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The Guardian
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Mark Twain by Ron Chernow review – the story of America's first literary celebrity, from the author of Hamilton
In his lifetime, Mark Twain was the greatest literary celebrity the world had ever known. In the US, he hobnobbed with presidents; on his many travels, he would dine privately with the German kaiser, the Austrian emperor, or the Prince of Wales. Visiting England to collect an honorary degree from Oxford University, he was cheered off his ship by the stevedores of the London docks, before making his way to Windsor Castle for tea with the king and queen. He was the bracing, irreverently humorous voice of America. Like Charles Dickens, whom he heard read from his own work in New York, he became a performer as well as an author. In London he was feted when he read passages from his travelogue of the Wild West, Roughing It. Everyone loved the 'twang of his drawl'. He went on to take his work in progress, Huckleberry Finn, round more than 100 American towns and cities, earning handsomely. His pre-fame life, as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, formed the inspiration for much of his work. He spent most of his youth in Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, and delighted in the river: fishing and swimming and exploring its islands. Aged just 11, he became a printer's apprentice at the Missouri Courier, giving him the skills of a journeyman typesetter and allowing him to earn a reliable living. At 21, he befriended a young river pilot, Horace Bixby, who schooled him on the 1,200 miles of shifting channels of the lower Mississippi, between St Louis and New Orleans. At 23, he received his licence as a steamboat pilot for that stretch of the river. His experiences would form the basis for his wonderfully readable Life on the Mississippi and his masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn. The river was even there in his pseudonym, which he first adopted in newspaper articles in his late 20s. 'Mark twain' was the cry of a leadsman, who sounded the water with a rope and a weight and confirmed that the river was a safe two fathoms deep. In his early 30s he went on a trip with American tourists to Europe and the Middle East, simply in order to get copy for The Innocents Abroad, an often hilarious travelogue. It was 'the rocket that lifted Mark Twain to literary stardom'. (It remained the best-selling book of his lifetime.) That stardom was cemented by Huckleberry Finn, published in 1884. Ron Chernow, who is best known for the biography of Alexander Hamilton, on which the musical was based, rightly says that having the unlettered, 14-year-old Huck narrate the story meant it became one of the great demonstrations of 'how expressive colloquial language could be'. There had been nothing like Huck's deadpan humour, not least in his depiction of his monstrous, drunken, deeply racist father. Yet, as Chernow notes, the novel seems to have become almost unteachable in American schools and universities (he might have added, in British universities too). Huck grew up, like the author, in Missouri, a slave state. As he describes his adventures with the escaped slave, Jim, he uses the N-word some 200 times. This now presents 'an almost insuperable problem for educators'. Twain never became as enlightened as Chernow – who often apologises for him – would wish. Almost all his best books have something disturbing in them. The illustrations accompanying Life on the Mississippi stereotype Black people and Jewish tradesman in ways that would make any reader flinch from this brilliantly written book. It is not just his attitudes to race that need explaining. In his 70s he cultivated – mostly by letter – relations with girls he dubbed his 'angelfish': 'I collect pets: young girls from ten to sixteen years old who are pretty and sweet and naive and innocent.' Chernow hopes that, if not innocent, the preoccupation at least led nowhere. Hamilton aside, Chernow has specialised in stories of American capitalism, including an account of the Morgan banking dynasty and a life of the oil plutocrat John D Rockefeller. His financial savvy is essential to this biography, and he shows how the highest earning American writer of the 19th century spent much of his life oppressed by money worries. The son of a feckless and often financially desperate father, keeping afloat was at the forefront of his mind. He was drawn to get-rich-quick schemes, and always being conned. He invested and lost huge amounts (millions in today's money) in a series of mad projects, often involving new technology. As well as losing the money that he had earned, he managed to burn through much of his wife's inheritance (his wife Olivia, known as Livy, was the daughter of Jervis Langdon, a wealthy colliery owner and coal dealer). Convinced that publishers were villainous, Twain started his own house, which duly bankrupted him and sent him, aged 60, on a speaking tour round the world, via Australia, India and South Africa, in an attempt to pay off his massive debts. He also cranked out potboilers like Tom Sawyer, Detective. By his mid-60s, he had cleared those debts – only to lose further huge sums developing a 'miraculous' health food product known as Plasmon. The other great theme of this book is illness. Twain's and Livy's son had died of diphtheria as an infant. Their eldest daughter, Susy, was withdrawn from Bryn Mawr College (possibly to 'save' her from a lesbian infatuation with a fellow student) and withdrew into lassitude, before dying of meningitis in her mid-20s. Chernow exhaustively chronicles the family's further ailments: Twain's youngest daughter, Jean, was epileptic, a source of shame as well as anxiety to her father. A witty sceptic about the medical profession, he was susceptible to every form of quackery in pursuit of a 'cure'. Livy spent years ill and isolated before her death in 1904, after which Twain relied more and more on Isabel Lyon, a bookish middle-aged woman who called him 'the King'. Chernow says that she was his 'de facto mistress (minus the romance)'. This is a huge book – well over 1,000 pages – because there is so much to go on. As well as thousands of Twain's letters, there are 50 volumes of notebooks and half a million words of an autobiography, dictated to a stenographer in his last years. There are copious records of Twain's lectures, as well as transcripts of interviews: he was interviewed more often than any other writer of his generation. It was as if he was trying to supply future biographers with material. When he quarrelled with his closest financial advisers in old age, he compiled an obsessively detailed, furious account of how he had been wronged. He even left posterity a detailed record of his dreams. Chernow makes out of all this an admirably animated, readable account of one of the modern world's first celebrities. Somewhere deep inside it, almost hidden, glows the energy and humour of Twain's very American prose. Mark Twain by Ron Chernow is published by Allen Lane (£40). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Wall Street Journal
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
TV Before Cable Was a Barren Landscape. It Was Also Magical.
