Joseph Csicsila is an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature. He is part of a team recently awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant as part of the “We the People” program, which supports projects that explore significant themes in the history and culture of the United States. Csicsila, along with co-directors Lawrence Berkove of the University of Michigan and Barbara Snedecor of Elmira College, will conduct a month-long summer seminar entitled “Mark Twain and His Age.”  Scholars selected to participate in the program will gather at Twain’s home in Elmira, New York to focus on the characteristic ideas in the author’s work and how they relate to the principles that define America today. (Read more about the project and plan your visit.)

Professor Csicsila earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 1998. In 2002, he was awarded the Ronald W. Collins Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching, EMU’s highest honor. His first book, “Canons by Consensus: Critical Trends and American Literature Anthologies,” was published by the University of Alabama Press in 2004.

casenotes: How old were you when you first read something by Mark Twain? How was your interest sparked?
Joseph Csicsila: My first encounter with Mark Twain, what really sparked my interest, was an old film version of “Tom Sawyer” that I saw when I was seven or eight. What I remember most, strangely enough, was being riveted not by the fence-painting incident or Tom’s boyish pranks but rather by the darker moments of that movie – the midnight graveyard scene where Injun Joe murders Doc Robinson and then the court room episode where Injun Joe hurls that huge bowie knife at Tom and then crashes through a huge window as he escapes. I was hooked. Soon after that I read the novel.

casenotes: Is there significance to Samuel Clemens’ choice of “Mark Twain” as his pen name?
Csicsila: Sure. The pen name “Mark Twain” comes from steamboat jargon – Twain briefly worked as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the Civil War. When the deckhand yelled out “mark twain,” it meant that the water was two fathoms deep, which is the minimum that a steamboat needed to keep from hitting the bottom of the river. The call “mark twain” was usually sounded when a steamboat was moving out from the shoreline approaching deeper water, so the call is synonymous with “safe water.” However, it was also the signal for moving out of deeper water into something shallower than two fathoms, which of course is a big problem. In that situation, the call “mark twain” becomes a warning for “dangerous water.” Twain no doubt appreciated the paradox embedded in the call “mark twain” and started using it as his pen name in the early 1860s.

casenotes: When you were teaching a special seminar for EMU students in 2002, you and your family had the opportunity to actually live in the house at Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York, where Twain did a good deal of his writing. Did you feel his spirit? See his ghost?
Csicsila: We never saw any ghosts, but there’s no question that you feel Twain’s spirit when you’re at Quarry Farm. I taught right there on his front porch. On the first day of class, I had gotten to the point in the lecture where I was telling the story of Twain in the 1890s losing his oldest daughter, Susy, to spinal meningitis. She was his favorite and only 24 when she died. It destroyed him. The family was never the same afterward. I recall getting choked up in front of my students at that moment. It was very strange – I had recounted that incident in Twain’s life to students dozens of times before and never had any problems getting through the story. This time was different. I found myself reacting in similarly unexpected ways to his writings throughout that entire week. Visiting Quarry Farm exposed me to Twain’s “spirit” in ways that are hard to describe. It has without a doubt made me a better teacher of Mark Twain.

casenotes: You’ve said that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not the best choice of books to introduce high school students to Twain’s work.  Why?

Csicsila: A couple of reasons.  First, let me say that it has nothing to do with teachers at the secondary level.  Frankly, I don’t even teach the novel in 100- or 200-level college courses.  I usually wait until I’m dealing with students in their third or fourth year of literature classes at EMU.  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn relies heavily on irony — perhaps more so than any other American novel written in the late 19th century.  If you miss the irony, you miss Twain’s point; if you miss Twain’s point, then you’re really not dealing with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Second, the seemingly excessive use of the word “nigger,” which appears 211 times in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, makes teaching the novel at the high school level difficult.  What I have found is that teachers end up spending inordinate amounts of time discussing the “n-word” because they want to be responsible, which leads inevitably to long classroom conversations about American social history and racial injustice in the nineteenth century.  But before you know it, two weeks have gone by and we’re no longer talking about Twain’s novel.  If your goal is to introduce students to Mark Twain as a writer, there are much more efficient ways to do that than having younger readers tackle Twain’s masterpiece right out of the gate, which is probably more likely to overwhelm them than engender any kind of real long-term enthusiasm for his work.

