Max Cavitch*
There are many reasons why Mark Twain’s lifelong struggles with psychic trauma, serious mood disorders, and suicidality have only recently been accorded much critical attention—reasons including resistance to biographical interpretation, the (apparent) incongruity of humor and melancholy, and the continuing stigmatization of mental illness.1 Moreover, the complete text of Twain’s frank and voluminous autobiography remained unpublished (at his insistence) for a full century after his death. The recent publication of the threevolume Autobiography of Mark Twain (2010–15) has brought a fresh abundance of information to light while also, crucially, making possible a fuller and more accurate assessment of the structure and methodology of the Autobiography itself. Indeed, his autobiography’s significance for the story of mental health in America has as much to do with its form as with its content—an innovative autobiographical form that Twain crafted not only out of personal upheavals but also with acute insight into the depth psychology of his time. 1. Suffer the Reminiscences While scholars have begun to appreciate the extent of Twain’s early traumatization and its lifelong consequences, it still goes virtually unknown among his casual readers and fans, even though his most widely read and cherished (and densely autobiographical) books are full of horrific violence, deep melancholy, and perhaps the highest body count in American literature. By the time he was 15 years old, he had witnessed two enslaved children regularly beaten and flogged by his own father; an adult enslaved man being *Max Cavitch is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania where he co-directs the Psychoanalytic Studies program. His books include American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman (U of Minnesota P, 2007) and a new edition of Walt Whitman’s Specimen Days (Oxford UP, forthcoming in Fall 2023). American Literary History, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 1183–1205 https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajad096 C The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. V For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
[The] significance of [Mark Twain’s Autobiography] for the story of mental health in America has as much to do with its form as with its content—an innovative autobiographical form that Twain crafted not only out of personal upheavals but also with acute insight into the depth psychology of his time.
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Mark Twain, the Talking Cure, and Literary Form