Ordeal Of Mark Twain

"The Ordeal of Mark Twain" is primarily a psychological study and yet it is full of biographical detail related to the career of Mark Twain, and supplements he famous biography written by Albert Bigelow Paine. It should be stated, however, that Van Wyck Brooks, most likely, did not undertake this task in the spirit of a chronicler. He started, rather, with the aim of offering a logical explanation of Mark Twain's well-known tendency to pessimism. To satisfy his own mind, Brooks seems to have adopted a thesis which he feels bound to support by ingenious and plausible argument. As a clever and brilliant application of critical methods to a literary career, this book has few equals in American literature.