Selected Short Stories of Mark Twain

Author: (American) Mark Twain (Twain, M.) wrote, selected and compiled by Dong Hengsun
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2007-01-01
Features: The stories selected in this book show that Mark Twain's novels have three distinctive features: , he developed an extremely exaggerated artistic imagination based on the tradition of Western humor in the United States. The second feature is: the works often use the first-person "I" as the protagonist. This "I" is mostly innocent, honest, and has a simple mind, always having one-sided ideas, and the results are often contrary to expectations. For example, in "The Friend of Golsmith Reappears," Aisongxi, and in "The Facts About My Recent Resignation," the young secretary, the protagonist always harbors some innocent ideas, but encounters obstacles at every turn in the process, indicating that the protagonist's ideas are impractical, and the more he fails to understand this, the more the contrast between his ideals and reality becomes apparent. The third feature is irony in the humor. In his autobiography, he summarizes his experience: "Humor for humor's sake cannot last, humor is just a scent and a bit of decoration. I always advise others, which is why I have been able to persist for thirty years." The so-called "advising others" means that his novels contain a serious creative goal of suppressing evil and promoting good.