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The Ordeal of Mark Twain by Van Wyck Brooks ~ Full Audiobook [biography]
The Ordeal of Mark Twain by Van Wyck Brooks audiobook. This book, published in 1920, analyzes the literary progression of Samuel Clemens and his shortcomings (which are debatable). Brooks attributes Clemens' increasing sense of pessimism to the repre...
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Show Notes
The Ordeal of Mark Twain by Van Wyck Brooks audiobook.
Genre: biography
In The Ordeal of Mark Twain, literary critic Van Wyck Brooks reexamines the life and work of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, tracing how a riverboat pilot from the Mississippi became the most recognizable American voice of his age - and how that fame carried a private cost. Brooks follows Twain from the shaping forces of boyhood and the frontier to the whirlwind of lectures, publishing triumphs, and celebrity, reading the books alongside the man who wrote them. As Twain grows into a national icon, Brooks highlights the strain between the humor the public demanded and the darker moral intelligence that pressed to be heard: anger at hypocrisy, disillusionment with politics and profit, and a restless search for artistic honesty. Set against the pressures of the Gilded Age, the story brings forward the personal trials, financial risks, and complicated relationships that tested Twain's resilience and sharpened his satire. Both portrait and argument, this is a vivid, provocative account of an American writer wrestling with his country, his conscience, and the shadow behind the laughter.
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Chapters (Approximate)
(00:00:00) Chapter 01
(01:02:03) Chapter 02
(02:05:17) Chapter 03
(02:58:32) Chapter 04
(04:04:12) Chapter 05
(05:14:12) Chapter 06
(06:04:04) Chapter 07
(07:16:43) Chapter 08
(08:05:47) Chapter 09
(09:00:00) Chapter 10
(10:03:57) Chapter 11
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