from April 27, 2016

The title page of “Autobiography of Mark Twain” omits Samuel Clemens, because Twain was an alternate personality and not just a pseudonym

If the name “Samuel Clemens” had been unknown to the public, then it might have made sense to omit it from the title page of his autobiography. But his real name was well known, and he could very easily have used both names, if the title page had said, “Autobiography of Mark Twain by Samuel Clemens.” So why did he omit his real name from the title page of an autobiography, a nonfiction book?

As seen in recent posts on Charles Hamilton’s autobiography, “The Autobiography of Frank Richards,” the use of an author’s pseudonym instead of his real name in the title of his autobiography implies that the pseudonym was the name of an alternate personality.

I would also relate the title page of Clemens’s autobiography to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Purloined Letter” (1844), in which a letter is hidden in plain sight. The title page of Clemens’s autobiography is like a letter to the public about his multiple personality, hidden in plain sight.

Am I the only one to see a connection between Samuel Clemens and Edgar Allan Poe? Apparently not, as Alan Gribben makes clear in an essay, which includes the following:

“Several other parallels link the psychological patterns of Poe and Twain even more closely. As Patrick F. Quinn pointed out thirty years ago, “the phenomenon of the Doppelganger is perhaps the most characteristic and persistent of Poe’s obsessive fantasies,” so much so that, “in a real sense, Poe’s heroes are all doubles, one of another. “Unquestionably Poe’s “William Wilson” (1839), “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), “The Man of the Crowd” (1840), “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), “Ligeia” (1845), and several other tales with double motifs would have appealed to Twain, a tireless chronicler of twins, disguises, exchanged roles, and contrasting personalities. The mistakenly switched Edward Tudor and Tom Canty in The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer in Huckleberry Finn, Hank Morgan and the King (sold as slaves) in A Connecticut Yankee, and Thomas a Beckett Driscoll and Valet de Chambre in Pudd‘nhead Wilson (1894) represent only the best known of Twain’s many explorations of alter ego variations. Twain’s modern biographers, like Poe’s, have discovered a divided, tormented personality — in Twain’s case, partly suggested by his adoption of a nom de plume and his affection for pseudonyms (in 1882, for instance, returning to the Mississippi River to gather literary material, he registered at hotels as “Mr. C. L. Samuels”). Mysterious subterfuges involving names and identities had tremendous allure for the imaginations of both writers” (1).

In short, the title page of “Autobiography of Mark Twain” treats Twain like a person in his own right, which is how alternate personalities see themselves. He used that title page to reveal his multiple personality. But his message was hidden in plain sight. Or, as he was wont to say, nobody believed him when he told the truth.

1. Alan Gribben, “ ‘That Pair of Spiritual Derelicts’: The Poe-Twain Relationship,” Poe Studies, December 1985, Vol. XVIII, No. 2, 18:17-20 http://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1980/p1985201.htm

Note: This is my fifteenth post on Samuel Clemens. Search “Mark Twain” to read the previous ones.