Many books have been written about Mark Twain; but with the exception of Paine's biography—perhaps the best biography ever written by an American—this work ["The Ordeal of Mark Twain"] by Mr. Van Wyck Brooks is the most important and the most essential. Mr. Brooks is one of our ablest critics, for he combines catholicity of taste with an almost austere sincerity. His book, like all books filled with ideas, is a challenge; it contains so much truth that it provokes and disturbs the reader, as all critical writing should do….

I say that this book contains much truth. I do not think it contains all the truth, or that it is wholly true. But it is packed with ideas….

The main idea in this book is that Mark Twain's career was a tragedy—a tragedy for himself and a tragedy for mankind. Every man who does not live up to his highest possibilities is living in a state of sin. Mark Twain was, therefore, one of the chief of sinners, because his possibilities were so great and he fell so short….

If I understand Mr. Brooks correctly, there were two villains in Mark Twain's tragedy—his mother and his wife. His mother was more eager to have him good than to have him great; his wife wanted him to be a gentleman. Between them they tamed the lion and made him perform parlor tricks. This hypothesis is worked out by Mr. Brooks with such ingenuity and such force that I can only advise every one to read the whole book with serious attention to every page. Yet although there is much truth in this explanation, I do not believe it to be the whole truth nor the real reason for Mark Twain's pessimism. (p. 1)

I do not believe that Mark Twain would have been happier if he had completely shaken off his mother's influence or if he had trampled on his wife's sensibilities. If he really were dissatisfied with his achievements—however unconscious that discontent may have been—this was not, I think, owing to the restrictions placed on him by his conventional wife; it was owing to the natural self-reproach in every honest man, and particularly in those in whom the sense of humor is dominant….

Mr. Brooks, though he does not use this particular comparison, would have us imagine that [Mark Twain's] plight was almost equal to that of Andrea del Sarto, who looked from the bondage of domestic tyranny with longing at the great three—Rafael, Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci, who never let a woman come between them and their work. I can hardly subscribe to this. The fact that Mark Twain showed such sympathy with Huck's rebellion against the artificialities and restraints of polite society, is nothing more than what all men, and women, too, often feel; an instinctive resistance to convention, that draws people at times away from the comforts of civilization into the free life of the woods. This feeling is in every human animal….

Mr. Brooks has written a powerful, thoughtful and ingenious work, but he has endeavored to fit Mark Twain's life and career to a theory, and though he brings many facts and many strong arguments to its support he fails, because no man's life can be made to fit a theory. That Mark Twain wrote many books unworthy of his genius is perfectly true; so did Shakespeare. But not only do I think that Mr. Brooks has hit upon the wrong theory for the tragedy of Mark Twain's life, I do not think it was a tragedy. The fact that he loved the cultivated society of New England is no more against him than Shakespeare's love of the aristocrats, and his desire to become a gentleman can be though a crime against his art. I do not believe that his mother or his wife or Mr. Howells inflicted any serious or permanent injury upon him, and whatever they may have done to repress him was perhaps equaled by the inspiration they all three undoubtedly gave him—the inspiration of love and friendship….

I agree with Mr. Brooks that Mark Twain did not realize all his highest possibilities. But I do not share his approval of Henry James's statement that Mark Twain's appeal is an appeal to rudimentary minds, nor of Arnold Bennett's calling him a "divine amateur," and his remark that while "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" are "episodically magnificent, as complete works of art they are of quite inferior quality." With all due respect to Arnold Bennett, his criticism of Mark Twain is an impertinence….

Whether one agrees with Mr. Brooks's thesis or not—and I do not—one must admire and one ought to profit by the noble and splendid purpose animating it. It is a call to every writer and to every man and woman not to sin against their own talents. (p. 2)