An Interview With Roy Morris, Jr., Author of Lighting Out For The Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain

(from 2010)
Mark Twain is one of the best writers ever and one of the most fascinating and intriguing humans ever. This book's author gave himself the unenviable task of researching Clemen's life when he was in the west to deal with what Clemens would refer to as "stretchers," which would range from exaggerations to complete lies.
At first I was hesitant to read it because it's hard to watch literary idols - heck, any idols - be proven to be liars but in this case Twain admitted that he has a tendency to do this so the question switched quickly from "did he lie a lot" to "what did he lie about?" and "how did this author manage to prove and disprove these.
And with that let's turn to the interview, conducted via email
Scott: What was the most surprising thing you learned through your research?

Roy: One of the most surprising things I found was that Twain, for a funny man, had absolutely no sense of humor about himself. He liked to play practical jokes on other people, and he wrote many devastating things about rival journalists and writers, but he would not—or could not—laugh at himself. In my book, I recount the time his old friends in Virginia City staged a mock holdup of Twain, then returned his money and gold watch to him the next day. He was so angry that he cancelled the rest of his speaking tour, returned to San Francisco in high dudgeon, and fired his tour manager. In a more positive vein, I was surprised at the sheer courage it must have taken Twain to travel and experience so much by the time he returned from the West in late 1866. He was one of the great travelers of American history, certainly of American literature, and one of the great travel writers, in consequence. He really had a lot of moxie, no matter how much he exaggerated his laziness and general “cowardice.”
You mentioned early in the book that one of your tasks was to deal with his stretchers (his exaggerations) and act as a “de-stretcher.” Was that hard to do?
It’s always hard to separate fact from fiction in Twain’s work. He had no hesitation about playing fast and loose with the facts—anything to make his stories better and funnier. His friends, too, had a tendency to exaggerate his antics, in imitation of him, I believe. Whenever I could, I looked at other sources to fact-check him, such as the completely fabricated story he invented about killing an unarmed civilian while serving—briefly—in the Confederate Army. If you check the Official Records, which has all the reports of action, no matter how slight, that took place during the war, you won’t find any mention of the Marion Rangers (Twain’s outfit) killing or even fighting anybody during the early summer of 1861, when Twain was performing his very brief military service. It was simply a way for him to explain his desertion and lack of military record when he was forced to describe his own war record in the post-Civil War period when he was friends with such high-ranking former Union generals as Ulysses S. Grant and William Sherman. Revealingly, he had no similar friendships with former Confederate generals after the war—he tried hard to play down any connection to the Confederate cause, however slight. His friend William Dean Howells once said he was “the most de-southernized southerner” he had ever met.
In terms of Twain—why do people still find him funny, when most 19th century humor has faded badly?
Humor is notoriously changeable--just look at a program about old vaudeville shows, for instance. What makes people laugh in one era seldom carries over into another one. But if the humor comes from the basic human condition, as Twain’s does, it has a better chance of enduring, because human nature is constant. The best of Twain’s work is always grounded in his extraordinary powers of observation and identification. He was able to see himself in so many of his characters, and to show real affection for them--which is interesting, since Twain had trouble being truly affectionate with his own friends and family. For all his image as a kindly old humorist, he was really a pretty prickly individual--a true handful for his wife and daughters. But every young boy can see something of himself in Tom Sawyer and his schoolboy pranks, and most everyone has known somebody like Huckleberry Finn--the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks. It was Twain’s ability to find and express the humor in the human condition that makes his work truly memorable and enduring. Plus, he’s just naturally funny.
Who do you think are the humorists currently working whose work will last as long as Twain’s?
The short answer is nobody. In the same way that there are no doubt many fine playwrights living today, but there is no William Shakespeare out there. (Twain would have hated that comparison, since he never believed that William Shakespeare actually wrote his plays, but that’s another subject entirely.) Will Rogers was very popular in his time, but hardly anyone remembers him anymore, except for his one quote, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” You couldn’t say that about Twain, by the way. He met many men--and women--he didn’t like, and he wasn’t bashful about letting them know it, usually in print. Some of James Thurber’s stories are as funny as Twain, but here again, he seems to be fading from the popular imagination. The one writer that I would put up there with Twain, partly for his subject matter and partly for the sheer genius of his writing style, is Charles Portis, who wrote True Grit, Norwood and perhaps the funniest book of the late 20th Century, the much underrated The Dog of the South. There are a lot of funny comedians working in movies and television today, such as Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, but their humor tends to be topical and political, which of course doesn’t hold up well to changing topics and politics.
What is it about Twain that goes past international lines?
As I said earlier, the best part of Twain’s work is truly universal, since everyone has been young, and has had annoying relatives, and has been lovelorn. Everyone has gotten themselves into embarrassing situations, and most everyone has traveled to foreign countries and been alternately enchanted or irritated by the different cultures they encounter on their trips. Partly because he traveled so much himself to make money and pay off his debts, Twain was a true citizen of the world--even if he never could stand the French.
What are you working on next?

