The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories by Mark Twain 1962 Hardcover Durabind from New American Library

The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories by Mark Twain 1962 Hardcover Durabind from New American Library

<Condition is Very Good as Pictured> (normal wear with markings, visible edge-wear, age appropriate toning to interior pages, discoloration/yellowed exterior cover boards) size is approximately 7.5” x 5.5”

—The Mysterious Stranger is that rarity in the work of Mark Twain - a novelette in which the author turns his sardonic, free-wheeling wit to the problem of Eternal Evil in a distant time and place. In the other eight stories presented here Twain debunks his Gilded Age; he ransacks the back yards of daily life and fable to find his notorious, sometimes preposterous, metaphors. He is as apt to deal with the great minds of the law hunting a wayward elephant as with a man who has a bank-note no one can cash.

⬇️Stories Included⬇️
-The Mysterious Stranger: This posthumously published novella is the darkest of Twain’s works. Theodor and Seppi, boys living in Eseldorf (German for Donkeytown), a 16th century Austrian village, are visited by Satan, a boy-like angel who amazes and amuses them. He schools them on the ridiculousness of religion, the meanness of human life, the principles of determinism, and above all, the valuelessness of “the moral sense.” Satan is a transparent mouthpiece delivering Twain’s own skeptical and misanthropic world view, savaging the cultural institutions and hypocrisy of his own time and country.

-The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County: The story that was Mark Twain’s first great success, it consists of a shaggy dog tale about a notorious gambler and his frog, as related by a loquacious Western barkeep to the Eastern narrator. Something of its original humor is lost to the passage of times and changing of tastes.

-The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut: The author relates an amusing battling with his own misshapen, shrunken conscience — literally.

-The Stolen White Elephant: A ludicrous satire parodying a detective tale. An over the top tall tale where the detectives officious, bumbling ineptitude is praised as high talent.

-Luck: Relates a story of a wooden-headed fellow who continues failing upward in the British military through pure, stupid luck.

-The £1,000,000 Bank-Note: A feel good story of a down on his luck American in London who becomes the object of a bet between two wealthy brothers. Given a huge bank-note that can neither be deposited, cashed, or otherwise disposed of, the otherwise penny-less young man must survive and avoid jail for 30 days. Similar in ways to both Brewster’s Millions and Trading Places, this is a light, quick moving and fun tale.

-The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg: Another of Mark Twain’s pitch dark, cynical late works. Hadleyburg was a mean town, but one that reveled in self-righteous glory in the town’s reputation for incorruptible honesty. A vengeful prank from one seeking revenge reveals its staggering hypocrisy.

-The Five Boons of Life: ”My name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue, and it seemed well with me for a little while — how little a while it was!”
A bitter, nihilistic fairytale/parable. A fairy visits a man with five boons — pleasure, love, fame, riches, and death, and bids him choose wisely. He does not.

-Was it Heaven? or Hell?: A story where Twain plays with the ideas of conscience and Victorian morality. Aged twin sisters care for their dying niece and her daughter (also dying). They repeatedly break their strict code of no lying to bring comfort to their dying wards.

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