The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories (Unabridged)

'The $1,000,000 Bank note' is almost surreal, or Marxist, the story of a derelict made an unwitting guinea pig by two elderly millionaires, curious to see what would happen to an honest but poor man in the possession of such an impractible note. The frightening fetishistic power of currency structures a somewhat creepily benevolent narrative, and the opening paragraphs audaciously cram a novel's worth of misfortune.

'The Man who corrupted Hadleyburg' is the masterpiece here, at once an unforgiving morality tale about the temptation of money on an incorruptible town, and a satire on the crippling effect of bogus social respectability. Twain's irony is at its most relentless here, mixing anger at elite hypocrisy with distaste for the savage mob mentality. The scenes of public justice are hilarious but terrifying; the unnamed man taking monstrous revenge on a whole town for a personal slight, exposing its shams by an experiment, could well be Twain himself.

The same could be said of the hero of his novella 'The Mysterious Stranger', Twain's last, posthumously published work. In this, an angel, Satan, nephew of his infernal namesake, comes to a late 16th century Austrian mountain village and systematically exposes the murderous herd instincts, moral deceptions and shabby pretensions of the human condition. Everything - war, religion, society, justice, family, human aspiration, childhood innocence - is ground down with misanthropic, sub-Swiftian satire.

'Stranger' is not an easy book to like. As an historical novel, it is an utter failure, with no attempt to understand the mindset, never mind the language, idiom or customs of an alien culture. As an allegory for the contemporary America in which Twain was writing, the book is indispensible, insightful, brave, bracing, honest, incredibly prescient, but monotonous, flatly written and exhausting. As a supernatural fable, the book has little sense of wonder or of the unknown, but in its story of a devil wreaking subversive havoc on a socially repressive culture by playing on their hypocritical terms, 'Stranger' does look forward to Bulgakov's more successful 'The Master and Margarita'.


Twain anticipates Crane in Mysterious Stranger   July 20, 1998
mfuller@posisource.com (Boise, Idaho)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

Aside from Twain's depiction of God as a malevolent and mischevious deity, the story illustrates Twain's pessimistic view of Christianity in general. There is much vitriol spilled - toward God - at the end of the work. Certainly the death of Twain's daughter had much to do with excentuating this antagonism towards God and religion. Mysterious Stranger, especially the chilling conclusion, is a disturbing tale - as Twain no doubt intended it to be. A worthwhile read but be prepared to have your religious moorings and faith shaken.


TWAIN'S LAST, UNJUSTLY NEGLECTED NOVEL IS FINALLY AVAILABLE!   April 28, 2005
D. C. Wilks (Eugene, OR)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

This is literally the last work of fiction by Mr. Twain. Those familiar with his short stories will remember a similarly titled 60+ page story in which the devil makes an interesting visit to a small Austrian village during the dark ages. This novel, while sharing some commonalities with the latter, is essentially its own animal, though not quite as darkly pessimistic. It is a good quick read-something you'll want to read twice in order to fully appreciate. It is very funny at times, at others somewhat predictable, but always entertaining and imaginative. It is remarkable how much insight Twain had into the modern world and its connection to history. Highly recommended.


Beware! No. 44 is not The Mysterious Stranger   October 29, 2006
J. G. Pavlovich (Santa Barbara, CA USA)
9 out of 14 found this review helpful

There is much confusion regarding the several editions of The Mysterious Stranger. This volume from the Mark Twain Library is titled "No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger". It is NOT No. 44 in the series as often listed. More importantly it is NOT the same as the story titled "The Mysterious Stranger" to which most of the reviews refer. This story, only published as part of The Mark Twain Library, is a later manuscript utilizing some of the same themes and characters from the better known story, but otherwise very different. Neither story was published in Twain's lifetime. Following Twain's death his literary executor, A. B. Paine, selected one of three stories written on similar themes, and published it as "The Mysterious Stranger" following some changes and editing including adding an ending which was apparently written for another version. While Paine's changes were controversial, his decision as to which manuscript was worth publishing was certainly correct.

The publishers of The Mark Twain Library series would have us believe that "No. 44" was Twain's own preferred version based primarily on chronology. Twain, however, had a habit of suppressing his own work -- particularly some of his most biting satires (See DeVoto's edition of Twain's "Letters from the Earth.") believing it, perhaps, too controversial for its time.

The story of the evolution of "The Mysterious Stranger" and all three manuscripts as Twain left them can be found in William Gibson's "Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts."

This story, "No. 44," is a pleasant enough boy's adventure along the Tom Sawyer line, but -- being an unfinished manuscript and having never seen the hand of a good editor-- it rambles around and takes wild unexplained changes in tone and storyline and never really leads anywhere. The grand dark satire of the better known story is missing, or, at best, severely watered down in this version. To add insult to injury, the television film of "The Mysterious Stranger" was based on "no. 44".

I originally wrote this review for a previous edition of "No. 44", but I see that it has been appended to all editions of "The Mysterious Stranger". So let me be clear: I am referring to The Mark Twain Library edition which is entitled "No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger".

"The Mysterious Stranger" is a marvelous work. "No. 44" is a curiosity at best.