Chernow Speaks of Twain But Doesn’t Know His Words

Horace—not Horace Greeley or Horace Grant but the Roman poet Horace—famously said that poetry should delight and instruct. If we apply this standard to Ron Chernow’s mammoth Mark Twain, I’ll grant it gets about half the job done, and that half almost entirely on the instruction side of the ledger. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) lived a fascinating life, rising from the muddy banks of the Mississippi River to storm the house of fame as Mark Twain, a pen name redolent of the great American river, its depths and shallows, and the steamboats navigating them.