Unexpurgated musings without a whitewash

By R.B. | TEXAS

READERS of the recently published "unexpurgated" autobiography of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, are seldom moved to say "Tell us what you really think, Clemens". "Easy does it, old boy" might be more apt. This self-portrait in words was published in late 2010 by the University of California Press to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of Twain's death, according to the man's own wishes. "A book that is not to be published for a century," he observed, "gives the writer a freedom which he could secure in no other way." In these pages, he takes advantage of that freedom by skewering sacred cows—the church, Congress, industrialists, Teddy Roosevelt—and, most bitterly, acquaintances he perceived to have wronged him.

Thus the vitriolic character sketch of the Countess Massiglia, the Clemens family's American-born landlady at the Villa Quarto in Florence. He accuses her, essentially, of ruining his life as an expatriate in Italy: "She is excitable, malicious, malignant, vengeful, unforgiving, selfish, stingy, avaricious, coarse, vulgar, profane, obscene, a furious blusterer on the outside and at heart a coward." Given such restraint, Twain was wise to ensure the ants got to him before any new enemies did.