Customer Reviews
Roughing IT
I became acquainted with ROUGHING IT as a high school sophomore, when an otherwise fatally boring "World Geography" textbook introduced a chapter on America's Rocky Mountain West, with an italicized excerpt from Chapter 43 of ROUGHING IT. That excerpt was Mark Twain's description of Virginia City and the Comstock Lode during the "Flush Times". At that time, "Bonanza" was a popular TV western, and the Virginia City of Twain's experience, made "Bonanza's" Virginia City seem dull! I was hooked. I found a tattered old copy of ROUGHING IT at the public library and read it. And I have re-read ROUGHING IT many times since, finding it one of those rare books revealing fresh nuggets with every prospecting trip.
ROUGHING IT is captivating in so many ways, and on many levels. It's a journey into the real "Old West" on the Overland Stage, a journey on the road from youth to maturity, a journey to an era of wild, crazy times and colorful characters to match, a journey from young Sam Clemens to Mark Twain, and all written with the young , enthusiastic Twain's incomparable style and eye for detail and humor.
Although Twain's peerless storytelling is reason enough to read ROUGHING IT , the book is also a gem of priceless historic value, revealing much about the Western Frontier's early mining era. The first 20 chapters are probably the best first-hand account of travel on the Overland Stage in existence, and the description of early 1860's Virginia City ,as well as the descriptions of prospecting, mining , miners, and other details of that time are of equally priceless historic value. For those with a morbid dread of history, rest assured that with Professor Twain instructing , the subject emerges with a fresh, new perspective that is irresistible.
I can never read ROUGHING IT without wondering why Hollywood is so hung up on the Western Frontier's "cowboy era" , when the early mining era of the frontier seems so much more colorful and interesting . Hopefully, someone will drop ROUGHING IT on a studio executive's head , before he commits "Legally Blond 15", or "Terminator 25".
This classic book has often been overlooked for reasons I can't understand. It reads as freshly as if it had been written yesterday, and it is well worth the effort. This is history the way it should be taught, and while ROUGHING IT belongs at the top of any list of classic books, it would also belong at the top of a list of books which are fun to read. "Fun to read", and "Classic", rarely describe the same book, but ROUGHING IT is the exception.
A fun read, and some history too
The genius of Mark Twain is that his work is still enjoyable, and funny, to this day. This book, originally published in 1871, is Twain's account of his journey from Missouri to Hawaii (called the Sandwich Islands in his day). He tells story after story of his adventures along the way, starting with the stagecoach ride on the Overland Stage Line to Carson City, Nevada, around 1861, and then telling of his stay in Nevada, then California, then his visit to Hawaii. The stories are informative, humorous, and all-around entertaining. He lampoons everybody he can--nobody is safe--including miners, pioneers (emigrants), politicians, Mormons, Blacks, American Indians, Chinese, newspaper reporters, "desperados", even himself on more than one occasion. Sometimes his stories are so outrageous that you wonder how much is true and how much is embellishment, or just outright fiction. Even he understands this by telling the reader on occasion that he has not made up a particular story, to demonstrate that truth is often stranger than fiction, but also to imply that he has taken liberties in other places in the book. (I wonder if the Mormon Church has ever banned this book for the things he says about them.) Even while he is being irreverent, however, he often demonstrates a sensitivity toward people, with an awareness of the situation of others that seems to me to be ahead of his time. For example, he has a chapter on the immigrant Chinese population in the West, and while he pokes fun at them in some respects, he spends the time detailing their lives and culture, as much as he could understand it, with a respect that was uncommon in his day.
I bought a copy of this book years ago because I am a native Californian, and knew that there was some material in here about California in the early days (my copy is an old hardcover published by Grosset and Dunlap). As Twain states in his Prefatory: "...There is quite a good deal of information in this book. I regret this very much, but really it could not be helped." I enjoyed reading about the "old West" from an eye-witness, although most of it deals with Nevada, not California. While some of it sounded familiar, like something from any Western-genre movie, other things were like nothing I had ever heard of before, describing the "Wild West" from an original point of view. In that respect, this book is a great resource.
This book falls short of five stars due to some minor flaws. He often digresses with text that is not only marginal to the point, but not even written by him, reprinting someone else's text. I skipped over some of that. He would also spend pages detailing coversations between other people that he could not have possibly remembered verbatim. While I understand that it was a common writing style of his day, it sounds like bad jounalism today. Those complaints aside, this is some great writing by Twain and some valuable American history.
Hilarious jounrye across America
Mark Twain achieves a remarkable feat in this book, he manages to write a travel book even funnier than 'Innocents Abroad', which I wouldn't have thought possible. His riveting account of his travels west across the country is packed with fascinating and amusing incidents and anecdotes. I was almost in hysterics when I read about Twain and a group of friends beimng held at bay by a boxful of escaped Tarantulas, and again reading about his bizarre encounters with the preposterous Mormons in Utah. As in Innocents Abroad, humour is woven in with serious observations on the places he visits and their inhabitants. His account of his visit to Hawaii is particularly fascinating, but the whole book is unforgettable.
