Roughing It, Part 6. — Inside the Classic

The Novel That Never Was

Twain recounts being engaged by the editor of the Weekly Occidental to write a novel, a task for which he claims to have no aptitude. He sketches the plot with deliberate flatness: a hero and heroine are separated by a villain, and the hero spends years searching for her. Twain’s summary is a parody of sentimental fiction, and he admits he lost interest after a few chapters. The episode reveals his ambivalence toward the conventions of popular literature—he can mimic them, but he cannot sustain them. The novel, he says, was abandoned, and the weekly soon failed. This self-mocking account of literary failure is typical of Twain’s persona in Roughing It: he presents himself as a hack who stumbles into adventures rather than a deliberate artist.

Drunks, Props, and Performances

Three consecutive anecdotes in Chapter LV hinge on drunkenness and deception. The first involves a man who lets a hundred-pound brick fall on his foot—a foot he proves to be a cork leg—to cadge brandy from sympathetic bystanders. The second, titled “Ye Modest Man Taketh a Drink,” describes a bar patron who, after fumbling with a wet quarter, asks for a cigar instead of change. The third tells of a man who mistakes an iron dog for a real one, kicks it, and is flung head over heels. Each story is a miniature performance: the cork-leg man acts out pain, the modest man acts out embarrassment, and the iron-dog kicker acts out bravado followed by reflection. Twain’s delight in these set pieces lies in the gap between appearance and reality, and in the ingenuity of the drunk who turns a mishap into an opportunity.

A Last Look at Mount Davidson

Twain’s farewell to Virginia City is characteristically undercut by a digression. He mentions taking a last look at the flag atop Mount Davidson, “thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide,” fluttering like a lady’s handkerchief two thousand feet above the roofs. The image is both grand and absurd—a giant flag reduced to a handkerchief. This moment of genuine sentiment is immediately followed by the phrase “And this reminds me of an…” which trails off into the next anecdote. The structure suggests that Twain cannot sustain a solemn departure; his instinct is to puncture pathos with another story. The flag itself becomes a symbol of the book’s method: a large, conspicuous object that is also a pretext for comedy.

Readers should attend to the way Twain uses digression as a structural principle. The chapters are less a continuous narrative than a series of set pieces linked by association. The prefatory claim that information stews out of him is a clue: the book’s value lies not in its facts but in the comic pressure under which those facts are delivered. Treat each anecdote as a self-contained performance, and watch for the recurring pattern of a setup, a twist, and a punchline that undermines the initial premise.

Some evenings I think of Mark Twain’s boisterous, cork-legged drunkard, all bluster and brandy—and then I recall Rundle’s quieter ledger of army days, where hardship wore a similar face of stubborn cheer. Both men knew how a man spins his own legend to outlast the cold. That kinship sits warm on the shelf. A Soldier's Life: Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle — Inside the Classic keeps such honest company.