The Twain Doctrine: Citizen Holbrook & The Geopolitics of Colloquial Humor
Hal Holbrook was, briefly, an agent of the US government in the Cultural Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Tag: humor
Joking Aside: Jon Stewart & The Mark Twain Prize
Jon Stewart will receive the 2022 Mark Twain Prize at The Kennedy Center this weekend.
Gallows without Humor: How I Mined Mark Twain’s Western Violence
Jarrod Roark discusses how he became interested in the peculiarities of Twain’s Western writings.
Ah Shucks, Satan!: Mark Twain’s Style, Quantified
Mark Twain was an immensely popular author. Based on this apparent truth, it has been convenient to regard him as populist as well. Contemporaneous critics dismissed him as “merely a humorist,” a characterization which he clearly internalized. Even those who praise his literary style often, like his friend William Dean Howells, invoke the slightly backhanded adjective natural. “Mr. Clemens is the first writer to use in extended writings the fashion we […]
Judith Yaross Lee to Conclude the Fall 2016 “Trouble Begins at Eight” Series
Samuel L. Clemens pioneered a modern understanding of the new information economy emerging in the U.S. in the years after the Civil War because he understood and marketed Mark Twain as a brand-name comic commodity. Judith Yaross Lee explains how Clemens managed the Mark Twain brand by extending it to some activities, excluding it from others, and exploiting its modern conception of the self in his public performances. Judith […]