In the New Yorker, Ben Tarnoff reviews Volume II of the Autobiography of Mark Twain.
Notorious for his ability to talk a blue streak, Twain dictated the entire three-volume tome of over 5000 typewritten pages while lying in bed awaiting, it would seem, his own demise.
In his autobiography, the rambling flow that has always infused his work liberates itself of any pretense of plot or structure and achieves its purest form. It doesn’t always make for riveting reading, but it shows us what made Twain a revolutionary writer.
