Amazon.com Review
There is no nicer surprise for a reader than to discover that an acknowledged classic really does deliver the goods. Mark Twain's
Roughing It is just such a book. The adventure tale is a delight from start to finish and is just as engrossing today as it was 125 years ago when it first appeared.
Roughing It tells the true-ish escapades of Twain in the American West. Although he clearly "speaks with forked tongue,"
Roughing It is informative as well as humorous. From stagecoach travel to the etiquette of prospecting, the modern reader gains considerable insight into that much-fictionalized time and place. Do you know about sagebrush, for example?
Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his illegitimate child, the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousness is worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or brass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes handy, and then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters for dinner.
Roughing It is informally structured around the narrator's attempts to strike it rich. He meets a motley, colorful crew in the process; many mishaps occur, and it shouldn't surprise you that Twain does not emerge a man of means. But he withstands it all in such a relentless good humor that his misfortune inspires laughter.
Roughing It is wonderful entertainment and reminds you how funny the world can be--even its grimmer districts--when you're traveling with the right writer.
Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(50 customer reviews) 29 of 29 people found the following review helpful
A fun read, and some history too,
August 23, 2001 Matthew Taylor (Rockville, MD USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Roughing It (The Penguin American Library) (Paperback)
The genius of Mark Twain is that his work is still enjoyable, and funny, to this day. This book, originally published in 1871, is Twain's account of his journey from Missouri to Hawaii (called the Sandwich Islands in his day). He tells story after story of his adventures along the way, starting with the stagecoach ride on the Overland Stage Line to Carson City, Nevada, around 1861, and then telling of his stay in Nevada, then California, then his visit to Hawaii. The stories are informative, humorous, and all-around entertaining. He lampoons everybody he can--nobody is safe--including miners, pioneers (emigrants), politicians, Mormons, Blacks, American Indians, Chinese, newspaper reporters, "desperados", even himself on more than one occasion. Sometimes his stories are so outrageous that you wonder how much is true and how much is embellishment, or just outright fiction. Even he understands this by telling the reader on occasion that he has not made up a particular...Read more
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Thank Goodness!,
December 9, 2002 Eric Wilson "novelist" (Nashville, TN United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Roughing It (Signet Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
Twain is a storyteller in the old-fashioned sense of the word. He spins his tales, weaves his lies, and draws us in with the skill of a magician. Dividing fact from fiction is not always easy in a work such as this. "Roughing It" has moments of obvious hyperbole, grounded by stories of true difficulty. Yet throughout, Twain finds a way to make us smile, even laugh out loud. We are amused by the eccentric characters and turns of events which he describe, and find that we are not so far different as we might like to think.The story follows Twain's journey as he travels west by stagecoach, train, wagon, horse, and ship. He meets surly frontiersmen, murderers, thieves, fortune-hunters, and men of ill-repute. Even here, he finds the good beneath the dirt. I especially enjoyed his anecdote of Scotty Briggs, a man trying to hire a minister to attend over his friend's funeral. Hilarious stuff! And so true to human nature.Throughout his account, Twain makes a habit of degrading...Read more
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Frontier life through the eyes of Americas greatest satirist,
June 18, 2003 bixodoido (Utah, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Roughing It (Signet Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of travel logs, journals, reports, diaries, etc. that tell about the American West in the mid-nineteenth century. This book by Mark Twain, however, is both unique and one of the best. This is travel writing as it should be. Twain, traveling across the plains from Missouri to Nevada in the early 1860's, and spending seven years loafing about Nevada, California, and Hawaii, collected and compiled his experiences into this extraordinary book. One of the best things about Twain, of course, is his unique view on things. This tale is told in Twain's wry, humorous style, and is very enjoyable.
This book is not quite as pessimistic as Twain's other great travel writing, `The Innocents Abroad,' but it does include some interesting and unorthodox views which often prove hilarious. Twain spends time as a gold and silver seeker, a speculator, a journalist, and a vagabond (as he himself puts it), and puts a unique spin on each of these...Read more
