Chapter 3 - Autobiography

Summary

Mark Twain made several attempts at autobiography over the years, finally arriving in the early 1900s at a very unconventional approach: rather than a chronological memory of his life, he made daily dictations, talking about whatever was on his mind that day, which was only sometimes memories of his life, and more often comments on current events. He stopped in the middle of many memories, sometimes never to come back. The result is a rambling but interesting window into the mind of a man reflecting on his life and his times. Although versions of his autobiography were published, one during his lifetime, the complete autobiography was not published until one hundred years after his death, as he requested. The editing of these autobiographical efforts is one of the great achievements in American literary scholarship.