Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Mark Twain as an American Icon
- 2 The Innocent at Large
- 3 Mark Twain and Women
- 4 Mark Twain's Civil War
- 5 Banned in Concord
- 6 Black Critics and Mark Twain
- 7 Mr. Clemens and Jim Crow
- 8 Speech Acts and Social Action
- 9 How the Boss Played the Game
- 10 Mark Twain's Travels in the Racial Occult
- 11 Mark Twain's Theology
- Further Reading
- Index
- Continued Series List
1 - Mark Twain as an American Icon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- 1 Mark Twain as an American Icon
- 2 The Innocent at Large
- 3 Mark Twain and Women
- 4 Mark Twain's Civil War
- 5 Banned in Concord
- 6 Black Critics and Mark Twain
- 7 Mr. Clemens and Jim Crow
- 8 Speech Acts and Social Action
- 9 How the Boss Played the Game
- 10 Mark Twain's Travels in the Racial Occult
- 11 Mark Twain's Theology
- Further Reading
- Index
- Continued Series List
Summary
That Mark Twain parades on as a prominent American icon is obvious - visually, audibly, and palpably. The fact is validated by the most dynamic force in the United States - the profit-driven economy. To reassure customers who worry that “this country is running out of natural gas,” a corporation prints a full-page ad depicting a bushy-haired, white-suited, cigar-smoking Twain under the heading “The reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated.” To highlight the case against reregulation, the Association of American Railroads disseminates a photograph of a solemn Twain, holding a book rather than a cigar but again in basic whites, under his maxim “Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.” In a newspaper ad, a bank (“We frown on get-rich-quick schemes, but we are not opposed to helping people make money”) features his “I'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position”; the experts in subliminalism at its ad agency reinforced this with a Huck Finnish boy fishing. But a cemetery, selling “dignity and simplicity in a setting of great natural beauty” through a full-page spread in the Los Angeles Times, understandably prefers a close-up of a solemn, elderly Twain along with his epitaph for Susy Clemens.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain , pp. 1 - 26Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995