The Slight Cockiness of Mark Twain

In class, we were discussing whether or not Mark Twain’s speech could be taken as humorous. What I thought was actually humorous about the speech wasn’t simply what was in the speech, but rather that Mark Twain reminisces about the past event twenty-eight years later with a slight cocky attitude. When Mark Twain stated, “[I]f I had those beloved and revered old literary immortals back here now on the platform at Carnegie Hall I would take that same old speech, deliver it, word for word, and melt them till they’d run all over that stage,” it doesn’t seem as if he was concerned with himself or the speech (489). Instead, the tone seemed more revengeful considering the fact that the three “old literary immortals” were then dead, and he decided to rant about that the past when Mrs. H brought it up. According to Wikipedia, Oliver Wendell Holmes died on October 7, 1894, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died in March 24, 1882, and Ralph Waldo Emerson died on April 27, 1882. I thought what was actually more humorous was that Mark Twain mocked them postmortemly, while describing these men as “immortal” when in fact, they had been dead for at least a decade.

Furthermore, it seems as if Mark Twain never intended to repeat his speech. When he described his speech as not having “a single defect in it from the first world to the last. It is as good as good can be,” his cocky attitude suggested that he was enjoying seeing the reactions to his first speech (489). It seems as if he would give his speech a second time just to see the audiences’ horrified reaction but not for the purpose of perfecting the presentation.

While I was browsing the Internet, I read something about Mark Twain as being a pessimist and having a cocky attitude.

"As Twain's life and career progressed he became increasingly pessimistic, losing much of the humorous, cocky tone of his earlier years. More and more of his work expressed the gloomy view that all human motives are ultimately selfish. Even so Twain is best remembered as a humorist who used his sharp wit and comic exaggeration to attack the false pride and self-importance he saw in humanity." ("Mark Twain: American Author and Humorist" from http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95nov/twain.html)

I'm not sure whether this source is necessarily reliable, but it does provide a starting point in looking into Mark Twain's character. If he did tend to write with a cocky tone, then it could provide a different view on his autobiography.