A Tramp Abroad (1880) (Oxford Mark Twain)
by Mark Twain
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Book Summary Information
Author: Mark TwainEditor: Shelley Fisher Fishkin
Introduction: Russell Banks
Afterword: James S. Leonard
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1996-12-05
ISBN: 0195101375
Number of pages: 631
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of A Tramp Abroad (1880) (Oxford Mark Twain)
Book Review: An underrated book that at times is absolutely hilarious
Summary: 4 Stars
"A Tramp Abroad" is a humorous account of Mark Twain's travels in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. It is part travel guide, part commentary on European culture, and part tall tale. Like many of Twain's less-known works, "A Tramp Abroad" is rather uneven -- the chapters in the book range from rather boring to laugh-out-loud funny. Yet on balance, the humorous moments make up for the dull moments, and the majority of the less humorous chapters are still interesting. Apart from a few slow chapters, it provides a good read from beginning to end.
Some of the highlights of "A Tramp Abroad" are Twain's exaggerated account of his ascent of the Riffelberg (a mountain in the Swiss Alps), his comments on the peculiarities of the German language, and a hilarious episode in which Twain spends half an hour pretending to know a woman who remembers him though he doesn't remember her.
I have read most of Twain's works, and in my opinion "A Tramp Abroad" is not his best work, but it is definitely one of his most underrated books. It is not as good as his most popular works of fiction (i.e., Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn), nor is it as good as "Life on the Mississippi." But I found it to be the most entertaining of his purely travel-oriented books (the other books in that category being "The Innocents Abroad" and "Following the Equator"). The bottom line is that if you are a fan of Mark Twain's style, then you should find this book to be well worth reading.
Finally, if you are going to read "A Tramp Abroad," I highly recommend obtaining a version that contains all 328 of the original illustrations. While I normally would make this recommendation for any of Twain's works, it is especially important for this book since the text makes several references to the illustrations, and since some of the jokes in the text would not make sense without the illustrations. The only current edition I know of that definitely contains *all* of the original illustrations is the Oxford Mark Twain edition (ISBN 0195101375). Also, the Modern Library Classics edition (ISBN 0812970039) apparently has retained some of the original illustrations, since it contains a note stating that "... some illustrations have been omitted" (thus implying that some have not been omitted). I would assume that this edition has retained those illustrations which are essential to the humor, but I can't say for sure since I don't actually have it.
Summary of A Tramp Abroad (1880) (Oxford Mark Twain)
A Tramp Abroad, published in 1880, is Mark Twain's second travel book, a sequel to his immensely popular The Innocents Abroad. Here Twain returns to Europe in the company, as Russell Banks puts it in his introduction, of a genial "goad, guide, and all-purpose straight man" modeled on his friend and real-life traveling companion, Joe Twitchell, who "plays Butch Cassidy to Twain's Sundance, Sancho to his Quixote." The eccentric journey they take through Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and other countries constantly veers into imaginative burlesques, exaggerations, tall tales, and humorous digressions, the most well known of which are the inimitable "Baker's Blue-Jay Yarn" and "The Awful German Language." The travelers gamely take in student duels, Wagnerian opera, and the works of the Old Masters; they travel by raft, train, and donkey cart, listen to folk legends and dreadful pianists, scale the Alps, and view cathedrals he found noble in their ugliness. But the sight that cheers them most is that of New York harbor on their return. A Tramp Abroad, Banks reminds us, celebrates two "American males clearly blessed with the gift of friendship, of giving it and of receiving and holding onto it."Nearly nine decades after his death, Mark Twain remains an international icon. His white-maned, mustachioed image is instantly identifiable throughout the world, the very picture of probity and high spirits (which explains why he's become the poster boy for products as diverse as beer, billiard tables, sewing machines, pizza, and real estate). Perhaps more importantly, Twain's books have retained all their power to amuse and enrage. How is it possible for the creator of a 19th-century "boy's holiday book" (Twain's own description of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) to raise so many contemporary hackles? The answer is that Twain is a contemporary writer. Not, of course, from a chronological point of view--he was born in Missouri in 1835 and died in 1910 (having insisted that "annihilation has no terrors for me"). But Twain was the first writer to elevate the American vernacular to a high art. Sidestepping the starched-shirt diction of his peers, he created an idiom that resembled (but did not precisely duplicate) the wayward, slangy, ungrammatical music of American conversation. No serious reader of Twain will want to do without the Oxford Mark Twain. This 29-volume leviathan includes not only the major works but also a treasure trove of essays and short pieces, many of them unavailable for decades. Throw in the introductions to each volume (by such heavyweights as Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut, Cynthia Ozick, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Walter Mosley), as well as the original illustrations, and you've got the book bargain of the millennium.
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