Bad Pool and Dull Wine

Loves cats and pool: Twain at the billiard table with a cute kitten

       Twain is well-known not only as a great writer but also as a great lover of pool.   He had a whole room set up just to play it on the third floor of the mansion he and Livy built in the Nook Farm neighborhood of Hartford--a man-attic if not a man-cave.  There he and his friends would hang out till the wee hours smoking tobacco, drinking scotch, and shooting pool.  According to Paine, Twain could play all night, until everybody else fell asleep.  He also liked to write and edit there, spreading pages of his manuscripts out on the pool table. 
     So I guess it's not surprising that the other thing Twain did his first night in Paris was to play billiards--or at least try to.  But here too what he found in France disappointed him.  When he and his friends came upon a place with billiards, they headed right in but found nothing but frustration:
     At eleven o'clock we alighted upon a sign which manifestly referred to billiards. Joy!...We expected to fare better here [than when they had played in Gilbraltar], but we were mistaken.  The cushions were a good deal higher than the balls, and as the balls had a fashion of always stopping under the cushions, we accomplished very little in the way of caroms.  The cushions were hard and unelastic, and the cues were so crooked that in making a shot you had to allow for the curve or you would infallibly put the "English" on the wrong side of the ball.  Dan was to mark while the doctor and I played.  At the end of an hour neither of us had made a count, and Dan was tired of keeping a tally with nothing to tally, and we were heated and angry and disgusted.  We paid the heavy bill--about six cents--and said we would call around sometime when we had a week to spend, and finish the game.
     Now, I know nothing about playing pool.  So his description of cushions and caroms means about as much to me as the Egyptian hieroglyphs I saw last week at the Louvre.  As far as I can remember, I've only tried to play twice, twenty years apart.  When I was in college, my brother tried to teach me in a friend's basement near Boston.  He's a patient soul, but after several attempts he got that look on his face that says, Can I really be related to this woman? So I let him off the hook, or should it be pool stick?  The second time, a friend from London gave it a go at an English pub in Bordeaux.  I performed equally badly if not worse.  Luckily, we soon got distracted by the good, cheap wine and she too was free to give up on me. 
     But even though I'm an ignoramus about pool, I hope I've learned something about Twain's tricky use of tone, especially when it comes to himself and the French .  The pattern I see is that he sets up an expectation--"Joy!"--only to have it dashed, quickly and quirkily, in a way that manages to make likeable fun of himself even while he's putting down the French.  The trains are wonderful but free of accidents because of the Draconian consequences for conductors.  The hotel is lovely but lacks soap and gaslight.  The cafes are frisky and Frenchy but somehow sound too cutesy.  And the shave, well, that's just an unmitigated desastre, based on a foolish fantasy.
     Yet, through it all, Twain, or should I say his persona, makes us like him, even when he admits to taunting the French with their own language, just "for the pleasure of being cruel."  How does he pull it off?  Well, for starters, he presents himself and his sidekicks from The Quaker City, as just regular folks, people his readers can relate to.  He doesn't pretend to know much about Paris or France (in fact, he knew quite a bit more French language and history than he let on).  He admits to arriving in Paris with the typical romanticized notions about the city of Americans of his day (many of which still persist).  As a result, his readers like him because we can follow him around Paris with eyes that seem to have a similar gaze as our own.  In that way, he's the definitive reporter and travel writer.  Because the character of "Twain" that he creates, starting with The Innocents Abroad, and continuing throughout his long career as a writer, speech-maker, and public figure, is neither better nor worse than ourselves.  "Twain" is the average American let loose in the world, like some kind of cultural scout, with no airs or pretensions.  Even by the Quaker City trip, though, what with the fame of his "Jumping Frog" story, Twain himself is no longer that guy. And he'll become even less so as time goes on.  But it is that "Twain" persona--and his careful cultivation of it--that allows him, ironically, to take a superior attitude toward the French.  Hey, he's just sayin'.  Can he help it if France and the French aren't all they were cracked up to be?
      But there's a bigger force starting to come into play, too.  Through "Twain," Twain is creating a new American identity, one different from earlier extremes of either the Brahmin or the frontiersman: from Emerson on the one hand or Wild Bill Hickok on the other.  He's forging an American character who, yes, is still rough around the edges, but who is also competent to comment on the most refined capital of the world, the place that symbolizes culture itself.  And who is willing to do so.  It takes quite a bit of cultural self-confidence to do that.  When I say Twain builds an American identity in contradistinction to the French, that's what I'm talking about.
     So, back to pool as an example.  According to histories of the game, it was a French (and English) pursuit long before it was an American one.  In fact, it's generally agreed that it started in medieval times in France or England as an indoor version of a lawn game like croquet.  As far back as 1470, French kings were playing it, as evidenced by the fact that Louis XI bought a billiard table that year.  Many pool terms even come from the French: billiards itself, for example, and cue, which derives from the French queue, or line.  And what was one of Marie Antoinette's and Louis XVI's favorite ways to pass the time in the waning days of the monarchy before the French Revolution?  Shooting pool.  You can still see a pool table at Versailles today.

The pool table in Versailles today

     What's more, there are evidently many places to shoot pool in Paris these days, though I personally haven't tried any of them out, of course. But for those of you who may be so inclined, here's a list. Maybe one of you will go and have a better experience than Twain--then write an updated review and post it as a comment on this blog.
     But I'm not quite done with Twain's first night in Paris.  Between the bad pool and dark, soapless hotel, he stops by "one of those pretty cafes," where they ate and "tested the wines of the country, as we had been instructed to do."  And how does he--and I mean "Twain"--find them?"  Harmless and unexciting." 
Mais, bien sur!

