Judith Yaross Lee - Twains Brand

Humor in Contemporary American Culture

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Copyright 2012 by University Press of Mississippi
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Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lee, Judith Yaross, 1949
Twains brand : humor in contemporary American
culture / Judith Yaross Lee.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61703-643-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-61703-644-6 (ebook) 1. American wit
and humorHistory and criticism. I. Title.
PS430.L44 2012
817.009dc23 2012013004

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

To my familysmall recompense for their humor, love, and joy

Twains Brand and the Modern Mood

Standing Up: The Self-Made Comedian

Humor and Empire

Kid Stuff: The Vernacular Vision and the Visual Vernacular

Comic Brands: More than Funny Business

I have racked up a pile of debts while writing this book and can only begin to repay them here. My greatest gratitude is to my husband, Joseph W. Slade, whose kindness and generosity are exceeded only by his patience; without his examples of scholarship and ambition I might not have pursued my own. Our children, Marya, Joe, and Alison, remind me often how much I still have to learn about humor, while my parents, Lillian and Irving Yaross, still practicing their professions well into their eighties, provide ongoing lessons about the value of humor, family, and work.

Seetha Srinivasan, director emerita of the University Press of Mississippi, understood and encouraged this project from the start, made key recommendations along the way, and did me yet another favor in passing me on to Walter Biggins after her retirementone of many editorial gifts she has bestowed since acquiring Garrison Keillor: A Voice of America so long ago. Anne Stascavage and Carol Cox brought their keen eyes to the manuscript. Colleagues in the Mark Twain Circle and the American Humor Studies Association have taught me most of what I know about Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain, and American humor through their scholarly work and fellowship, both models for the profession. Their attention to early versions of my arguments at conferences challenged me to improve them. Robert Hirst of the Mark Twain Papers and Project at the University of Californias Bancroft Library in Berkeley provided copies of unpublished letters and other help, not to mention leading his colleagues to prepare their wonderful scholarly editions of Twains works. Kevin Mac Donnell provided information on Twain-branded goods during a very early phase of the project and supplied beautiful images of Mark Twains Scrap Book and associated marketing materials at the end. Mark Woodhouse, archivist for the Elmira College Mark Twain Collection, helped me understand what I found on the shelves in the library at Quarry Farm. An Cardoen of Belgiums Royal Museum for Central Africa promptly secured scans and permissions for letters in the Henry M. Stanley Archives.

I could not have finished Twains Brand without research support in many forms from Ohio University. I am grateful for travel funds, sabbatical leave, and other research assistance received from Claudia Hale, Scott Titsworth, and Jerry Miller, directors of the School of Communication Studies, and to former dean Gregory Shepherd of the Scripps College of Communication for securing resources for faculty despite tough times. For the production of color plates, I owe special thanks to Eric Rothenbuhler and Jerry Miller for their help in securing grants from Scripps College Faculty Development Fund and the School of Communication Studies to supplement funds from the Faculty Research Support Program of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. Lindsey Rose, Jeffrey Kuznekoff, and Efraim Kotey provided excellent bibliographic assistance. Communication bibliographers Jessica Hagman and her predecessor Char Booth at Alden Library tracked down and purchased much-needed materials, while the librarians and staff of Aldens Document Delivery Service kept the pdfs and ILLs coming as fast as my requests. I appreciated being able to share work in progress at a 2010 English Department event organized by Langston Hughes Professor Amrijit Singh and department chair Marsha Dutton to commemorate the centennial of Clemenss death and to discuss Connecticut Yankee with students in the Honors Tutorial College reading group led by Dean Jeremy Webster.

Broad public interest in Mark Twain inspired me to write this book for general readers intrigued by humor as well as for scholars of American culture, and I hope that the final result bears evidence of what I learned from audiences at Ohio University, the University of Helsinki, the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, the West Virginia Humanities Council, Davis and Elkins College, West Virginia Wesleyan University, and the Mark Twain House and Museum. I am particularly grateful to Barbara Snedecor and the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College for the privilege of spending several nights in 2009 at Quarry Farm, where the Clemenses summered with Livys sister and her husband, and to Kerry Driscoll for the wonderful invitation to join her and Craig Hotchkiss of the Mark Twain House and Museum as faculty for their 2011 NEH Summer Teachers Institute, Mark Twain and the Culture of Progress.

Portions of , and Sharon McCoy, who critiqued my analysis of Huckleberry Finn, gave me splendid advice, not all of which I took. Those are the parts that are wrong.

Works by Mark Twain, other humor under discussion, and frequently referenced scholarship are cited parenthetically in the text with the abbreviations below. Brief citations to other works are given in the notes to each chapter. Full citations to all works are in the bibliography.