I haven’t settled on my next book yet. Hopefully, I can do something that will enable me to continue combining my two great interests, which are history and literature. I enjoy studying writers and seeing how they related--literally and figuratively--to historical events and the times in which they lived.
How did you decide to write this book?
Having done books previously on Ambrose Bierce and Walt Whitman, two Civil War-era American writers, I was always fascinated by Mark Twain’s very brief and not particularly praiseworthy Civil War career. That led me directly into his trip out West and the six formative years he spent literally becoming Mark Twain, both as a writer and a stage performer. If it hadn’t been for the Civil War (and I’m a long-time Civil War student myself), Twain would probably have spent the rest of his life as he said he would do--piloting steamboats up and down the Mississippi River. I doubt that he would have felt the necessity to become a writer, although with natural geniuses such as Mark Twain, you can never say positively that they wouldn’t have developed their genius somehow, some way.
Have you always been a fan of Twain, and, if so, was it hard realizing some of his “stretchers” were not quite accurate?
I’ve been a fan of Mark Twain ever since I first read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a boy (which is when you should really read it for the first time). And I remember watching Hal Holbrook’s tremendous one-man show, Mark Twain Tonight, on the old Hallmark Hall of Fame television series back in the mid-60s. I don’t think I was actually disappointed to find out that Twain was stretching the truth--I pretty much expected it. After all, as I point out in my book, Huck Finn warned us years ago that “Mr. Mark Twain” sometimes told “stretchers.” It’s part of what makes him so funny. I always say that I never spent a day researching or writing this book that Twain didn’t make me laugh out loud at something he said or did. I think it would be pretty much the same for anyone reading Twain on a daily basis.

Scott: I want to follow up on two things you said. One was that Twain, despite being one of the best known humorists ever, seems to have had no sense of humor about himself. Any thoughts on why that was?
Roy: One of the few things that Mark Twain took seriously was himself. Like many artists, he was extremely protective of his image—indeed, he was one of the first true celebrity-writers, who was almost more famous for being famous than he was for writing great books. Perhaps, too, as a self-taught prodigy who quit school when he was 12, he may have been defensive about his lack of formal education. Beyond that, his rather chilly relationship with his father, who died when he was 11, probably impacted his self-image. Finally, I gather that such a lack of humor about oneself is pretty common among comedians, who have to be “on” when they’re performing and don’t feel the need to be funny when they’re offstage.

Scott: Same question for your comment about Twain having trouble being affectionate. Sounds more like a grumpy unlovable curmudgeon than someone I’d invite over to tell stories you know. Any thoughts on why that was?
My sense of Twain isn’t necessarily that he was unlovable, but that he was definitely a handful to deal with for his wife, daughters and friends. I get the impression that he was hard to please and frequently disappointed by his family. He was particularly hard on his favorite daughter, Susy, who died tragically at the age of 24 of spinal meningitis while Twain and the rest of the family were away in London. Susy was the most like her father in looks, talent and personality, and I don’t think he ever got over her death. This didn’t stop him from teasing her relentlessly when she was young and embarrassing her badly in front of her fellow classmates at Bryn Mawr by telling them a ridiculous ghost story that she had specifically asked him not to tell. He later modeled his idealized heroine Joan of Arc after Susy.

