Becoming Mark Twain: Life, Death and Huck Finn on the Mississippi
A former Washington Post and Associated Press journalist, Chris Daly has been teaching courses in the history and techniques of journalism at Boston University for almost 25 years. He is the author of Covering America: A Narrative History of the Nation’s Journalism, as well as many scholarly and popular articles on the history of news. Professor Daly has appeared as an expert in the PBS American Masters documentary “Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People.” He writes at www.journalismprofessor.com and contributes to the Washington Post series “Made by History.”
Overview
In 1935, Ernest Hemingway made a pronouncement that has become famous: “All modern American literature,” he declared, “comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” Hemingway’s remark is widely quoted among writers and scholars, and it is rarely disputed. The Twain novel that Hemingway so admired is 138 years old this month and still selling strongly. But what are the origins of Huck Finn? That is, where did the book come from? And perhaps more to the point, where did that character Huck Finn come from?
In this lecture, we’ll explore the sources Twain drew on for his novel of the Mississippi and discuss how he became a writer in the first place. It seemed so unlikely. That’s the funny thing about Mark Twain: he did not set out to be a writer at all. No, the popular and admired author initially set his sights on a very different career. As a youth, he was committed to the idea that the most exalted calling on Earth was to pilot steamboats on the broad and mighty Mississippi River. That’s where we find him at the start of this talk.