Life on the Mississippi, by Mark Twain (1883)

Life on the Mississippi is one of those old classics that needs to be re-read from time to time. It's a valued part of my permanent library and I just finished re-reading it for the second or third time. The form of the book itself is split into almost halves, the first concerning Twain’s training as a pilot, before becoming America’s premier writer; the second half is more of a travelogue, chronicling Twain’s return to the River, 20 years after.

Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) was to American literature what Charles Dickens was to English literature: A writer in the vernacular; a chronicler of his times; a prolific writer whose works were published in newspapers, magazines, and books; a writer, who, better than any other, captured the flavor of his times, distilled it, and preserved it for posterity.

Much like the River itself, Twain begins his wending way with a description of the natural history of the Mississippi, length, depth, breadth, wandering channel, blah blah blah - exploration by DeSoto and LaSalle, yada yada;

Then he suddenly changes course, throwing in a chapter from the yet-to-be published Huckleberry Finn that tells how Huck surreptitiously hitched a ride on a vast timber raft piloted down river by a handful of ex-keelboatmen, who, incidentally, had been put out of business by the Steamboat, which could carry more cargo, faster, and steam up river as well as down...

Twain proceeds through twenty chapters, detailing his consecration as a "cub" (apprentice) pilot, from 1857 through the start of the Civil War, in 1861, when all river traffic ceased. These chapters are some of the most memorable in the book with Twain's inimitable humor slyly inserted among the facts, until you aren‘t quite sure which is fully true, which is embellished, and which is a damn lie, as Twain himself would put it. :>

I might mention that, according to Twain's account, a pilot was required for each steamboat, to steer it down the river's changeable course around snags, across sandbars, and so on. For the skill exhibited, the pilots were handsomely remunerated, and even outranked the riverboat captain while underway. But the heyday of the steamboat pilot only lasted a short while, from 1812 to around the end of the Civil War. After that, the railroads had taken over transportation. Twain describes their swift progress back and forth on tracks laid along the banks of the Mississippi, not without some regret.

Beyond the humor of the first half, where Twain gives side-splitting descriptions of piloting a boat in the dark of night, there is an undeniable touch of melancholy in the second half, where Twain revisits Old Man River, twenty years later, taking a steamboat tour up and downstream and describing the changes he sees. Many priceless observations will delight the reader, especially if they are familiar with the areas described. From St. Paul to Saint Louis to New Orleans, Mark Twain covers them all.

The book runs approximately 300 pages and will be one you’ll want to re-read again.

Read a good book tonight!




Recommended: Yes

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