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Article: Mark Twain on the Loose: A Comic Writer and the American Self.
- Article from:
- College Literature
- Article date:
- March 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 West Chester University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Michelson, Bruce. 1995. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. $45.00 hc. $16.95 sc. ix + 269 pp.
In his influential study of Mark Twain's humor, James M. Cox proposes that critical discussion of Twain logically begins not with his first story or book but rather with "the signature itself," the pseudonymous comic identity that Samuel Clemens created early in 1863. According to Cox, this signature "constitutes the first distinct work" in the Twain corpus; it also represents the tentative first step in the development of the writer's - and America's - greatest comic invention, "Mark Twain," a figure who would ultimately take on mythic proportions (1966, 4). The ...