twain's writing. Indeed, in his introduction, Henry B. Wonham explains that “the absence of a single reference to Mark Twain” in the influential 1999 volume The New Economic Criticism was in fact “one of the motivating factors behind the present collection” (14). Although a number of essays in the volume make no reference to this ongoing conversation about literature and economics, maintaining the familiar but strange barrier often seen between some humor scholarship and theory, others robustly and successfully engage with the field, helping us rethink not only Twain but also our understanding of the relationship between culture and economics in one of its most creative, productive and volatile periods.Some of the best essays in the volume provide new biographical information and perspectives on Twain's business practices while simultaneously linking these aspects of his life to the ongoing economic and cultural transformations of the period in which he wrote. For instance, Ann M. Ryan's chapter, “The Quality (and Cost) of Mercy: Mark Twain's Evasion of the Poor,” seeks to relate Twain's worries about poverty and his sometime sympathy for the poor to his “hostile response to actual poor people” (84), whom he represents as “sometimes dangerous, sometimes pathetic, and often repellent” (85). Ryan eloquently suggests that “Mark Twain often seems caught between remembering and forgetting the poor, which is precisely the ambivalent response of the culture he lives in” (85). Here, Wonham and Howe's editorial desire to participate in the ongoing conversation with economic, literary, and culture scholars is fully realized. Sharon D. McCoy's chapter, “Minstrel Economics: Mark Twain, the San Francisco Minstrels, and Folk Investment in the American Dream,” provides a similar kind of insight, exploring how “during the postbellum era, Mark Twain's writings increasingly explore how economic class and social aspirations intertwine with racial identity in American culture” (177). McCoy provocatively and rightly suggests that “in nineteenth century America, constructions of ‘race’ were largely about money and competition” (179), and it is precisely because such matters figure so prominently in Twain's writing that Twain studies has much to offer the conversation in which Wonham and Howe want the volume to participate.While there isn't space in this review to address all of the fine contributions to the collection, some standout contributions to Twain studies and to our understanding of the relationship between economics, literature, culture, and history are worth highlighting here. Joseph Csicsila's “‘These Hideous Times’: Mark Twain's Bankruptcy and the Panic of 1893” explains in knowledgeable and riveting detail how Twain's famous bankruptcy had more to do with the depression of 1893 than with pudd'nhead speculation and incompetence—the lack of credit that was endemic during the depression meant that a business model that had worked in the past simply couldn't work at the time. This little story has big consequences, and Csicsila concludes that “the time has come” for Twain studies “to consider the full range of forces bearing down on Mark Twain and his business interests in the early 1890s” (139). In my favorite contribution to the volume, “‘A House of Cards’: Fictitious Capital and The Gilded Age,” Jonathan Hayes argues that “in identifying finance as the motivator of such social phenomena [economic collapse, outbursts of violence, the reinforcement of poverty], the novel criticizes the expansion of finance capitalism as it develops into the modern business enterprise economy” (201). Moreover, Hayes reminds us that this critique is presented specifically in the form of the novel and takes this as the opportunity to observe that “the novel's melodramatic, sentimental narratives reveal a homology between the desire-based discourses of romance and financial enterprise” (203). The ensuing discussion contributes as much to Twain studies as it does to theories of literature, culture, and ideology.Perhaps the most representative conclusion reached in the volume is found near the end, in Jeffrey W. Miller's “‘By and By I was Smitten with the Silver Fever’: Literary Veins in Roughing It.” After providing a close reading of representations of mining in some of Twain's best-known works and linking them to Twain's ways of thinking about his own writing, Miller suggests that “the logic of capitalism—which marries language and money in multiple ways— acts as the ultimate ordering principle of the frontier. Thus, Twain is not really escaping civilization; rather, he is helping to construct a version of eastern capitalism in the West” (230). This is exactly the kind of contribution editors Wonham and Howe were seeking, one that highlights the intersection of literature and economics in Twain's writing and shows how much Twain studies can contribute to the fields of economic, literary, and cultural and political criticism. This is an important collection of essays, one that is of value not only to students and scholars of American humor and Twain studies but also to those interested in the broader fields of American studies and in cultural and economic theory." @default.
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• W4237935801 date "2019-01-01" @default.
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• W4237935801 title "Review" @default.
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