Mark Twain Dog Book News

As always happens when I publish a book, better stories about the subject of the newly released book emerge and it truly amuses and vexes me at the same time.

This happened with the Vortex I, rain, Blazers, Yaquina Bay Bridge and Astoria books. Now it’s happened with my latest book, Of Dogs and Meaning. (which you can purchase here and I hope you will to support and independent writer at work)

I was sorting through some of my Dad’s old books and came across The Devil’s Racetrack: Mark Twain’s Great Dark Writings. I opened it up and saw my inscription to Dad. It was birthday gift from me in 1982. I’d never read it.

I was feeling in the mood for some dark writing and took the book outside on the deck and began reading the introduction, It referenced a tragic sea tale about an abandoned St. Bernard.

What? Mark Twain wrote about dogs! And I didn’t have it in my dog book!

According to the introduction, in 1896 Mark Twain wrote a fragment of a tale called The Enchanted Sea Wilderness. It wasn’t published for nearly a half century after his death.

I read the fragment and it truly is dark, Twain at his very darkest.

So the fragment goes….a St. Bernard bounded aboard a docked American ship and quickly became a crew favorite and shipmate once the ship launched carrying a load of munitions. After two months at sea, the dog had had learned how to stand a watch. One night, with the captain and crew asleep, a fire broke out and the dog woke up everyone in time for them to escape to a lifeboat. Everyone, that is, except the dog, who the captain chained to the helm over the heated objections of the crew. He claimed the St. Bernard would eat too many of the provisions and thus had to be left behind.

It is easily one of the most harrowing dog deaths in all of American literature, (there are many of those), and the result of human evil and selfishness.

But, Mark Twain has his wonderful dark redemptive way at the end. The captain and his entire crew later perish at sea in a hellish vortex. They all die knowing they had died because they wronged the dog.

Oh joy!

Yes, I really needed this story for the dog book.