" Cosmopolitan Twain" takes seriously Mark Twain's life as a
citizen of urban landscapes: from the streets of New York City to
the palaces of Vienna to the suburban utopia of Hartford.
Traditional readings of Mark Twain orient his life and work by
distinctly rural markers such as the Mississippi River, the Wild
West, and small-town America; yet, as this collection shows,
Twain's sensibilities were equally formed in the urban centers of
the world. These essays represent Twain both as a product of urban
frontiers and as a prophet of American modernity, situating him
squarely within the context of an evolving international and
cosmopolitan community.
As Twain traveled and lived in these locales, he acquired
languages, costumes, poses, and politics that made him one of the
first truly cosmopolitan world citizens. Beginning with New York
City--where Twain spent more of his life than in Hannibal--we learn
that his early experiences there fed his fascination with racial
identity and economic privilege. While in St. Louis and New
Orleans, Twain developed a strategic detachment that became a part
of his cosmopolitan persona. His contact with bohemian writers in
San Francisco excited his ambitions to become more than a humorist,
while sojourns in Buffalo and Hartford marked Twain's uneasy
accommodation to domesticity and cultural prominence. London
finally liberated him from his narrowly constructed national
identity, while Vienna allowed him to fully achieve his
transnational voice. The volume ends by presenting Elmira, New
York, as a complement, and something of a counterpart, to Twain's
cosmopolitan life, creating a domestic retreat from the pace and
complexity of an increasingly urban, modern America.
In response to each of these cities, Twain generated writings
that marked America's movement into the twentieth century and
toward the darker realities that made possible this cosmopolitan
state. "Cosmopolitan Twain" presents Twain's eventual descent into
skepticism and despair not as a departure from his early values but
rather as a dark awakening into the new terms of American identity,
history, and moral authority. This collection reveals a writer who
is decidedly less static than the iconic portrait that dominates
popular culture. It offers a corrective to the familiar image of
Twain as the nostalgic voice of America's rural past, presenting
Twain as a citizen of modernity and a visionary of a global and
cosmopolitan future.
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