Though known throughout the world for his fictional novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain was also a skilled chronicler of his own life and experiences. In his youth, Twain traveled extensively throughout the untamed American West with his brother, working his way from town to town in a variety of jobs, including gold prospector, reporter, and lecturer. Roughing It is Twain's personal recollection of his wanderlust years. It is a wildly humorous adventure yarn that combines hard facts with a healthy dose of the author's unique perspective, one that helped define the course of American literature.
Pocket Books' Enriched Classics present the great works of world literature enriched for the contemporary reader. This edition of Roughing It has been prepared by Professor Henry B. Wonham of the University of Oregon. It includes his introduction, notes, selection of critical excerpts, and suggestions for further reading as well as a unique visual essay of period illustrations and photographs.
There is no nicer surprise for a reader than to discover that an acknowledged classic really does deliver the goods. Mark Twain's Roughing It is just such a book. The adventure tale is a delight from start to finish and is just as engrossing today as it was 125 years ago when it first appeared.
Roughing It tells the true-ish escapades of Twain in the American West. Although he clearly "speaks with forked tongue," Roughing It is informative as well as humorous. From stagecoach travel to the etiquette of prospecting, the modern reader gains considerable insight into that much-fictionalized time and place. Do you know about sagebrush, for example?
Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his illegitimate child, the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousness is worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or brass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes handy, and then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters for dinner.
Roughing It is informally structured around the narrator's attempts to strike it rich. He meets a motley, colorful crew in the process; many mishaps occur, and it shouldn't surprise you that Twain does not emerge a man of means. But he withstands it all in such a relentless good humor that his misfortune inspires laughter. Roughing It is wonderful entertainment and reminds you how funny the world can be--even its grimmer districts--when you're traveling with the right writer.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Dull and dirty:
I saw little of the wit Twain is known for in this book. It's filled with long dull passages about his dirty travels from one place to another. My least favorite Twain book.
A rich pocket mine of humor and observation.:
No need to beat around the sage brush: this book is fantastic. The funny passages are falling-down funny (the story of the coyote, the cat that fell asleep in a mine shaft, getting "lost" in a snow storm, the mad minister in Hawaii -- on and on it goes). But the bulk of the pleasure this book delivers, in my estimate, lies in Twain's brilliant descriptions -- and they're also a good part of the humor. Partly because behind Twain's humor there often seems to lie a sadness -- and at times a touch of cynicism.... more info
Mildly entertaining however long:
This book is not one that you will sit down and read over a weekend. It is a slow reader, however the chapters are relativly short. There is typical Mark Twain humor, which I love. I wish there was more of his wit in the book. Not my favorite book by him, but for the love of the author, I read on!
Travel through the Old West:
The Virginian (Signet Classics)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin When I was reseachering The Shopkeeper, I found two books especially valuable; The Virginian by Owen Wister, and and Roughing it by Mark Twain. Both were written by men who had actually experienced the Wild West first hand. Mark Twain is best known for The adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Nowadays, most people forget that he also wrote travel memoirs. Roughing It describes his adventures... more info
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