A Pair of Distinguished Contemporary Authors Weigh In On A Nineteenth-Century Genius
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October 2006
Volume57Issue5
Every successful musician sooner or later makes an album of standards, the familiar pieces he or she has loved and learned from over the years. Writers, too, love paying homage to their forebears, as can be seen from a pair of recent books:
Johnson is a British journalist and critic, best known for sweeping historical works such as
This contrast may be seen in their divergent treatments of the only person covered in both books, Mark Twain. Johnson spends much time comparing Twain’s writing with his lecture performances and praising his creative recycling of material and his astute management of the business side of literature. He goes wild over
Doctorow delves into the creative tension behind the writing of
This same pattern recurs throughout the rest of both collections. Johnson presents a historical march of geniuses and master artisans and shows them at the writing desk or in the studio, creating things whose beauty and originality have become part of a great Western tradition. Doctorow gives us a series of rebels and reformers, mostly American (Poe, Melville, Hemingway, Harpo Marx), who dream of new and better worlds even as they struggle with disillusionment and self-doubt. It is a measure of Twain’s achievement that he can garner effusive praise even when considered from these two very different standpoints, showing that true greatness cannot be confined in a box—or, perhaps, that it can be made to fit in any box you want.