Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise, by Oscar Hijuelos
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Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise, by Oscar Hijuelos
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Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oscar Hijuelos, is a luminous work of fiction inspired by the real-life, 37-year friendship between two towering figures of the late 19th century, famed writer and humorist Mark Twain and legendary explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley.
Hijuelos was fascinated by the Twain-Stanley connection and eventually began researching and writing a novel that used the scant historical record of their relationship as a starting point for a more detailed fictional account. It was a labor of love for Hijuelos, who worked on the project for more than 10 years, publishing other novels along the way but always returning to Twain and Stanley; indeed, he was still revising the manuscript the day before his sudden passing in 2013.
The resulting novel is a richly woven tapestry of people and events that is unique among the author's works, both in theme and structure. Hijuelos ingeniously blends correspondence, memoir, and third-person omniscience to explore the intersection of these Victorian giants in a long-vanished world.
From their early days as journalists in the American West to their admiration and support of each other's writing, their mutual hatred of slavery, their social life together in the dazzling literary circles of the period, and even a mysterious journey to Cuba to search for Stanley's adoptive father, Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise superbly channels two vibrant but very different figures. It is also a study of Twain's complex bond with Mrs. Stanley, the bohemian portrait artist Dorothy Tennant, who introduces Twain and his wife to the world of séances and mediums after the tragic death of their daughter.
A compelling and deeply felt historical fantasia that utilizes the full range of Hijuelos' gifts, Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise stands as an unforgettable coda to a brilliant writing career.
Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise, by Oscar Hijuelos- Amazon Sales Rank: #88617 in Audible
- Published on: 2015-11-03
- Released on: 2015-11-03
- Format: Unabridged
- Original language: English
- Running time: 1092 minutes
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Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. Cannot put down By Walter O. Hecht Twain and Stanley Enter Paradise by Oscar Hijuelos. My recent studies have been of Mark Twain and the late 1800s and early 1900s in American history. While browsing a favorite bookstore, Twain and Stanley Enter Paradise caught my attention. I purchased a copy and could not put it down. The book was published posthumously; the author died too soon to finish it after 10+ years of work. Based on a few established facts, he has expanded the story into a novel that records the friendship between Mark Twain and the famous explorer, Henry Stanley, of Stanley and Livingstone fame.In 1859 or 1860, Henry Stanley and Mark Twain met on a Mississippi River steamboat on which Twain was the pilot and Stanley a newly arrived immigrant from Wales. They struck up a friendship that lasted for life. Both shared a love of books and became famous authors. Stanley served in both the Confederate and the Union armies. After the war, Stanley's career followed in Twain's footsteps, employed by the same newspapers and viewing the same American scenes, but not at the same time.Stanley became famous as an African explorer when he found Dr. Livingstone, alive and well after a long period of no news. Stanley was employed at a handsome salary by King Leopold 2 of Belgium as his personal explorer of central Africa. Leopold mislead Stanley as to his motives in Africa. The King played on Stanley's faith to motivate him while, in fact, the King was interested in exploiting Africa to amass personal wealth. The King's double-dealing haunted Stanley for the rest of his life as did the diseases he contracted in Africa.Stanley died before Twain. The title of the book refers to their spirits entering heaven together. A very enjoyable book.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful. It feels like a non fiction novel that might have been written ... By J Moulton I was very surprised to discover in the afterword by his wife, that even the letters between Twain, Stanley and Tennant were all fabrications of the author. Hijuelos had spent many years researching these characters and the book reads as if it is all quite true. A very intriguing piece of fiction. It feels like a non fiction novel that might have been written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Twain and Stanley's lasting friendship By UpstateASB I receive advance reading copies (ARCs) from publishers for review purposes from time to time and I always make it a practice to read them in order of publication date. I do this so my reviews will be as timely as possible and roughly coincide with each book’s release. So when I finished The Early Stories of Truman Capote, I flipped to the next ARC on the list and came up with Oscar Hijuelos’ Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise. Okay . . . so . . . the book I read immediately preceding the Capote collection was Lynn Cullen’s Twain’s End. Were the book gods really going to make me read two Twain-based novels nearly right in a row? Apparently so. If I weren’t so OCD about my hard and fast publication date rule, I would have just put the Hijuelos aside for a month or so and come back to it later, but I’m a little hard-headed about these things so I hunkered down and prepared to dive back into the world of Samuel Clemens.If you read Lynn Cullen’s book, you know that her Twain was a rancorous dude not much interested in giving a rodent’s posterior about anyone but himself. So I wondered what kind of light Oscar Hijuelos was going to shine on the old coot. A radically different one as it turns out.Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise orbits around the actual, lifelong friendship of Mark Twain and Sir Henry Morton Stanley, controversial African explorer and supposed utterer of the legendary “Dr. Livingstone, I presume” line. Twain comes off more like the revered figure most of us imagine, a better family man and friend than the one Lynn Cullen would have us know. He’s a relatively considerate pal, a devoted husband and father, and just an all-around much nicer bloke to hang out with. However, Stanley, not Twain, is the real star of the show here, as his voice is the principal one Hijuelos uses to narrate his sprawling tale. The novel spans at least 50 or so years and we’re with Stanley every step of the way in his life, beginning with his arrival in New Orleans as a penniless orphan from Wales, to his first meeting with Twain on a Mississippi River steamer (Twain then being known only as Samuel Clemens and prior to his immense literary fame), to the sweltering jungles of both Cuba and Africa and finally to pastoral England. We even backtrack a little to Stanley’s childhood before his abandonment by his mother and his eventual orphandom (okay, so the jury’s still out on whether “orphandom” is actually a word).Hijuelos employs several narrative devices to relay the intertwining stories of Twain and Stanley. At times he writes in the third person, giving the novel the feel of a Stanley biography instead of a fictional interpretation, and I frankly had to remind myself on a multitude of occasions that this wasn’t a biography. Other times the epistolary voice takes over in the form of letters between Stanley and Twain and correspondence exchanged between Twain and Dorothy Tennant, Stanley’s portraitist wife. Yet other chapters are set forth in the first person as either Stanley’s or Dorothy’s journal entries. This constant tone shifting has the whole thing coming off as slightly schizophrenic, and truly the thing works best when it’s simply Stanley doing the talking from the pages of his diary.For those expecting Hijuelos’ usual exuberant, Cuban-American themed fare, Twain & Stanley is a divergence, although the two men do venture together into Cuba searching for Stanley’s potential adoptive father (NOTE: The Cuba jaunt is completely fictional, not based on any actual trip taken by the pair, although much of the book is rooted in the facts of their relationship as best could be gleaned from Hijuelos’ extensive research). In all fairness, the author died unexpectedly before he ever submitted Twain & Stanley for publication so one can only presume that he didn’t get the chance to further shape, polish and winnow down his manuscript prior to his death. According to his wife’s afterword, Hijuelos had been fascinated by Henry Morton Stanley since his teenage years, and the research and travel that form the underpinnings of this book were a labor of love that spanned more than twelve years. You have to wonder though, had Hijuelos lived, would he be completely satisfied with the rambling Twain & Stanley we’re left with or would he still have some tweaking to do?I’m torn on how to rate this one: it’s better than three stars, but not quite deserving of four, so let’s call it three and a half, then because I’m forced to, I’ll round it up to fit Amazon's format.Full Disclosure: A review copy of this book was provided to me by Grand Central Publishing via NetGalley. I would like to thank the publisher for providing me this opportunity. All opinions expressed herein are my own.
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