Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain
Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain
A man who is born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of
it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has
no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some
people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality. He knows
these people, he knows the selected locality, and he trusts that he can
plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he
goes to work. To write a novel? No–that is a thought which comes
later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale; a
very little tale; a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not
acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes
along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it
spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has happened
to me so many times.
And I have noticed another thing: that as the short tale grows into the
long tale, the original intention (or motif) is apt to get abolished and
find itself superseded by a quite different one. It was so in the case
of a magazine sketch which I once started to write–a funny and fantastic
sketch about a prince and a pauper; it presently assumed a grave cast of
its own accord, and in that new shape spread itself out into a book.
Much the same thing happened with “Pudd’nhead Wilson.” I had a
sufficiently hard time with that tale, because it changed itself from a
farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it–a most embarrassing
circumstance. But what was a great deal worse was, that it was not one
story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed and
interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion and
annoyance. I could not offer the book for publication, for I was afraid
it would unseat the reader’s reason. I did not know what was the matter
with it, for I had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories in one.
It took me months to make that discovery. I carried the manuscript back
and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and read it and studied
over it on shipboard; and at last I saw where the difficulty lay. I had
no further trouble. I pulled one of the stories out by the roots, and
left the other one–a kind of literary Caesarean operation.
Would the reader care to know something about the story which I pulled
out? He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist
works. Won’t he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him
how the jack-leg does it?
Originally the story was called “Those Extraordinary Twins.” I meant to
make it very short. I had seen a picture of a youthful Italian “freak”
or “freaks” which was–or which were–on exhibition in our cities–a
combination consisting of two heads and four arms joined to a single body
and a single pair of legs–and I thought I would write an extravagantly
fantastic little story with this freak of nature for hero–or heroes–
a silly young miss for heroine, and two old ladies and two boys for the
minor parts. I lavishly elaborated these people and their doings, of
course. But the tale kept spreading along, and spreading along, and
other people got to intruding themselves and taking up more and more room
with their talk and their affairs. Among them came a stranger named
Pudd’nhead Wilson, and a woman named Roxana; and presently the doings of
these two pushed up into prominence a young fellow named Tom Driscoll,
whose proper place was away in the obscure background. Before the book
was half finished those three were taking things almost entirely into
their own hands and working the whole tale as a private venture of their
own–a tale which they had nothing at all to do with, by rights.