People, I honestly don’t know how any writer in the United States who didn’t start writing before reading Life on the Mississippi dares put words to page after reading it. It may not be the “great American novel” but I honestly don’t think there’s a more perfect book about the United States. At least, he’d have to really fuck up the last 150 pages here for me to feel otherwise.
I’m just at the point where he admits to being born in the South (and has been making fun of Southern male authors for being too prone to flowerly language when women are nearby), but I must say that I’ve always thought of Twain as a Midwestern writer. And nothing about the section in which he says he was born in the South makes me feel otherwise, because the national pastime of the Midwest after not telling each other things and then being mad or hurt when we don’t know them and having potlucks in our church basements is indeed wondering what the hell is up with Southerners. If you could combine all those things–a bunch of passive aggressive Midwesterners eating casseroles while talking hilarious smack about their Southern cousins (or the Southern cousins of their friends)–you’d have the quintessential Midwestern experience.
Twain doesn’t mention eating casseroles, but I think we have to assume he was. Ha ha ha.
I’ve been trying to decide what it is about him that makes me lump him more into “Midwestern” than “Southern.” But I don’t know if those are legitimate differences or just based on stereotypes I have. I think Midwestern literature is more prone to a skeptical eye toward organized religion (even as people are predominately religious) because of a mistrust of it being a kind of busybodying, whereas I think Southern literature is soaked in religion and religious belief. I wasn’t surprised when Twain’s brother just showed up out of nowhere to die off. That seems right to me, that a Midwesterner would just assume that we’d all know he had a family and not be alarmed by a brother magically appearing. Whereas, in Southern writing, family relationships are central. Even the way he’s nostalgic strikes me as different from Southern writers, since he’s so keen to be clear that the times and places he misses had their problems back in the past.
But I don’t know. I feel like I have a good idea what constitutes Southern literature, but it’s hard for me to put my finger on what I think Midwestern literature would be.
But, he had a brother named Orion. Granted, I don’t know how it was pronounced. Oh-rye-un, fine. The Clemenses could be Southern. Ore-eee-un and there’s no doubting that they’re Midwestern.
Filed under: America how can I write a holy litany in your silly moo
Just FYI, I’m a native southerner and I’ve had many a casserole in the church basement. Not telling each other stuff is definitely a midwest thing though. And you’ve been in TN long enough to know we just make fun of our cousins who live farther south than us (or in Arkansas).
“mistrust of it being a kind of busybodying”
Between that and your earlier reference to being passive aggressive: You’ve captured the essence of Midwestern-ness. The two greatest sins to people from that part of the country are (1) gossip and (2) giving unsolicited advice.
When it comes to religion, some religious Southerners see it as us being godless when we’re uncomfortable with overt religiosity. But, even for those of us who aren’t religious, that’s not it. It’s just none of (y)our business.
Example (Michiganders): My stepfather’s parents, who are born-again Baptists, say their prayers before they leave the house if they’re having dinner out.
When I first moved down here, I was shocked by the number of people who said “My name is [whatever], and I’m a Baptist, I’m a virgin, and I hate black people.” (Or whatever thing that seemed way like oversharing.)
In the Midwest, if someone doesn’t go to your church, you might not know what denomination someone is unless you happen to drive by when they’re coming out of church on Sunday. You could fuck them your whole life and not be sure if you’re their first or thirty first. And I think you could know someone forever, go to their funeral, and be like “Jim was in the Klan?!”
It’s not that Midwesterners are less racist or less religious or less awkward in social situations. We just don’t share it. Ever.
Not that we don’t love giving solicited advice. And lord, the loopholes that family will use. “Your mom tells me that you’re wondering about xyz and I have many opinions which I will now subject you to because I’ve weighed you down with chocolate cake and it would be rude to get up and leave on your grandma.”
Though I must say that I appreciate the forthrightness with which Southerners put out their deal-breaker qualities. If someone’s a racist, you know it in five seconds, not years after you’ve come to love them.
Charles, my dad doesn’t pray out in public (unless he’s been asked to lead a prayer), but he has a friend who does and for years, I though he just was trying to surreptitiously try to check and see what time it was without seeming rude by folding his hands in his lap and looking down.
Years and then I realized he was praying. And I am constantly around people who pray for a living!
After living near Elmira, NY, I always thought of Twain as a New Yorker! (NOT NY!)
Sam of course was born in Mo., but Orion and four other elder siblings were born in Jackson Co. TN, up north of Cookeville and east of Carthage, where my grandmother (a Stidham) was born, much later.
After the Clemens family left in the 1830s, and before my ancestors gave up on the place in the 1920s, Jackson Co. towns like Granville and Gainsborough thrived on the Cumberland steamboat trade going up toward Kentucky. I doubt MT could ever have found as much to write about from that business as he did from the boats on the mighty Mississippi.
One of my Stidham ancestors moved to Mo. in the 1850s and then came back to Jackson Co. in the next generation. Nicki has a similar pattern of movement in her genealogy. The whole “westward ho” thing was not irreversible.
Ah, but, Tom, I notice you slide right over the tell-tale pronunciation of Orion. Ha ha ha. I tease, but this is really interesting stuff. My Grandpa Bob’s parents went out to Colorado on a Conestoga wagon, had their three sons out there, and then turned around and came back to Chicago. There are still Colorado Riches, I’m told–my grandpa’s cousins and their families. But my branch was like “The west, eh, fuck it.”
College Professor, he has indeed tried to pass himself off as an Easterner a few times in the book. I’m just not buying it.