Twentieth-Century Foreign Fiction Reader - Fiction and Drama

Author: Song Zhaolin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras County [United States] Mark Twain, translated by Yu Ning
Mark Twain (1835—1910), whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born into a lawyer family in Florida, Missouri. At the age of twelve, he began to earn a living independently after his father's death, working as a printer, pilot, miner, and later as a journalist, where he began his literary career. Mark Twain was a compassionate and justice-seeking writer who mercilessly exposed and criticized the dark underbelly of American society. His works are rich in distinctive American national characteristics, vivid, and engaging. He not only inherited the tradition of Southern humor literature in the United States but also blended meticulous realism with lyrical romanticism, creating a unique artistic style with serious themes and humorous prose. He pioneered a new realm of colloquial writing and holds a pivotal position in the history of American literature. His representative works include the novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and the short stories The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Running for Governor, The Million Pound Bank Note, and The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg.
A friend of mine from the East wrote to me, and at his request, I visited the amiable and talkative old Simon Wheeler to inquire about the whereabouts of his friend, Leonidas Smiley. Here is the result of my visit. I privately suspected that Leonidas Smiley was a fabrication; perhaps my friend had never even met such a person. He might have imagined that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his embarrassing Jim Smiley, and he would launch into a long-winded, tedious, and useless tirade about Jim's damnable past, which would only bore me to death. If that were his intention, then he had succeeded.
In the old mining town of Angel, in a dilapidated inn, I found Simon Wheeler comfortably dozing by the bar. I noticed he was fat, bald, and had a placid face with a pleasing, gentle, and unpretentious expression. He awoke and greeted me. I told him that a friend had me to find a childhood friend named Leonidas Smiley, also known as Leonidas Smiley the minister. I heard that this young evangelist had once been a resident of Angel. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about Leonidas Smiley the minister, I would be very grateful.
Simon Wheeler asked me to move to a corner and blocked me there with his chair, then began to ramble on about the monotonous plot from the next part. He never laughed, never frowned, never changed his tone, and his every sentence was delivered in a steady, monotonous rhythm. He never gave any hint that he was particularly enthusiastic about it, yet his endless rambling was always filled with a sincere and moving tone, openly revealing to me that he had no intention of...