201
81
Gregory Jackson employs this term in his explanation of realism (The Word 150), but Lilian Furst offers a more
thorough discussion of the techniques that realist writers employ “to make readers believe that the action takes place
in a credible and close present” (77). Furst suggests that such temporal markers serve “as one of the sustaining
conventions” of this genre (81).
82
In fact, the multiplicity of this term must also be considered in relation to nonliterary impulses such as art, music,
and philosophy, as Bernard Bowron argues in 1951, when he writes: “one is strongly tempted to talk not about
American realism but about American realisms” (269).
83
Robert Bellah defines the subject-object relationship as symbolic realism: “Here reality is seen to reside not just in
the object but in the subject and particularly in the relation between subject and object. The canons of empirical
science apply primarily to symbols which attempt to express the nature of objects, but there are nonobjective symbls
which express the feelings, values, and hopes of subjects, or which organize and regulate the flow of interaction
between subjects and objects, or which attempt to sum up the whole subject-object complex” (93).
84
In Tangier, for example, he notes: “Here are five thousand Jews in blue gaberdines [sic], sashes about their waists,
slippers upon their feet. . . . Their noses are all hooked, and hooked alike. They all resemble one another so much
that one could almost believe they were of the same family. . . . Their woman are all plump and pretty, and do smile
upon a Christian in a way which is in the last degree comforting” (Innocents Abroad 49-50). Later, moving away
from a socio-political discussion of Jewish identity, he focuses on the tradition of the Wandering Jew in Jerusalem,
noting that evidence of this doomed wanderer who refused refuge to Jesus was inscribed on the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher as recently as 1860 (440). Twain’s final comment on “Israel’s religion” is that “it contained no promise
of a hereafter” (485), an oversight which he satirically notes stands in marked contrast to “enlightened religion with
future eternal rewards and punishment in it” (485). Twain is referring not to Christianity but to Egypt. He is writing
an anti-progression model by pointing out that many of the “advances” of Western civilization existed in Egypt
thousands of years ago. These several but fleeting comparisons of the Jewish people culture by culture seem to offer
a commentary on civilization; backwards civilizations stereotype the Jewish people and discriminate against them,
as seen in the blue robes in Tangier, while “enlightened” civilizations did not persecute the Jews. Twain never
finishes the implicit comparison in relation to the Jewish Jesus, but the political aspect of religious identity emerges
in relation to a larger discussion of Christianity and civilization.
85
Here, again, we have the problematic moniker “Christian” being invoked. Does the narrator mean to imply that
all Christians in America treat all members of the Jewish faith with equal tolerance? Twain seems to be using the
term “Christian” as a synonym for “American” and it is helpful to see this label as a particular unfolding in a larger
rhetorical development of American religious culture.
86
There are multiple versions of “The Mysterious Stranger” in print. Twain wrote at least three versions of the story
between 1896-1910, and he revised these several times. After Twain’s death in 1910, the story remained
unpublished until 1916 when biographer A. B. Paine “discovered” the manuscripts. Paine and Frederick Duneka
actually found several versions of the story, and they edited and rewrote several passages before publishing the story
in 1916. Critics continue to examine the story today and debate the question of intention and authenticity, but the
Paine edition has been discredited as a Twain manuscript because of the new text added by Paine and Duneka
(Rasmussen 329 and Reiss xiii). In 1963, John S. Tuckey discovered the fabrication, and he identified at least three
holographic versions and several other manuscripts and fragments (14). Tuckey published his findings in 1963, and
he later published Twain’s manuscript in 1969 with the title No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger. For this reason, any
edition based on a copy text prior to the 1969 version is most likely to be the unauthorized Paine and Duneka
version, which continues to remain in print, incorrectly identified with Twain as the sole author. Contemporary
scholars distinguish between the two versions by referring to Paine’s version as The Mysterious Stranger and
Tuckey’s version as No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger. See also Kahn (8). Robert Hirst point outs that Paine and
Duneka based their version on the earliest rather than the latest of Twain’s Stranger manuscripts: “They took
extraordinary liberties with what Mark Twain had written. They deleted fully one-fourth of the author’s words; they
wrote into the story the character of an astrologer, who did not even appear in the manuscript. . . . And, since the
‘Chronicle’ version was incomplete, they appropriated the concluding chapter Mark Twain had written for his latest
and longest version, ‘No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger.’ . . . The editors said nothing about their alterations, and the
facts were not known even to scholars familiar with the manuscripts until John S. Tuckey published Mark Twain
and Little Satan in 1963” (198). Ironically, Twain himself predicted Paine’s downfall when discussing Paine’s
enjoyment of some of his later manuscripts during the time they spent together at Twain’s house, Stormfield, in his
final days. In a 1909 letter to his friend Betsy Wallace, he writes: “Paine is going to be damned one of these days, I
suppose” (Neider 315). Because the story offers an examination into Twain’s later views on Catholicism, it is