Mark Twain's Fables of Man
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Authors
Mark Twain; John S. Tuckey
Issue Date
1972
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Abstract
I have seen this title pass by a number of times in the past and wondered. I finally plunged when Biblio offered a discount. Let me pause a moment before commenting on the book to note that it renewed a wonderful contact from the past. Peter Kohler, it turns out, is the proprietor, with his wife, of this online bookstore. I knew Peter when he worked at Powell's in Portland in the "Mythology" section. While there, he watched out for unusual fable books for me. At some point, we lost touch. Now he wrote back to me immediately as "you ol' Aesopian." What a lovely and surprising renewal of personal contact! About the book? The book gathers previously unpublished writings of Twain. It turns out to contain two items listed as -- appropriately, I believe -- fables. "Goose Fable" (150-51) tells of a goose mother instructing her daughter. Who are the gods? Human beings, and geese must be grateful for all that humans do, since it is for their good. And whom can this daughter trust in times of trouble? The cow. Tuckey sees Twain suggesting "that man also was too trusting toward his own gods" (149). In "The Fable of the Yellow Terror" (426), Twain calls up early history. The butterflies were the representatives of civilization and they imposed it on every other "nation" among the animals. Butterflies had stings and sold honey. Only the simple bees resisted the butterflies: they did not want "civilization." Finally the butterflies announced that the bees were a "yellow peril." The butterflies vanquished the bees, who began to like honey and to buy it. Then one tribe of bees learned two things: how to make honey and how to kill. Hurray for civilization! But that tribe of bees was ready now to outproduce, outsell, and outsting the butterflies. Maybe they should never have started the "yellow peril," as a wise grasshopper tells them. Tuckey comments on each writing and dates it carefully.
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Publisher
University of California Press