In his autobiography, Mark Twain confesses that “from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race—never quite sane in the night.” Of all the memories and fears that disturbed Twain’s peace of mind, none are more intractable than those associated with White fathers, Black men, the histories they reflect, and the future they promise. The Ghosts of Mark Twain: A Study of Manhood, Race, and the Gothic Imagination investigates these tense intersections in Twain’s life and work. 
 
Ann M. Ryan maps Twain’s resistance to ideals of white masculinity and his occasional capitulation to them. While Twain reflects upon the history of White men—including the intimate memory of his father’s failures and abuses—he also imagines a future in which Black men will gain an authentic voice and agency.  Preferring the messy humanity of Mark Twain, Ryan calls into question the “St. Mark” school of criticism, which glosses—among other themes—Twain’s uneasy relation to Black culture. In unpublished works and excised material, Twain conjures memories and specters of Black men that are far from comforting. No longer “friends and allies” like fictive Ol’ Uncle Dan’l; these Black ghosts will settle for revenge if they can’t get justice.

Some of the works considered in The Ghosts of Mark Twain are not widely known: “Which Was It?,” “The United States of Lyncherdom,” No. 44: The Mysterious Stranger, and the Morgan manuscript of Pudd’nhead Wilson. Written into the record of these fragments is Twain’s desire to be a different kind of White man, just as their incomplete nature demonstrates how often he stumbled in that effort. When Jim describes the White and Black spirits hovering over Pap Finn, Twain reveals his own conflicted position in America’s racial history. And as Jim declares to Huck, “A body can’t tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him at de las.’”

 
 

Ann Ryan is Professor of American Literature at Le Moyne College, past president of the Mark Twain Circle, the former editor of The Mark Twain Annual, and co-editor of the volume Cosmopolitan Twain, published by the University of Missouri Press. Her research focuses primarily on issues of race and racism in Mark Twain’s life, his writings, and in the society that produced him. She also writes on the intersections of the gothic and humor in American culture.
 

List of Illustrations/ ix
Acknowledgments/ xi
Introduction: The Ghost as Grief—The Ghost as Trauma—The Ghost as Story/ 3
Chapter 1: The Ghost of John Marshall Clemens/ 23
Judging Fathers—Bad Boys Make Great Men—Playing (Haunted)House—Stealing Home—Writing Wrong(s)—The Sins of the Father
Coda:In the Clutch of Circumstanceby A. Burglar/ 68
Chapter 2:The Ghost of Daniel/ 73
All in the Family—Mark Twain Meets Joel Chandler Harris—UncleDan’l Meets Uncle Remus—Banking on “The Golden Arm”—Travelswith “The Golden Arm”—How Not to Tell a Story
Coda: The True Story of Daniel Quarles/ 115
Chapter 3: The Ghost of Jim/ 121
Taking Stock of Dead People—Righting (and not Writing) theWronged Black Body—Fathers, Sons, and (un)Holy Ghosts—FearfulBlack Men—Fearing Black Men—Exorcising Jim’s Ghost Story—Brothers in Arms
Coda:James by Percival Everett/ 168
 
Chapter 4: The Ghost of Sam Clemens/ 173
True Stories and Strange(r) Fictions—The Last Haunted House—Black Bones and White Ghosts—Ghost Writing Twain—Loving SamClemens to Death
Coda: Classic Twain/ 208
Epilogue: Channeling the Ghost of Mark Twain/ 213
Notes/ 227
Bibliography/ 261
Index/ 277