What the French Think of Twain: Take 2

The front cover of a French version of Tom Sawyer for children

      To understand anything about what the French think of Mark Twain, you first have to know something about how and where they encounter him.  Are they reading his books in school?  At what level?  Or do they come to know him through popularizations of his books into movies, TV shows, and cartoons?  During my time in France, I've traveled to French universities to give guest classes and talks on Twain, and I've given a short questionnaire to the students, faculty, and occasional administrators who came to listen.  The results were illuminating, at least for me.
     The first thing I learned is that Tom Sawyer--not Huckleberry Finn-- is Twain's best-known work in France.  This mystified me, until I got the good sense to do the obvious: ask why.  And it turned out that almost everyone I met knew Tom Sawyer from a children's TV show that was as popular and ubiquitous in France as, say, Superman was in the U.S.  Over decades and in different incarnations, the show brought a strange kid's version of Twain's most famous characters to generations of French youth.  Here's a sample episode, and you can easily watch others by doing a simple Google or YouTube search.  I especially like the show's theme song, which you can now download as a ring tone for your cell phone--a fact that surely falls into the category of "What would Twain make of that?" WWTMOT.
     The theme song's lyrics give a glimpse into how the French stereotype Americans through Twain, in a nice counterpoint, I think, to what he does to them:
Tom Sawyer
C'est l'Amérique, le symbole de la liberté
Il est né sur les bords du fleuve Mississipi
Tom Sawyer c'est pour nous tous un ami
Il est toujours prêt pour tenter l'aventure
Avec ses bons copains
Il n'a peur de rien c'est un Américain
Il aime l'école, surtout quand elle est loin
REPEAT CHORUS
Tom Sawyer
C'est l'Amérique, pour tous ceux qui aiment la vérité
Il connaît les merveilles qui sont dans la forêt
Les chemins, les rivières et les sentiers
Il a dans ses poches des objets fabuleux
Qu'il emporte avec lui
Trois bouts de ficelle, quelques pierres et du bois
Il les partage, avec tous ses amis.
     Translated into English, this more or less means:
Tom Sawyer
He’s America, the symbol of liberty.
He was born on the banks of the Mississippi River.
Tom Sawyer, he’s a friend for all of us.
He’s always ready for an adventure
with his good friends.
He’s afraid of nothing; he’s an American.
He likes school, especially when it’s far away.
REPEAT CHORUS
Tom Sawyer
He’s America, for all those who like the truth.
He knows the wonders of the forest--
The paths, the rivers, and the roads.
In his pockets, he’s got fabulous objects
that he takes with him:
Three threads, some stones, and wood.
He shares them with all his friends.
     What do we learn about America and Americans, as symbolized by this French Tom Sawyer? Well, for starters, he stands for "liberty."  This word, of course, is one of the most important in both cultures, historically and in terms of how we define ourselves and our societies.  For Americans, it's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"; for the French, "liberte, egalite, fraternite."  I'd say there is a difference, though: for Americans, liberty is a more individualized concept, for the French, it retains a collective spirit.  Still, Tom Sawyer here stands first for "America," which in turns stands for "freedom."  It's the key value that our cultures share, going back to our revolutions.
     What else?  The Frenchified Tom is a country boy and a river rat. Makes sense: think of how many fleuves there are in France and how much the French love la compagne.  He's also a good friend who loves adventure more than school.  He's fearless; he knows how to share, and he carries the sort of ordinary things around in pockets that other kids find fascinating.
     Oh, yeah, and he loves the truth.  (Tom?)
     Even bearing in mind that this theme song is for a children's show, it's worth noting that "America"--"Tom"--is an outgoing, generous, adventurous, and honest guy, if not exactly intellectual or refined. And I would say that, among my French friends and acquaintances, those qualities do somehow still sum up the American character.  (And note that there's much more positive than negative here.)
     But back to Twain.  On my questionnaire, many students said they had read at least parts of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn at lycee (high school) or university level.  But virtually all said they first learned about him from the TV show.  My final question--"What is your general idea or image of Twain?"--brought some fascinating and strange responses.  They were all over the place. 
     One person wrote simply, "odd," another only "cheerful."  Many accurately associated him with "humor," "wise and witty remarks," "adventure stories," "the Mississippi," and "fun."  Others cottoned on to his use of dialect, irony, and satire, and to his interest in writing about "controversial" topics like slavery and race.  At the very least, everyone knew he was an "important" American writer. "Very American," as one person put it. "He is so much a part of the intellectual fabric of the USA that is would be hard to separate his influence.  He is everywhere."
     Not a bad showing, I'd say, for them or for Twain.  Here's the thing, though.  Tom Sawyer predominates in the French imaginary, no doubt because of the TV show.  But for Americans, it's Huck Finn who inhabits our literary and cultural landscape--as well it should be.  The French seem to have less knowledge or understanding than I expected of how deeply Twain's poignant story about an abused boy and a run-away slave on a raft resonates with "America." 
     Come to think of it, the description of Tom Sawyer in the French theme song sounds a lot more like Huck Finn.  He was the one who was loyal, adventurous, and imaginative. Mostly, though, he was honest, brave, and free.  Many Americans still aspire to that kind of free-wheeling life.  As Huck put it, "It's lovely to live on a raft."  

From: Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. NY: Simon & Brown, 2010