By Garo Kerdelian | Staff Writer
Life on the Mississippi is the memoir of American writer Samuel Langhorne Clemens, more famously known by his pen name Mark Twain. While commonly celebrated in the mainstream for his stories about young troublemakers, such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain’s travelogue on the Mississippi river is a treasure-trove of satirical storytelling intertwined with unique socio-political and historical commentary.
Twain opens the book with a description of the river, its history, and its explorers. He contextualizes its first exploration within historical events in 1542 such as the Spanish Inquisition, the establishment of the Jesuit order, and Michel Angelo’s painting of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. In the most ordinary descriptions of the river water’s rises, falls, and jumps, Twain entertains the reader with his humor and creative thinking. For example, when the water cuts through the neck of a bend and changes the course of the river – a procedure called a cut-off – the jurisdictions and boundary lines among states can change very rapidly. So, he ironically declares, “Such a thing, happening in the upper river in the old times, could have transferred a slave from Missouri to Illinois and made a free man of him.” (p. 32)
The writer follows with “Frescoes from the Past,” a series of stories from his experiences on the river whose sole purpose is to paint a picture of the river-people at the time – the raftsman, the keelboats-man, and the steamboat-man. Throughout the memoir, Twain is quite variable in his writing style. He often decorates his chapters with stories that seem to be irrelevant but arguably constitute one of his primary tenets: the necessity of raw, personal, and unique experiences as material for storytelling. His approach to writing is similar to his approach to life: to be simple, do what he wants, and talk about his interests for as long as he is interested in them, with due regard for appropriate language use in print.
Twain then describes his long and ambitious journey to becoming a steamboat pilot during the golden ages of the Mississippi. He recounts how all little boys strived to become steamboat-men, his initial failure, and his difficulties in learning the ins and outs of the river from Horace Bixby, an expert pilot and later his dear friend. Twain provides a dramatic and fantastic account of the courage, memory, and instinctual decision-making abilities the pilot heroes of the Mississippi were endowed with. To become a steamboat pilot, Twain had to memorize the locations of innumerable towns, hills, bars, points, and islands, and hone his instinct to read the face of the water for different reefs. To be able to steer in the dark in the absence of electric lights, he not only had to learn the shape of the river, but he also had to continuously update his information as the river changed shape through different cut-offs and melting banks. The young Twain quickly realized that piloting was not as romantic a profession as he had imagined, for “there was something very real and work-like about this new phase of it.” (p.68) The romance and the beauty of the river had faded to give way to the utility it provided to safely piloting a steamboat.
The thrill of piloting the river had faded even further when Twain travelled the Mississippi at an older age and technological revolutions had made the process much safer. The United States River Commission had established electric lamps along the Mississippi, its snag-boats patrolled the river to remove dangerous obstructions, and charts and compasses made piloting in the fog simple. We may consider this a Weberian rationalization process that constitutes an essential part of industrial modernization: the rational use of knowledge and the organization of social processes according to impartial procedures by institutions such as the Commission, at the cost of decreasing the individual emotion, intuition, and autonomy of the pilot within a bureaucratic institution.
Twain observed similar changes in the river’s surrounding cities, especially the Upper River towns, on his second journey and took special care to extract statistical information about them from twenty-five books. He notes the rapidly growing populations of the new towns in the region, so “new that I [Twain] who, who am comparatively young, am yet older than it is.” (p.342) He describes its people as an educated and enlightened race who build schools, trade, and live under the law, and, in our view, continue the rationalization process.
After a brief history of the river and a few snippets from the Civil War, Twain concludes his book with beautiful descriptions of scenery that I hold dear to my heart. He gives his final thoughts about American progress achieved in commerce, education, and the railway, and comedically recounts a legend about an American Indian tradition that perplexes him. In doing so, Twain paradoxically ties together two fundamental threads in the book: his nostalgia for the past and his impressions of present progress.
Occasionally, the reader can relate Twain’s satire to our present day as he outlines practices that have not changed till today. For instance, he jokes about the need to amend the constitution and inflict imprisonment for life for newspaper editors who focus on meaningless “surprises” and flashy stories, such as the “Annual Veteran who has Voted for Every President from Washington down, and Walked to the Polls Yesterday with as Bright an Eye and as Firm a Step as Ever.” Such a headline from the 19th century almost sounds like a 21st century one, as we frequently see news broadcasts focusing on silly topics instead of covering notable events.
The book is a light read with little need for philosophical reflection – it is accessible to and appropriate for all young adults and adults. Of course, readers interested in the history of steamboats or the United States will derive more benefit and pleasure, but Life on the Mississippi can be very enjoyable for anyone looking to explore a new topic and laugh a lot along the way.
If we are to take away a lesson from the wonderful memoir, let it be this: time inevitably goes on, and Twain’s simple and light-hearted approach to things is one everyone should adopt from time to time. In times of constant change, we can all learn from the steamboat pilots who braved the Mississippi – that “great father of Waters” – and be confident in our knowledge and experience, develop good judgment, memory, and decision, and go out into the great unknown with a courage that no peril can shake.