My family recently returned from a cruise around the Hawaiian islands. In anticipation of the trip, I employed a tactic of Tyler Cowen’s and tried to read as much as I could about the history and people of the islands. One book that was recommended by the community on his blog was Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii, a compilation of his correspondence as a journalist on assignment for the Sacramento Union.
Reading it was a surprising departure from the two other books of his I had read in my youth1 and reminded me of the author’s unique style of disarming humor.
In the first pages, Twain describes getting accustomed to the journey across the Pacific on rough seas:
The ship was rolling fearfully. At this point I got up and started over to ask the captain if it wouldn’t be a good idea to belay a little for a change, but I fell down. I then resumed my former seat. For twenty minutes after this I took careful note of how the captain leaned his body to port when the ship lurched to starboard, and hard to starboard when she lurched to port, and then got up to practice a little. I only met with moderate success, though, and after a few extraordinary evolutions, fetched up against the mainmast. The concussion did not injure the mast perceptibly, but if it had been a brick house the case might have been very different. I proceeded below, rather discouraged.
Initially the reader identifies with Twain, fully recognizing the challenge of staying upright on an unstable deck, turning to distraction by attempting to help in the manual labor, accepting his own inadequacies, then learning by watching and then mimicking an expert. Surely the effort has been sufficient and it’s time to try again. But no, injury is added to insult!
Just as the reader is empathizing with the pain that must result when their cranium collides with the center mast of a ship, Twain deflects attention away from himself, ensuring us that the ship is ok despite his assault.
I was tickled by how Twain subtly flips that scenario to save face.
-
Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, obviously. ↩︎