How much did the death of his brother, Henry, affect him? I wonder if that is part of the reason for his affection issues.
Henry’s death was the first real blow that Twain suffered as an adult—he was still a boy when their father died—and it hit him hard. He felt guilty for encouraging Henry to join him as a Mississippi River pilot in the first place, and for having gotten himself thrown off their boat, the Pennsylvania, the night before its boiler exploded below Memphis, killing Henry and 150 other passengers and crew. That said, I don’t think it was the root cause of Twain’s affection issues—he was just born cantankerous and high-strung, and the early death of a parent often leaves a person less likely to commit to others.
You mentioned that you have done a lot of writing on the Civil War. So have I, but mine came from working at a daily newspaper that had Antietam and, less so, Gettysburg in its coverage area. I’m curious both what you make of the re-enactors staging events there and what you think Mark Twain would make of such things. I’d also relish your opinion of my admittedly silly take on it here.
Now that I’m (blessedly) no longer editor of America’s Civil War magazine and forced to go to Gettysburg every summer to meet and greet reenactors there—most of whom I never believed read our magazine, anyway—I can say freely and openly that I find Civil War reenactors silly at best and offensive at worst. Most of them are middle-aged and out of shape, a good deal older than the brave young soldiers who actually fought in the Civil War, and I don’t think any of those real soldiers ever elbowed me out of the way for McDonald’s Egg McMuffins at the breakfast tent at Gettysburg while pretending to be Robert E. Lee or James Longstreet or some other lesser Confederate (or Union) soldier.
I have a real problem with grown men playing war, even if it’s in the spirit—so they claim, anyway—of preserving history. Historical recreations on or near real battlefields seems a little to me like telling jokes in church, or in a graveyard. It’s in bad taste. Your piece on what not to ask reenactors was right on. I particularly love the photo of overweight reenactors riding on the back of a truck. Real Civil War soldiers obviously didn’t have that luxury. I always say that it might increase their authenticity to load one out of every three muskets—it won’t come close to replicating a real Civil War battle, but it would give them a slight taste of what it was like being under fire.

What do you think of writers, Tony Horwitz is my favorite, who merge memoir with history writing, as they chronicle, say, life as a Civil War re-enactor in Confederates in the Attic.
Given my low opinion of reenactors (see above), I never read Horwitz’s book. I gather that it was well done. In general, I don’t particularly like the practice of a writer interjecting himself into his story. I guess it’s my old journalistic training as a reporter to keep myself and my opinions out of the story. Of course, there are times when that is the story, such as the recent book The Lost City of Z, by David Gran, which I enjoyed immensely, about Gran’s search for a fabulous lost city of gold in the Amazon.

What did you think of Clemens’ other pen names? Would he have been as well known had he gone by another one?
I give a long list of his other pen names in my book: W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab, W. Epaminonidas Adrastus Perkins, Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, John Snooks, Peter Pencilcase’s Son, even a Dog-Be-Deviled Citizen, among others. Obviously, these were just ridiculous, and I don’t think they would have caught on with the public the same way that “Mark Twain” did. It’s a perfect pen name, short, punchy and easy to remember. Plus, it has the added virtue of harking back to Twain’s days on the Mississippi River, which gives him a highly evocative connection to the American frontier.

One quibble: You referred to the adultery trial of Beecher as the “most celebrated adultery trial I American history,” yet I had never heard of it before. Do you mean most celebrated until then?
I think it’s still one of the most celebrated, among students of that sort of thing. Beecher was the Billy Graham of his day—no disrespect to Rev. Graham intended—and it was scandalous and shocking when Beecher was charged with adultery in open court. There just seems to be something about the religious right, certainly among many Republican politicians today, that encourages a great dichotomy between public morality and private philandering. Twain attended the trial and believed that Beecher was guilty, by the way, although Beecher got off with a hung jury and continued his preaching career. Of course, the last time I checked, Louisiana senator David Vitter was still in Congress, which gives added weight to Twain’s famous observation that “there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.”
Your descriptions of Twain’s stage show remind me of a piece I wrote about Steve Martin, who if I read you right, like Twain, plays with traditional delivery of jokes and humor, acting like he was surprised to get laughs as opposed to making it obvious he was seeking them.
That’s a great comparison, although I think Steve Martin is more intentionally obvious about reacting to our reactions. Twain never broke character, delivering his jokes in a flat, deadpan way, something he learned from his old friend Artemus Ward, whose stage persona was that of a country bumpkin who didn’t know he was being funny. Twain took it a step further; he knows he’s being funny, but he won’t give us the release of laughing along with the joke. In many ways, Twain was the first modern stand-up comedian. It’s all about the timing. He once got one of his biggest laughs by simply walking onto stage and looking at the audience in silence for about two minutes until someone finally broke down and laughed, which in turn brought down the house.
Lastly, you mentioned Hal Holbrook’s show about Twain, which I have always meant to watch but never did so. Would watching that be a good companion to this book.
Absolutely. Holbrook (who’s married to my fellow Tennessean, Dixie Carter) created one of the first and greatest one-man shows, Mark Twain Tonight!, which shows us how Twain actually looked and acted on stage. Holbrook did a lot of historical research into Twain’s stagecraft, and his impersonation of Twain is uncanny. I have the show on VHS and just watched it again recently. It still holds up pretty well, although it came out in the mid-60s. You can’t go wrong, as I learned in my book, by just stepping back and letting Twain be Twain.