REVIEWS

AIMING FOR THE MIDDLE: THE RENOWN AND
NEGLECT OF DON MARQUIS, BILL NYE,
AND FRANK STOCKTON

Don Marquis. By Lynn Lee (164 pp.); Bill Nye. By David B. Kesterson (164 pp.); Frank R. Stockton. By Henry L. Golemba (182 pp.). Twayne, 1981.

The authors of these three recent Twayne studies may not be equally successful in enhancing the reputations of their respective subjects, but all three illustrate some hard truths about the rigors of humorous writing as a vocation and the fickle transience of its rewards. Most significantly, they raise—especially Kesterson and Golemba—intriguing speculations about the particularly symbiotic relationship between purveyors of so-called "popular literature" and their audience, and they comment both implicitly and explicitly upon the almost automatic critical disdain with which such writers must contend.

All three of these writers were extraordinarily popular in their day, but living up to the demands of their popularity was not easy. Marquis, the creator of "Archy and Mehitabel" and "The Old Soak," was a columnist as famous as Robert Benchley or James Thurber would be a few years later. Nye was so well known by the turn of the century as a humorist and lecturer that an envelope addressed simply with a caricature of him and "New York" scrawled across the bottom reached him the following day. Stockton’s "The Lady, or the Tiger?" was one of the most popular short stories of the period; his The Adventures of Captain Horn was the biggest selling American novel of 1895; and he was voted fifth best among living American writers in a Literature Magazine poll.

The popularity of Marquis, Nye, and Stockton came directly from their huge audience of "Middlebrow" readers, and although they differed considerably as individuals and writers, they had in common an extreme sensitivity to the tastes of that particular readership. The enthusiastic response of the middle-class audience made them famous and financially secure, but it was fame and security dearly bought and precariously held.

Nye and Marquis were professional journalists, Nye publishing in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Marquis in the first quarter of the twentieth and a bit beyond. Both of them wrote often about the hardships of their profession, especially about the difficulty of satisfying the voracious appetites of columns and magazine serials. "I got to seeing my column as a grave, twenty-three inches long, into which I buried myself everyday," wrote Marquis (Lee, p. 24.). Lured by the attraction of being a $100-a-night man as famous as Mark Twain, Nye was propelled prematurely into a less metaphorical grave by the emotionally draining, physically debilitating rigors of the lecture circuit. He died at forty-five. Stockton started as a journalist but wisely gave up his trade for the slightly less taxing demands of magazine editors and book publishers. His sensationally popular fiction made him a comparatively wealthy man during his lifetime but within two years after his death in 1905, his royalty income was only $100 a year, his widow was forced to sell their home and move in with relatives, and, by 1911, his two children were poverty-stricken (Golemba, p. 46).

The success of these three writers was seductive, but it was prodigiously exhausting, artistically restrictive, and ultimately short-lived. Upon such ephemeral fame, lasting reputations are rarely built. But despite the demands of their own popularity, Marquis, Nye, and, particularly, Stockton were able to produce surprisingly substantial bodies of good work.

Marquis complained—and his concern is echoed by Lee—that he would probably be remembered principally as the creator of a cockroach and a cat. Indeed, and perhaps not entirely without justice, that is precisely what happened. Archy, his anarchically philosophical, free-verse-poet roach, and Mehitabel, the hedonist cat, were Marquis’ personae for a wide variety of columns on art, politics, social mores, and even on the labor movement when Archy, who supposedly typed out his contributions to Marquis’ column by jumping from key to key, struck for higher wages. Later, these columns were collected in what turned out to be Marquis’ most enduring books.

His novels, plays (one a dramatization of the Crucifixion, another a modernization of the Tristan legend), serious poetry, and other writings suffered in varying degrees from a tendency to melodrama and a sentimental streak. Even "The Old Soak," an engaging, W. C. Fields-like character whose exploits were later turned into a Broadway play, is not really accessible to a contemporary audience since he was conceived primarily as an antagonist to Prohibition. On the basis of the primary material and synopses Lee presents, Marquis’

work seems finally to justify least a major critical reappraisal. Neither does Lee’s ponderous style serve his analysis particularly well. Example: "Whether Marquis is a minor major humorist or a major minor humorist or, as I believe, a major American humorist is unimportant" (p. 145).

David Kesterson’s study of Edgar Wilson (Bill) Nye effectively pinpoints Nye’s considerable strengths as a humorous writer and describes the vital interdependence of humorous literature and the lyceum circuit. Although he began his career in the West as editor of the Laramie Boomerang (named for his mule), Nye made canny use of the traditions of Western humor without falling back upon the tall tale, cacography, or impersonations. Kesterson analyzes Nye’s technique—a gifted combination of incongruity, anti-climax, and verbal irony—and shows it at work in several genuinely funny examples. One of Nye’s weaknesses, which Kesterson ruefully glosses, is the writer’s bigotry toward minorities—an active hatred for Indians and an apparently unconscious condescension toward blacks.

