【文档】A-Tiny-Biography-of-Mark-Twain(英语外研必修五).doc

A Tiny Biography of Mark Twain
Ever A Gold Digger!
Sam Clemens never finished what he started — before the age of twenty-five, that is. By age twenty-five he had quit school to work for a newspaper typesetter, quit setting type to pilot a Mississippi steamer, quit river-boating to join the Confederate Army and shortly thereafter, deserted the army to go West and dig for riches. Thankfully for generations of readers, he found none; and, while recouping his losses, he instead latched onto a bit of wisdom that would change the landscape of American literature.
“There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life that he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.”
Which is Twain’s birth place? Florida? Missouri?
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri, on 30 November 1835. As he later said, he was brought in on Halley’s Comet and wished to go out on its return. He was raised in Hannibal, on the Missouri banks of the Mississippi. He was the sixth of seven children. At age twelve, sometime after his father’s death in 1847, he left school and apprenticed at a local printer’s shop. There, in what Abraham Lincoln later called the “poor boy’s college”, Clemens trained as a writer and critic.
How Twain Set His Writing Style?
“One isn’t a printer ten years without setting up acres of good and bad literature, and learning — unconsciously at first, consciously later — to discriminate between the two ... and meantime, he is unconsciously acquiring what is a “style”.
The literature he set into type varied in genre from anecdotes, to monologues, brief book excerpts, poems, and sketches by contemporary humorists. What these selections had in common was that they were all self-contained pieces — short and to the point. Training is,” as Twain later wrote, “everything”; and so, it should come as no surprise that Twain himself survives in our hearts (and on the tip of our tongues) as easily excerpt able and eminently quotable. We can all picture Tom Sawyer persuading his friends to pay money for the privilege to whitewash his fence, but how many of us remember the novel at length? That scene — rather than the plot — stays fresh in our minds because it encapsulates how much we admired and resented that conniving kid on our own block, or in the cubicle just outside our office door.
Twain As A Hopper Before His First Book
Twain would write short pieces for nearly two decades before penning his first novel. But it was his skills as a printer, and not a writer, that bought him his first ticket out of Hannibal. Working as a tramp printer, he traveled to St. Louis and Iowa and then east to New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. D.C. During that time, he contributed travel letters to his brother’s newspaper, the Hannibal Gazette. A prolific writer, his career as a journalist was off to a fine start, writing feature stories, political reports, and sketches. Then, in 1957, Twain traveled to New Orleans and apprenticed to the pilot master George Ealer on the steamboat Pennsylvania. One and a half years later, he was a licensed steamboat pilot.
By 1861, the Civil War had all but cut off traffic on the Mississippi. Twain enlisted in a Confederate company from Missouri. A few weeks later, he deserted and went off with his brother for the New Territory of Nevada. After failing as prospector, Twain served as city editor for the Virginia City Enterprise. One year later, in 1865, a real good liar and a jumping frog brought Twain into national prominence. New York’s The Saturday Press published his “Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and newspapers throughout the United States reprinted it. In 1867, that jumping frog was binded with other short sketches by Twain as his first book.
In the meantime, as early as 1866, Twain began lecturing. He told stories about himself and about his travels, which he continued to make as a correspondent. Twain visited the Sandwich Islands and, in 1867, set sail for the Holy Land. Later, he toured France and Italy gathering material for The Innocents Abroad. This book, published in 1869, truly established Twain’s reputation as a humorist. In it he satirized American tourists learning about Europe from guidebooks and, relying on his own voice of brash practicality, managed to extol the virtues of the New World as opposed to the Old.
马克·吐温的小传记

一个淘金者!