casenotes: Was the signature white suit a gimmick?
Csicsila: He used to call it his “dontcareadamn suit.” Twain possessed a great flair for spectacle and certainly loved to shock, so I think it’s possible to regard his wearing of the white suit as something of a gimmick. In those days lots of men wore white linen suits in the summer. As Twain got older – and more famous – he began wearing them during the winter months, too. Someone once claimed that at the turn of the century, Twain was the most conspicuous person on the planet. I think that’s probably fairly accurate, and Twain loved to cultivate that particular impression of himself. If you look at photos of Twain taken in the last 10 years of his life, you’d probably conclude that all he wore were white suits. But he actually didn’t wear them all that often. What he probably did was wear them for professional sittings and when he thought he might be photographed out in public. Again, he had a wonderful sense of drama.

casenotes: Twain is famous for his memorable quotations. What’s your favorite?
Csicsila: My favorite Twain quote goes something like “In the first place God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.” It’s one of those great sayings that allows you to switch out the punch line (“school boards”) and fill in the blank with anything you feel like abusing. It’s a lot like another famous quotation of his that works pretty much the same way: “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” I think lots of people forget how acerbic Twain could be.

casenotes: Is there a famous quote that commonly gets misattributed to Twain?
Csicsila: “Golf is a good walk spoiled” isn’t his. If Twain did say it, nobody’s been able to document it. A few years back, sportswriter John Feinstein used it for the title of a book about the PGA tour that sold very well. Feinstein was very happy in interviews to attribute the quotation to Twain – as were, by the way, a number of my colleagues at the time. Even though we’re not sure where it came from, Twain still manages to get the acclaim for the quote. But I suppose it’s just a function of having a reputation for creating great one-liners. There are worse things than getting credit for something that funny when you probably had nothing to do with it in the first place.

casenotes: Today’s students are familiar with the political and cultural satire of Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert on “The Colbert Report.” Can they be compared to Mark Twain in his day?
Csicsila: There are, I suppose, a few similarities between today’s political satirists and Mark Twain. Like today’s commentators, Twain took on the headline issues of his day, particularly in the period between 1895-1910. Surprisingly, though, Twain very rarely employed humor when he wrote straightforward political commentary. Works such as “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” “The War Prayer” and “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” are the pieces that come to mind when one thinks of Twain and political writings – and they are very serious in tone. In fact, he often displays a good bit of anger in these kinds of essays. Twain was also much less predictable in his social and political positions than most of today’s satirists.

casenotes: Is there anything about Twain that is not very well known, but should be?

Csicsila: Not a lot of people are aware that Twain paid for the schooling of numerous individuals outside his family. One of the most famous instances involved Warren McGuinn, an African-American student at Yale Twain met in the 1880s. McGuinn was struggling financially, but the young man so impressed Twain that he decided to cover all of McGuinn’s expenses through graduation out of his own pocket.  What makes the story even more interesting is that Warren McGuinn went on to become a successful lawyer and mentor to Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to sit on the Supreme Court

casenotes: Is there a common misconception about him?

Csicsila: I’d say the biggest misconception about Twain is that he was something of an accidental genius. Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Twain was voraciously curious his entire life.  He really is, I think, the most miraculous case of a self-educated individual in all of American literary history.  One study has established that Mark Twain personally owned — and likely read — more than 4,500 books in his lifetime.  We know he read most of these books because he was a person who read with a pencil. His notes and comments are everywhere in these volumes — they’re oftentimes pretty hilarious.  And Twain read everything: history, science, biography, philosophy, literature.  He was as well-read as any American author in the 19th century.

casenotes: Is Twain’s influence still being felt in the early 21st century?
Csicsila: There’s no doubt. We’re fast approaching the centenary of his death in 2010, so I suspect that in the next few years, you’ll see more and more coverage of his life, his work and his influence on American art. But there is more than just this kind of topical interest keeping Twain relevant. I also believe his influence remains perceptible at much deeper levels in our culture. Hemingway wrote in the 1930s that all modern American literature has its origins in one book, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Faulkner would later pay similar respect to Twain as an American literary innovator by referring to him as “all of our grandfather.” I think what Hemingway and Faulkner and others recognize is that American literature would have been different, perhaps dramatically so, over the last 100 years had Mark Twain never written. There simply aren’t a whole lot of authors who have had as profound an impact on American culture as Mark Twain. Period.

casenotes: Have you ever tried to grow a big, bushy moustache?
Csicsila: My wife barely tolerates the cigars. I’m guessing that a moustache is probably off the table – for now.

Professor Csicsila: "There simply aren’t a whole lot of authors who have had as profound an impact on American culture as Mark Twain. Period."