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Also by James M. Cox:

Mark Twain, December 2002
Paperback (reprint)

MARK TWAIN
By: James M. Cox

The fate of humor

University of Missouri Press
December 2002
On Sale: November 22, 2002
374 pages
ISBN: 0826214282
EAN: 9780826214287
Paperback (reprint)
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Non-Fiction Biography

In  Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor, James M. Cox pursues the development of Mark Twain’s humor through all the forms it took from “The Jumping Frog” to The Mysterious Stranger. Instead of seeking the seriousness behind the humor, Cox concentrates upon the humor itself as the transfiguring power that converted all the “serious” issues and emotions of Mark Twain’s life and time into narratives designed to evoke helpless laughter. In those sudden moments of pleasurable helplessness, we glimpse the great heart of a writer who imagined freedom in the slave society of his youth and discovered slavery in the free country of his old age.

For this edition of Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor, the author has written a new introduction showing how and why Mark Twain remains a central figure in American life; he has also appended an essay disclosing why Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will always be a hard book to take

Media Buzz

Talk of the Nation - December 31, 2012