Mark Twain: The ideal American

Mark Twain helped shape American literature, American humor and America’s understanding of itself. Really, who is more American than Mark Twain? 

Mark Twain once said of the praise he’d received: “I do love compliments, yet I’m often embarrassed to say what I think to the person when I get a compliment, I so often feel that they somehow, have not gone far enough.”

Twain just may be correct. Earnest Hemingway once said of Twain that “all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ‘Huckleberry Finn.’” Twain created the nation’s plainspoken, irreverent, and quintessential voice.

Critics consider “Huckleberry Finn” one of the most resounding antiracist novels by an American, and as such, Twain poses a conundrum for people trying to hide elements of the nation’s racial past and present. Namely, will they have to cancel this archetypal American?

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