山姆·克莱门斯从来没有完成过他开始做的事情——那是在25岁之前。25岁时，他辍学为报纸排版工工作，放弃开密西西比河轮船的布景，放弃划船加入邦联军，不久之后，他离开军队去西部挖掘财富。值得庆幸的是，对于几代读者来说，他一无所获;在弥补自己的损失的同时，他转而抓住了一点可以改变美国文学格局的智慧。

“在每个正常发育的男孩的生命中，总会有那么一段时间，他强烈渴望去某个地方挖掘隐藏的宝藏。”

吐温的出生地是哪里?佛罗里达吗?密苏里州吗?

1835年11月30日，马克·吐温在密苏里州的佛罗里达州出生，原名塞缪尔·朗霍恩·克莱门斯。正如他后来所说的那样，他是乘坐哈雷彗星而来的，他希望能在彗星返回时出去走走。他在密西西比河的密苏里河岸上的汉尼拔长大。他是七个孩子中的第六位。1847年父亲去世后不久，12岁的他离开了学校，在当地一家印刷厂当学徒。在那里，在后来被亚伯拉罕·林肯称为“穷小子学院”的地方，克莱门斯接受了作家和评论家的训练。

马克·吐温如何确立自己的写作风格?

“如果一个人十年的印刷生涯中没有积累大量好的和不好的文学作品，那么他就不可能在不知不觉中学会区分这两者……”与此同时，他在不知不觉中获得了一种“风格”。

他将文学分为各种类型，从趣闻轶事到独白，从简短的书籍选段，从诗歌到当代幽默大师的速写。这些作品的共同之处在于，它们都是独立的作品——短小精悍，言简意赅。“训练就是，”吐温后来写道，“一切”;因此，马克·吐温能够在我们的心中(以及我们的舌尖上)轻松地摘取和引用也就不足为奇了。我们都能想象出汤姆·索亚说服他的朋友出钱才有机会粉刷他的篱笆的情景，但我们中有多少人最终还记得这本小说呢?那个场景——而不是故事情节——在我们脑海中挥之不去，因为它浓缩了我们对那个纵容孩子的孩子的崇拜和憎恨，无论是在我们自己的街区，还是在我们办公室门外的小隔间里。

在他的第一本书出版之前，马克·吐温是一个善于跳跃的人

在完成他的第一部小说之前，吐温写了近20年的短篇小说。但是，是他的印刷技术，而不是作家，为他从汉尼拔手中买下了第一张门票。作为一名流浪汉印刷工，他去了圣路易斯和爱荷华州，然后向东去了纽约、费城和华盛顿。在那段时间里，他给哥哥的报纸《汉尼拔公报》(Hannibal Gazette)投稿。作为一名多产的作家他作为一名记者的职业生涯有了一个良好的开端，他写特写、政治报道和素描。然后，在1957年，吐温前往新奥尔良，师从宾夕法尼亚号蒸汽船上的领航员乔治·艾拉。一年半以后，他成了一名有执照的汽船领航员。

到1861年，内战几乎切断了密西西比河的交通。吐温应征加入了一个来自密苏里州的联盟连队。几个星期后，他离开了，和他的兄弟一起去了新的领土内华达。在淘金者失败后，马克·吐温担任了弗吉尼亚城市企业的城市编辑。一年后，也就是1865年，一个很好的说谎者和一只会跳的青蛙让吐温成为了全国瞩目的人物。纽约《周六新闻报》刊登了他的《卡拉维拉斯县著名跳蛙》，美国各地报纸转载了这篇文章。1867年，这只跳跳蛙和马克·吐温的其他短篇小品结合在一起，作为他的第一本书。

与此同时，早在1866年，吐温就开始讲课。他讲述了自己和他的旅行故事，并继续以记者的身份进行报道。吐温访问了桑威奇群岛，并于1867年起航前往圣地。后来，他周游了法国和意大利，为那些无辜的人收集资料。这本书出版于1869年，真正确立了吐温作为幽默作家的声誉。在这本书中，他讽刺了从旅游指南中了解欧洲的美国游客，并依靠自己那自负而务实的声音，成功地颂扬了新世界与旧世界的不同之处。