Cable TV came late to my town. This had something to do with my father, Herb Cohen, who, on the heels of the success of his book 'You Can Negotiate Anything,' was asked to represent a group of suburban Chicago villages in a deal with a prospective cable company. The arrangement went punk, and we suffered another half-decade of limited viewing options. My father claims this had in fact been his intention. By blowing the deal, he provided the kids of Glencoe, Ill., with a last taste of the old woods-and-creeks centered American childhood. As I've aged, with so many hours spent urging my own kids to turn off the TV, step away from the gaming console and venture beneath the sugar maples, I have come to see that my father was right. The coming of cable meant not only the arrival of a hundred channels but the end of those aimless days when we floated like Huck and Jim. It also brought an end to the odd beauty of broadcast TV.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
EXCLUSIVE: Kourtney Kardashian Barker's Lemme Is the Latest Brand Aiming to Make Fiber Cool
If anyone can make fiber cool, it might just be Kourtney Kardashian Barker. Today, Kardashian Barker's supplement brand Lemme is launching its Lemme No. 2 for $30, a daily fiber and probiotic strawberry-flavored gummy to boost regularity, support overall gut health and fill nutrient gaps. Lemme No. 2 is the brand's latest addition to its gut health offering, which includes bestsellers like Lemme Debloat, $30. To start, it will be available exclusively on More from WWD EXCLUSIVE: Assouline and Technogym Team on 'The Art of Wellness' Coffee-table Book Tate McRae Gets 'Pierced' in Grace Ling Set for 'Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' Performance Amanda Seyfried Puts Sparkling Spin on Suiting for 'Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,' Talks Sabrina Carpenter in 'Mamma Mia! 3' According to the National Institute of Health, only 5 percent of people reach the daily suggested amount of fiber — about 25 grams for women and 38 grams for men, ages 19 to 50. Insufficient fiber can cause constipation, bloating and gas, as well as have longer-term effects such as high cholesterol. 'Research tells us most of the general population is fiber deficient with wide-reaching implications. That's why Lemme No. 2 is formulated with 4 grams of non-GMO prebiotic fiber per serving, plus 2 clinically studied probiotics — scientifically shown to support regularity, digestive health and good gut bacteria,' said Leona West-Fox, functional nutritionist and Lemme medical advisory board member. Lemme cofounder Simon Huck added: 'When we think about fiber, we immediately go to regularity, but there are so many other things in your body, like metabolic function, overall digestion, bloating [and] hormone balance. Everything in your body is rooted from fiber.' The formula includes vitamin D, another nutrient that many are deficient in, which can boost immunity, support bone health and promote a healthy gut microbiome. Over the past couple of years, more brands have been jumping into the fiber game to meet this growing consumer need and refresh the category. According to Nielsen IQ, fiber supplements overall exceeded $188 million in omnichannel sales in a year, having grown 25 percent from the previous period — the most popular format within the category sales- and units-wise is gummies. Lemme is the latest brand to bet on the growing market. 'Fiber is the moment,' said Lemme cofounder Simon Huck. 'It's a category that we have been so interested in for the last two years. It's, again, one of those products that is constantly requested from us.' The product has been in development for a year-and-a-half, according to Huck, who noted the process was quite long given they formulated without sugar. This launch follows Lemme's latest retail expansion into iHerb, which has allowed the brand to expand its reach. 'Part of the challenge was, we want to launch in all sorts of different places, but it takes a lot of resources,' Huck said. '[iHerb] ships to almost every single country in the world.' Within two days of launching on the platform, 60 percent of Lemme's products were already sold out, according to Huck. As far as what's next, Lemme has a full pipeline of products in 2025, including a launch into a brand new category.
The Guardian
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
James by Percival Everett audiobook review
This satirical, Booker-shortlisted tale flips the script on Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the children's novel published in 1884 and set in Mississippi that went on to become a toxic cornerstone of the American canon. Where Twain had teenage Huck as his narrator, in James, Percival Everett reimagines the story from the perspective of his friend and fellow runaway Jim, an enslaved Black man who opens the book with the line: 'Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass.' The little bastards in question are Huck and his pal Tom Sawyer, who want to play a trick on Jim while he sleeps. He is alert to the boys' games but plays along because, as he has learned from experience: 'It always pays to give white folks what they want.' When our protagonist learns he is to be sold downriver and separated from his family, he hides on nearby Jackson Island while he comes up with a plan. There he is joined by Huck, who is trying to escape his abusive father. The actor Dominic Hoffman is the book's narrator. His performance is terrific: variously wry, poignant and thoughtful as he imbues Jim with the humanity and agency denied to him by Twain. Where the original Jim was illiterate and talked in dubious dialect, Percival's James is erudite and widely read, though he is careful not to let the white people know, speaking to them in 'correct incorrect grammar' in order that they retain their sense of superiority. For James, 'Jim' is a performance created to minimise danger. Dare I Say ItNaomi Watts, Penguin Audio, 6hr 50minThe actor narrates her memoir on her experience of early menopause and dispenses advice for other women doing battle with their hormones. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion ImminentLuis Elizondo, John Blake, 9hr 59minA first-hand account of the Pentagon's investigation into the existence of UFOs by a one-time insider. Elizondo reads.
