Gilded Age
Written by Mark Twain
Narrated by Robin Field
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Missouri in 1835, the son of a lawyer. Early in his childhood, the family moved to Hannibal, Missouri – a town which would provide the inspiration for St Petersburg in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. After a period spent as a travelling printer, Clemens became a river pilot on the Mississippi: a time he would look back upon as his happiest. When he turned to writing in his thirties, he adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain ('Mark Twain' is the cry of a Mississippi boatman taking depth measurements, and means 'two fathoms'), and a number of highly successful publications followed, including The Prince and the Pauper (1882), Huckleberry Finn (1884) and A Connecticut Yankee (1889). His later life, however, was marked by personal tragedy and sadness, as well as financial difficulty. In 1894, several businesses in which he had invested failed, and he was declared bankrupt. Over the next fifteen years – during which he managed to regain some measure of financial independence – he saw the deaths of two of his beloved daughters, and his wife. Increasingly bitter and depressed, Twain died in 1910, aged seventy-five.
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Reviews for Gilded Age
83 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5By 1873, Mark Twain and his Hartford neighbour Charles Dudley Warner were both quite well-known as travel-writers and essayists, but neither had tried his hand at a full-scale novel. Their collaboration on this one is said to have come about through a challenge from their respective wives during a dinner party discussion of the failings of current fiction ("Well, you should write a better one, then..."). They seem to have worked fairly briskly and without much planning, passing the manuscript back and forth between them as each finished a section. At first, it's pretty easy to see who wrote what, with Twain's story focusing on the impoverished family of "Judge" Hawkins migrating from Kentucky to Missouri and getting enmeshed in dubious land deals, whilst Warner's equally autobiographical plot deals with two young men from Yale knocking about New York in search of a worthwhile career. But the two storylines soon get firmly entangled with each other, and we get into a fast-moving satire of the political and financial sleaze of the Grant administration, with a cast of Washington lobbyists, crooked politicians, railroad promoters, and duped investors. Rather like The way we live now, but much, much sleazier. In the foreground are the irrepressible Colonel Sellers, a man who seems quite genuinely to believe in every one of the crooked schemes he is canvassing support for, and the glamorous Miss Laura Hawkins, a lobbyist who can twist any man in Washington around her little finger. Some of the finance is a bit too complex, and the humour a little too obvious, perhaps, and the structure of the novel shows evidence of its unplanned nature, with all sorts of interesting plot lines running off into the sand and being forgotten about (Twain actually prints an apology in the end of the book for their not having managed to track down Laura's father, despite their best efforts...). But it's a lively, fast romp with some good memorable characters, and it has a serious point: Twain keeps reminding us that the reason crooked politicians exist is that citizens are too prepared to leave politics to other people.Apart from its standing as the first major work of fiction Twain worked on, the book is also famous for the slightly sophomoric running joke of the chapter epigraphs, which are taken, untranslated, from no fewer than 47 foreign languages (including Amharic, Cornish, Ancient Egyptian, Assyrian, and numerous Native American languages), mocking the pretentious way many novels of the time used Latin and Greek epigraphs. They were provided by another Hartford neighbour, the scholar J. Hammond Trumbull. Disappointingly, it turns out that quite a few of them were taken from Bible translations into the languages in question, which seems rather a cheat, but they are all wittily relevant to the content of the chapters they head.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A very curious novel. Although it is quite aged, it is still a worthwhile one that entails a mighty adventure through various states, situations, and circumstances. I was quite thrilled by certain passages and the train of events was constructed with ardent structure and precision. For those interested in Mark Twain or American literature, this is one you should read.3 stars.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Want to see politicians stealing? Businessmen hustling bad debt? Bankruptcies galore? Twain lived this in the Gilded Age (NOT the golden--only had the sham of glitter). Remind you of today?
The poor had their eyes lit from above (from the tall mansions), trying to make it with one big deal. The rich wereraking it in. The cash cow government lead the country into a new technological age (Railroads), lining politcos pockets. Speculators drove at full speed before any tracks were laid. Note: The only decent people in Twain are women, but only a few qualify. Men are all brick-head ignorant and far beyond hope.
Finally--the book is more narrative than bite, but a good, old-time-scoundrel read. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A comic tale of land speculation and greed that is depressingly familiar. "A Novel of Today" indeed. Although this was written in the early ages of the 'Gilded Age' to which it would give its name, before the rise of the great industrial conglomerates and wars of conquest and imperialism, it does reveal the current spirit of corruption and greed.
This is Twain's only collaborative novel, and despite the possible hazards thereof, is actually pretty good. It is fairly obvious when the other guy takes over. He's not bad, and is even witty - but few compare to the great Master Twain. The scenes on the riverboat and in Congress shine, and are almost at the level of Twain's best stuff.