Mark Twain the Tourist

W HILE MOST READERS AGREE that The Innocents Abroad is organized by some kind of consistent narrative stance, just what that stance is remains a mystery and a cause of argument. The Innocents has lasted a century as most popular travel book ever written by an American, and in course of that century this particular American, this who guides us through Europe, has been hailed and damned with a baffling variety of names. Flagwaving Yankee-Philistine, hater of Americans and American ways, exacting and sober critic of civilization, boor and yahoo, ferocious democrat, sycophant before royal fools, pilgrim of real or hypocritical or parodistic piety-the long list gives little hope of ever settling question.1 Even so, understanding narration and structure of The Innocents can be made much easier if we recognize a mistake common to most of these opinions: mistake of listening too closely to one voice among many which present themselves in narrative-and of consequently missing one voice behind them all. Solving identity problem can be fairly simple, provided one is willing to trust Mark Twain a little and take The Innocents to be, in one sense, exactly what he says it is. Repeatedly his book announces itself as the record of a pleasure trip,2 of Great Pleasure Excursion,3 of America's historic first picnic on a gigantic scale ;4 that is, an account not merely of travel but of travel for fun of it, of

Archaeology · Art · Tourism · American and British Literature Analysis · American Literature and Humor Studies · History · Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis

• Billfinger, “Blackfellows,” and Forty-Niners

  Open Access•David G Leitch•Polity•2010

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