If you really want to know Mr. Clemens, don't stop with the modern biographies. Read this one by his long-time good friend and consultant. Howells wrote this book in 1910, the year Clemens died. It is a fond recollection of the 44 years he had known the author. Clemens was a complicated man and Howells admits that he did not always understand him. But Howells, a great writer himself, comes close to describing the multi-faceted person that Clemens was. Yes, he was Mark Twain, but that was just one part of a man who surely must be one of the most interesting Americans who ever stood in the spotlight of the world. He was a superstar before radio, TV, and movies. This is certainly not an unbiased account of his life. Howells was clearly in awe of Clemens, a man who was unlike himself in so many ways. He was fascinated by Clemens and drawn to him. How lucky we are that we have this insightful and personal biography, beautifully written by someone who obviously wanted to get it right. Howells put Clemens at the top of the list: "Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes - I knew them all and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists; they were like one another and like other literary men; but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature".
