Review Mark Twain’s Life and Writing
[Keep in mind this is a comparison essay between King and Hughes; any information about Twain is only given to prove points about King and Hughes and somewhere between little to no particular details and/or citing has been done on Twain’s essay because particular attention has been given to King’s and Hughes’ essays]
Twain’s writing is proven genius by both Stephen King and Langston Hughes whether Hughes would like this or not. King and Hughes have each written guidelines for people to become better writers. When their rules are applied to Twain’s writing of “Corn-pone Opinions,” the genius of this essay is illuminated because we are now able to clearly see the mastery Twain has over his writing. If King and Hughes were to read “Corn-pone Opinions” in a critical fashion, though King would enjoy the essay from beginning to end, Hughes would be highly critical. After reading all of these texts myself, it seemed as if Twain had read the guidelines for an essay that King and Hughes had laid down, had taken what he wanted from them, and tossed out the rest.
There are some important points that King makes about writing; these points make up the initial test to see if a writer is an advanced writer. A writer needs to be talented, needs to entertain, needs to know the markets, and needs to observe rules of proper submission. According to King this means he has to be able to get his works published and sold with money that he is able to spend. Not to say that the world revolves around money, but if the essay was able to sell, then it was obviously able to reach an audience that obviously enjoyed reading it, showing that he knows his markets. If he is able to spend that money, then, as Hughes would agree is necessary, his writing was not ahead of its time and people enjoyed reading his essay during his life-time. What is not as well understood is what it means to entertain. King says that entertaining is having serious ideas that serve a story and not the other way around: a true test of an advanced writer – more about this later.
A writer needs to be neat. Once a writing is fully compiled, people must be able to read and understand the writing clearly; your message has to get across to the audience you are trying to speak to. A writer needs to be self-critical and needs to be able to evaluate criticism. During a first draft one has a license to write what his will commands, however, afterwards a truly advanced writer will know how and when to be self-critical and have the ability to evaluate criticism from others. What might not be essential for King to be an advanced writer, but would be considered an excellent quality would be having the ability to ask “Am I having fun?” and to answer ‘yes!’
Twain quickly passes the test of being an advanced writer. He proves his talent in and out, and the fact that he knew his markets and observed the rules of proper submission, through his numerous best-sellers. His essay is organized in such a fashion as to drill all his points so that everyone understands them. If you have ever seen a copy of one of Twain’s initial manuscripts, you would see the endless markings that saturate every page showing how self-critical he is. As for evaluating criticism from a number of people, Twain probably heard much criticism over his time considering how controversial his writing is. However, instead of just giving up, he went through with writing his essay the way he liked it – lightly and with satire, enjoying his essay as he wrote it, I might add – and as a result became one of the predominant famous writers of his century and possibly throughout all of history. You often don’t see a writing by Twain that is simply bad – my guess is that he simply tosses the bad ones out and doesn’t go on with them, going by the simple guideline of giving a bad writing a mercy death of the trash can. What I personally love most about Twain’s writing is his amazing ability to – as King would put it – entertain. Twain did not present an essay filled with facts and statistics to back up his thesis. Instead he wrote a story about a boy, a slave, and conformist society that included serious ideas that made you think about what he was saying. This would assure King that Twain is indeed an advanced writer and that Twain knows what he is doing. However, though Hughes might like some things about Twain’s writing, he would probably take another approach to it.
Hughes would say that Twain has some of the basics covered of being a good writer. Hughes would enjoy that Twain characterizes all his characters, even the master that is dropped into the story momentarily, playing his Corn-Pone role of the businessman that knows how to make his bread. He would also enjoy how the essay was so pertinent to the time that he lived in, how slaves and black people could not move ahead in society and the conformists which can play a role in any period of time.
However, Hughes would also believe that Twain disregards several essential rules of language that simply may not be broken. Twain uses clichÃ?©s and twists grammar to fit how he wants to say something – Hughes would find this horrifying. The fact of the matter is that the way Twain does this is what makes him an excellent writer. Twain does use clichÃ?©s, but instead of keeping them boring, he uses satire to make fun of the clichÃ?©s he brings about. This would make Hughes glad that Twain is not a play writer or a poet. Otherwise Twain might make Jerry swing his hands up in the air in a way that is clichÃ?©-like, from “overuse,” and destroy poems in the same manner of using clichÃ?©s. What Hughes does not understand is that Twain does this in a satirical manner and therefore is simply beyond the scope of what the limited views of the time in which Hughes had lived in can even imagine. Twain also twists grammar, which Hughes would also be stomped by; what Hughes would not understand is that twisting grammar is allowed as long as it is done in advanced writing, meaning that since Twain brings about meaning from his twisting of language, there is nothing wrong with it – in fact I’m sure that it betters his essay.
There are a couple of things about Twains writing which it would seem both King and Hughes would enjoy. King and Hughes would like the fact that Twain “built his career upon his experiences in the western states and his travels in Europe and the Middle East,” meaning that these were his ideas about something he knew well. Even though he didn’t make this stuff up, it is still original. To make it even better, when Twain writes, he always tied it to the present, or near-past, which he obviously did, talking about himself, and the society of slaves that was abolished, yet at the same time keeping it eternal showing that conformity and corn-pone opinions have always been and always will be. Something additional that both King and Hughes would find proper about Twain’s writing is that Twain does not use extraneous words that confuses his writing; he is sharp and to the point. King and Hughes would cherish this because this is a sign of an advanced writer that knows what he’s doing.
Though Stephen King and Langston Hughes would have often disagreed either with each other or with the way Twain went about writing and would have found – what they would consider – faults, they most likely would have both enjoyed reading his essay. Stephen King came in a century in which people have arguably been able to think outside the box and therefore more able to enjoy Twain’s writing. Though Twain does not follow some of the basic conventions that Hughes would feel were quintessential, Hughes could still appreciate the advanced aspects of Twain’s writings, or at least the ones that were still conventional. King on the other hand was able to keep much more of an open mind as long as Twain enjoyed doing his own writings, made some money and was able to use the money he earned. What is important is that they both managed to prove the quality of Twain’s writing and his mastery over language. Everything that was good and simply correct about King and Hughes’ guidelines Twain absorbed in this essay and everything that was not Twain evaluated as wrong and let himself take his writing to levels beyond what may be imaginable in the world that Hughes had lived in, but King would have highly appreciated.
