Chapters from My Autobiography

Beginning in January 1906, Clemens dictated in some 242 sittings a long and complex autobiographical manuscript. He published selected chapters from this extensive dictation in the North American Review, in 26 installments, and it is this version that is published here. “Reading along, one becomes aware of being spoken to by this book, that it is really a chat,” Arthur Miller writes in his introduction. “It is wonderfully visual, full of recollected pictures, the best kind of listening. You can just about hear him laughing, or his voice growing husky in the sad parts. Clearly there are long rambles with no particular thematic relevance beyond the simple pleasure of the telling, like rummaging through cabinets and closets and trying on discarded shoes, old gloves and a half-remembered jacket or two.” In this volume, Miller writes, “the author who more than any other was the surveyor who marked the boundaries of American literature” reflects on his childhood, ponders his career as a writer, and recalls the joy and the pain of being a husband and a father.