All of Mark Twain's biographers agree that after 1894 his best good humor war replaced by a seriousness and moroseness that he rarely showed earlier. He had reasons in his last sixteen years to show such traits. He was financially ruined by the failure of the publishing company he owned (due to the incompetence and drug addiction of his company's President) and due to his sinking thousands of dollars into a remarkable typesetting machine that was never completed because it's inventor kept adding new devices to it. He had to travel around the world for two years to pay off his debts as a lecturer. His best liked literary project, a novel about Joan of Arc, was universally panned by the critics and public. His family was dying off: first his wife Livia, than two of his three daughters, than a favorite nephew. With all of this on his plate the darkening of his personality makes perfectly normal sense.
One should not think that Twain's literary work suffered as a result. His travel book FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR was a success. So were his anti-imperialist writings, "To The Person Sitting In Darkness" and "To My Missionary Critics". His satire on Conan Doyle, "A Double-Barrelled Detective Story" was a respectable attempt. His twin attacks on foreign despots ("The Czar's Soliloquy" and "King Leopold's Soliloquy" were well received. He did two spoofs on the first couple ("Adam's Diary" and "Eve's Diary") which were splendid. But he shied away from another full scale novel. Except for the fragments that are now called "The Mysterious Stranger".
Except that it is his bitterest piece of writing, Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger" is his "Candide". The narrator is living in a medieval village called "Esseldorf" ("Jackass ville"), and is lucky enough to meet an all powerful heavenly figure named Satan (or "#44" - Twain wrote several versions of his fragments). Together they explore the world, and the knaves who inhabit it. The idea of the story is that real happiness is impossible to find in the world. The only one who they cross who is happy (due to Satan's powers) is an elderly friend of the narrator, who Satan makes happy by making him lose his mind!
Twain had little reason to find life enjoyable, and the fragments of "The Mysterious Stranger" show this. But the film, although set in the 1450s like the novel, concentrates on the firm that is doing the printing of a new bible, and the phony antics of an alchemist (Fred Gwynne) who suddenly finds he is able to do all kinds of magic (anonymously caused by "44") but who finds that his "spells" and "incantations" are threatening to bring him up on fatal charges of being a witch/warlock.
It was a passing amusing film - certainly not boring. But it would have been better if the screenplay had stuck closer to the original fragments. The fragments themselves were published in 1917 for the first time.
One should not think that Twain's literary work suffered as a result. His travel book FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR was a success. So were his anti-imperialist writings, "To The Person Sitting In Darkness" and "To My Missionary Critics". His satire on Conan Doyle, "A Double-Barrelled Detective Story" was a respectable attempt. His twin attacks on foreign despots ("The Czar's Soliloquy" and "King Leopold's Soliloquy" were well received. He did two spoofs on the first couple ("Adam's Diary" and "Eve's Diary") which were splendid. But he shied away from another full scale novel. Except for the fragments that are now called "The Mysterious Stranger".
Except that it is his bitterest piece of writing, Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger" is his "Candide". The narrator is living in a medieval village called "Esseldorf" ("Jackass ville"), and is lucky enough to meet an all powerful heavenly figure named Satan (or "#44" - Twain wrote several versions of his fragments). Together they explore the world, and the knaves who inhabit it. The idea of the story is that real happiness is impossible to find in the world. The only one who they cross who is happy (due to Satan's powers) is an elderly friend of the narrator, who Satan makes happy by making him lose his mind!
Twain had little reason to find life enjoyable, and the fragments of "The Mysterious Stranger" show this. But the film, although set in the 1450s like the novel, concentrates on the firm that is doing the printing of a new bible, and the phony antics of an alchemist (Fred Gwynne) who suddenly finds he is able to do all kinds of magic (anonymously caused by "44") but who finds that his "spells" and "incantations" are threatening to bring him up on fatal charges of being a witch/warlock.
It was a passing amusing film - certainly not boring. But it would have been better if the screenplay had stuck closer to the original fragments. The fragments themselves were published in 1917 for the first time.