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Type of bind: Hardcover
EAN num: 9781598184457
ISBN number: 1598184458
Label: Aegypan
Manufacturer: Aegypan
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 376
Printing Date: October 01, 2006
Publishing house: Aegypan
Age index: Young Adult
Sale Popularity Level: 1248667
Studio: Aegypan
Editor's Notes and Comments:
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'This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in the volume . . .' Thus begins Mark Twain's Prefatory to Roughing It. The book is a humorous account of Twain's six years spent in Nevada, San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands (as Hawaii was known at the time) and is comprised of various anecdotes and tall tales, told as only Mark Twain can tell them.
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In 1861 a young Samuel Clemens heads west for a three month stay. Six years later he returns to write Roughing It. An account of his adventures and misadventures on the frontier from the mining camps of Nevada and California to the volcanoes of Hawaii it is what can be described, rather loosely, as a travelogue. There have been many very first person accounts written about the old west but for originality of thought, ease of writing and that slightly off kelter point of view few can match this. Starting with a stage couch ride to Virginia City, Nevada good men, bad men, ordinary men, chinese, indians, miners all the flotsam and jetsam of the frontier come under Clemens gaze only to have their great virtues and their great flaws mercilessly exposed. All the while showing a sensitivity and respect for other people and their ways that lifts this above the thinking of his time. This is a sprawling work laced with jokes, insights, tall tails and outright lies all told with Clemens trade mark wit and gentle humour making this a very good read.
Written in the style of the 19th century this can be a hard book for a 21st century mind to follow. If you stick with him however you will get a rollicking ride through a time now lost. And if you take the trouble to listen to the words themselves you can step back in time and, even allowing for humorous excess, almost feel that you have entered that world yourself. At the same time if you watch closely you can just catch a glimpse of a drifting greenhorn and self proclaimed vagabond named Samuel Clemens turning into Mark Twain.
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