Roughing It by Mark Twain (1872)

Mark Twain did a series of memoirs about his travel experiences, and I had never read any of them prior to this year.  One of my sons is taking a Mark Twain class, and I have been reading the books with him, so I have had the opportunity to read them.

Twain's brother is appointed to a government position in Nevada, and he takes his little brother along as his secretary.  The west is still pretty wild at this point in time--the two travel some by train, but they also travel by stage coach.  My son called it the 19^th century ‘On The Road’, and I think he is right on target with that assessment, because Twain not only describes the places that he goes and the means he uses to get there, but also the people he meets and their characters.

My absolute favorite part of the book is his observations of Mormons in Utah.  He does not spend a lot of time moralizing about the religion, or describing his moral opposition to polygamy.  Instead he tells a story.  In it the man first marries a woman about his age.  He likes her quite a lot, so he marries her sister, and then another sister, and then her mother, and he might not stop there.  But at some point in the process he marries an 11 year old girl and finds out that he likes her best, and then the little girl has all the power in the family, including over her mother.  That is completely inappropriate, thought Twain, and I really cannot disagree with him. 

His other worthwhile story in the book is his time in mining country while he was under the influence of ‘silver fever’—he is not one to forgive others, but he only cuts himself slightly more slack.

There are low points in the book (the casual racism that emerges from time to time is unsettling, especially as you try to tease out the fictional characters that Twain built and what we are meant to learn from them), as well as high pints—all in all it is a good travelogue of the American West immediately after the Civil War.