But Kesterson is forthright and insightful in assessing the reasons for Nye’s "moribund" reputation: the topicality of much of his material, the limitations of the brief and unvarying column format, the changing nature of humor itself, and the perception of just what is and isn’t funny. Nye himself was too shrewdly in touch with his audience not to know how vulnerable was his popularity. About the book of his that he liked best, he remarked, "It is the one which will live for weeks after the other books have passed away" (Kesterson, p. 40). Nye’ s reputation rests principally upon collections of his columns and lecture material; the manuscript of his one novel was lost in a shipwreck off the Bahamas.

Frank Stockton seems to belong to a broader tradition of American popular literature than Nye or Marquis, and Golemba’s analysis of his work is correspondingly more encompassing. His book offers an expansive, enlightening assimilation of American culture in the "Gay Nineties," showing how the era influenced and was reflected in Stockton’s writing. Stockton wrote children’s stories (he worked for a while with Mary Mapes Dodge on the St. Nicholas magazine), several best-selling novels, at least one short story that is still anthologized, and what is perhaps the first piece of American science fiction. He read more accurately than almost any of his peers the concerns of his middle-class audience, and he tapped those concerns to construct an art based on a kind of Garpian absurdist vision, a vision that mirrored the changing values and the apprehension of looming social catastrophe felt by his readers. A new uncertainty

seemed abroad in the land in the last quarter of the century, and Stockton perceived mankind "sailing along in an incomprehensible and unpredictable universe in which at any moment disaster might explode to shatter the serenity of clear skies" (Golemba, p. 22). Golemba places Stockton squarely in the tradition of Hawthorne and Poe—the tradition of human imperfections rather than heroic possibilities—but shows him possessed of an essentially comic, rather than tragic, vision. "On the edges of the most dreadful precipice fair vines and blossoms often grow," wrote Stockton in the preface to one of his novels, "and we are lucky if we can pick the flowers and blossoms without tumbling into the deep ravine" (Golemba, p. 51).

Making use of middle-class values, taking the middle way with both subject and technique, meant certain "adjustments," which Golemba delineates as a desire for moral improvement, a fascination with middle-class virtues and life styles, and the expurgation of certain themes and situations. Such adjustments certainly show up in Stockton’s writing and probably narrow his field of achievement. But he was also the beneficiary of other sensitivities of his audience, chiefly the loss of faith in male leadership and the fear of war. Stockton was able to incorporate these into his best work as thematic explorations of anti-imperialism and feminism. Some of his portraits of women, for example, are unconventional and daring. By taking the middle way, he was ironically thrust ahead of his time. In terms of technique, by being neither a true Romantic nor a Naturalist, he avoided the limitations of each but was probably subjected to the critical neglect that comes to those who do not "fit."

Ultimately, Stockton was caught in the trap fashioned from the combination of his popularity and his gifts: "His reputation as a widely popular author in the late nineteenth century has eclipsed the fact that he was also a serious writer, just as his fame as a humorist has made people blind to his serious statements" (Golemba, p. 146). But his best work, and there seems to be a good deal of it, is humane and interpretive, a simultaneous assertion of the reality of a chaotic world and the value of human relationships, particularly domestic love, as a buffer against chaos.

In addition to the other obstacles between these writers and lasting reputation, they also had to contend with the imposing shadow—and in the cases of Nye and Stockton, the actual presence—of Mark Twain. In the milieu of American humor, comparisons were inevitable, as, in fact, they still are. As Southern writers who have had to compete with William Faulkner have long

known, it really isn’t any fun to have your mule and wagon on the tracks when the Dixie Flyer comes through.

But, as we have seen, there was a more substantial obstacle to overcome: the double-edged, seemingly built-in obsolescence of popular literature in general. Nye and Marquis particularly were victims of the limitations of their journalistic formats, of the topicality of their material, of changing popular tastes. Stockton had to contend with the eclipse effect which rewarded production of work that was popular rather than work that was good—which, in effect, locked him into his own popularity, not a hack like Alger but not in the first rank either.

In the long run, the very measure of the popularity and success of these three writers and their association with middle-class taste has meant critical indifference and neglect. These Twayne studies of Marquis, Nye, and Stockton not only allow readers to become reacquainted with their work, but demonstrate the dilemma of all writers of popular literature—a literature which, justifiably or not, has very little staying power.

Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian. By David E. E. Sloane. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. 221 pp.

There has been a real need for a book such as this, a recent addition to the Southern Literary Series edited by Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Though Walter Blair and others have noted earmarks of the literary comedians in the humor of Mark Twain, nobody until now has examined the influence in detail. Rather, as David Sloane points out, the development of Twain’s humor has been associated mainly with that of the old Southwest, especially the local color elements, characterization, and brief "framed anecdotes." Moreover, there are also the influences of English humor and Northeastern humor to be reckoned with.

Sloane knows just how to begin and follow through on his pursuit of Twain’s allegiance to the literary comedians. His first chapter, "Literary Comedy," sketches the growth of the various comedians who influenced Twain, especially B. P. Shillaber (the "father"), George Horatio Derby, Petroleum V. Nasby, Orpheus C. Kerr, and Artemus Ward. (Later, Josh Billings, John Phoenix, P. T. Barnum, and others are introduced.) Sloane dwells on the more cosmopolitan humor of these writers in comparison to the Southwest humorists:

how they dealt with democratic virtues and mores and how they were mindful of society and concerned with contemporary issues.

The wheel stops temporarily at Ward, to whom Sloane devotes the better part of two chapters. Ward is presented as developer of the "archetypal figure of the literary comedian" (p. 44) from whom Twain drew heavily while gradually developing his own independence in the writing of sustained fiction. Transcending Ward’s pose of self-awareness and his conscious exploitation of his audience (traits Ward inherits from P. T. Barnum, according to Sloane), Twain was more importantly influenced by Ward and the other comedians’ "pragmatic and egalitarian" viewpoints (p. 45), the social ethic that Sloane identifies as pervading their outlook.

The remainder of Sloane’s study traces Twain’s development as a humorist from his earliest piece for Shillaber’ s Carpet-Bag in 1852 to two works of the cynical 1890s, The American Claimant and Pudd’nhead Wilson. The Innocents Abroad is viewed as a precursor of the novel, while its persona reflects Ward’s showman and the social attitudes of the literary comedians. The Gilded Age and The Prince and the Pauper are much closer to the right blend of humor and fiction, but it is not until Huckleberry Finn (the subject of chapter eight) that Twain "most completely merged the practices of the literary comedians with the possibilities of the tradition of the novel as a genre stressing observed scene and continuing action" (p. 129). Huck’s own deadpan humor is said to be owing to the literary comedians, as is the burlesque ending of the novel.

Moving on from Huckleberry Finn, Sloane pictures A Connecticut Yankee as Twain’s "most complete translation of social commentary into literary burlesque" (p. 146). Hank Morgan, in fact, is the last of Twain’s protagonists to resemble Clemens’ own persona and to hold the "traditional values of the comic figure developed through the traditional mode" (p. 167). The last two titles discussed, Claimant and Pudd’nhead, represent "the disintegration of the potential for literary comedy in the construction of Twain’s novels" (p. 168).

Sloane’s overall look at the canon is effective, his emphasis on the development of Twain’s humor in the context of literary comedy patiently detailed and informative. Yet there are problems. Ironically, there is some overstatement of the literary comedians~ influence on Twain. Their impact was, of course, significant, and this reviewer happens to be in Sloane’s camp, believing that the role of literary comedy in Twain’s humor has been inadequately explored. Nevertheless, one cannot avoid the fact that the tradition of Southwest

humor is an equally potent force in Twain’s development. As eclectic as were Twain’s tastes—especially in his reading, as Alan Gribben has recently shown—it is perhaps ultimately futile to uphold one tradition as the driving force behind Twain’s complicated development. Secondly, Sloane may be on somewhat shaky ground in categorically proclaiming "egalitarianism" as the common denominator of the literary comedians and the characteristic that Twain so readily adopted. It is perhaps more plausible that the style and techniques of the literary comedians influenced Twain more than their social views. Moreover, one does not read far in Bill Nye or Josh Billings, say, before seeing the mirage of egalitarianism quickly vanish.

Still, Sloane’s work is admirable for facing up to a major component of Twain’s humor that has long needed fuller treatment. If each strain of humor that shaped Mark Twain deserves its day in court, then Sloane has pointedly given the literary comedians their turn. And he has done it with insight and thoroughness.

Cavorting on the Devil’s Fork: The Pete Whetstone Letters of C. F. M
Noland. Edited with an introduction and notes by Leonard Williams.
Memphis, Tennessee: Memphis State University Press, 1979, 281 pp.

