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Description
Hoffmann, Donald. Mark Twain in Paradise: His Voyages to Bermuda. Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 2006. ii + 185 pp. Cloth: $29.95.
Mark Twain in Paradise is an orderly, well-mannered biography--admirable for its thorough excavation work and puzzling for its lack of curiosity about what this work uncovers. According to his preface, Hoffmann set himself the task of reconstructing Twain's travels to Bermuda, and in doing so, discovered what he describes as "the pleasure of finding things out" (ix). Many of these "things" are both quirky and suggestive of the fixations and anxieties that drove Twain to make eight separate trips to the island and to speak of it as a special kind of refuge from public life. Others are more straightforward--details of Bermuda history that help us to imagine the island as it appeared when Twain visited.
By his own admission, Hoffmann is less interested in explicating than "tracking" such details. He explains that he has given preference to "direct observation, primary sources and various extracts in order to steer clear of secondary commentary, contrived interpretations, and... |
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