Man of The World

"It liberates the vandal to travel--you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born." --MARK TWAIN, 1868

Samuel Clemens liberated himself from Hannibal, Mo., with dreams of South America. He never made it, but Mark Twain kept moving and writing.

Along the way he twisted an aged form--the travel narrative--into something uniquely American. Twain didn't just describe exotic sights; he thoroughly reimagined them with self-deprecation and enough comic invention to keep the reader guessing what really happened. He also demolished the writerly veneration of the Old World at the expense of the New. Yes, Americans could be boorish and loud, but Europe could be tired and sad. Be proud, he said to the home folks. Besides, the food over here is lousy.

After the success of The Innocents Abroad, Twain returned to the form over and over. A life of travel, which he once pronounced "fatal to prejudice," marked Twain deeply. In his twilight years, on an around-the-world lecture tour, he saw far fewer innocents abroad. The man who had crossed the U.S. 35 years earlier without seeming to notice the crushing of Native Americans now decried the depredations of colonization and the eradication of native cultures.

Twain would spend the remainder of his life railing at the savagery and presumption of imperialism abroad and racism at home. Travel had liberated his vandal, but now he wished a lot of other people had just stayed home.

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