In an "old book" (to borrow from Thoreau), it is said that the last shall be first. This promotion has indeed happened to Charles Fenton Mercer Noland, better known to readers of his time as "N. of Arkansas" and "Pete Whetstone." One of the most neglected creators of Southern or Southwestern humor, he has in recent years become one of those receiving detailed study. In this respect he may now be classed with A. B. Longstreet, subject of a biography by John Donald Wade, revised recently by M. Thomas Inge; Johnson Jones Hooper, whose life and work drew a meticulous analysis by W. Stanley Hoole; and George Washington Harris, subject of a first-rate volume by Milton Rickels in the Twayne United States Authors Series. Leonard Williams’ book is not a biography, but it ranks with the aforementioned works on the grounds of its sensitivity, its scholarship, and its multi-dimensional approach. Williams’ volume offers several features that make it front-shelf reference material, unlike the pioneering but inaccurate edition by Ted R. Worley and Eugene A. Nolte (Pete Whetstone of the Devil’s Fork: Letters to the Editor of "The Spirit of the Times" by Charles F. M. Noland [Van Buren, Arkansas: The Press-Argus, 1957]).

First, the book contains sixty-three letters from Noland, most under the pseudonym "Pete Whetstone" (occasionally "Jim Cole," a friend of Pete). These are addressed to William Trotter Porter, editor of the Spirit of the Times, and to other editors of papers that printed backwoods humor between 1837 and 1856. In the letters Noland creates a world of colloquial American prose which includes characterizations of that redoubtable bear hunter, horse fancier, farmer and politician, Pete himself; his sister Sal; and his friends—and sometimes rivals—Dan Looney, Jim Cole, and "Lawyer" McCampbell, all located in the vicinity of the very real "Devil’s Fork of the Little Red" River, near Batesville, Arkansas.

Second, the book offers an introduction, the biographical part of which separates the facts of Noland’s life from a tissue of fiction and legend. Working largely from scanty and hard-to-get sources, Williams pieces together the record of a life that included childhood in Virginia, flunking out of West Point, a move to Arkansas that turned out to be permanent, a duel in which Noland killed the nephew of a prominent politician (he regretted the episode for the rest of his life), service in the Army and in the Arkansas state legislature (Noland was a Whig, like Porter, his editor), marriage, farming, lawyering, hunting, horse-racing, and death in 1858 from "consumption."

Third, Williams gives an analysis of the technique and substance of the Pete Whetstone letters. Concerning technique, he notes, among other things, that "Pete told most of the stories completely in his own language" (p. 43), unlike other frontier humorists who preferred the framework, tale-within-a-tale structure. Substantially, Williams finds that Pete and his creator are relatively similar in many ways: "Indeed, Noland might well have considered Pete as himself without refinement, social or political images to uphold, or hesitancy to indulge in the wild and raucous life on the Arkansas frontier" (p. 48).

Fourth, the book contains appendices which include a "Glossary of Proper Names" used in the letters, a "Glossary of Words and Phrases" that should prove especially useful to linguists, a checklist of appearances of the letters, and an informative note on sources, as well as an explanation and list of "emendations" made by the editor in the interest of readability. The letters themselves are there for laypersons and specialists alike; the book’s editorial and scholarly apparatus should satisfy the most demanding specialists.

This volume grew out of Professor William’s doctoral dissertation, but little trace of graduate-school formality remains. Considering the excellence of the work within its limitations, one is probably unfair

to mention those limitations. One drawback, however, is that none of the many letters Noland wrote in his own person, as "N. of Arkansas," have been included, not even for purposes of comparison. Ideally the entire body of "N." letters should be in the book, especially in view of the inaccuracy and incompleteness of the Worley-Nolte edition. Doubtless, copyright problems were only one of various conditions thwarting such inclusion, but for proper comparative analysis of Noland and Pete as characters in their own letters, both bodies of material should have been brought under the same cover as Williams’ introduction.

Another criticism may be nit-picking: Noland’s mastery of the comic metaphor in the Pete letters at its best rivals that of Harris in the Sut yarns and deserves some editorial emphasis. Examples: "Since the election, the lawyer’s as mute as a wild cat, with his head cut off" (p. 79), and "He is no more fit to be Secretary of the Treasury than a tumble bug for a lady’s pet" (p. 92, italics Noland’s).

Enough said, except for citation of a recent study by Lorne Fienberg which in general reinforces the conclusion of Professor Williams: "Colonel Noland of the Spirit: the Voices of a Gentleman in Southwest Humor," American Literature, 53 (1981), 232–245. As suggested earlier, Noland and his humor have at last received detailed examination; and—to verge on the scatological—the reputation of the man and his work is "rising again like smoke from a new-laid improver of the airth" (p. 167).