LITERATURE OF A LOW ORDER

Sam was 23 years old in 1860– but he still didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. He had apprenticed as a printer, but he yearned for adventure.

Sam

He had briefly considered heading off to South America where he thought he could make some money collecting coca leaves. But before he got too serious about that, he landed a job as an apprentice riverboat pilot.

Meanwhile, Sam’s brother, Orion, had been working in Abraham Lincoln’s presidential campaign in Missouri and, after the election, Lincoln had arranged a political appointment for Orion in the office of the Territorial Governor of Nevada. Sam saw that as a perfect opportunity to experience “The West,” and he cut a deal with his brother to become his paid assistant. So, in July 1861, off they went to Carson City– 19 days by stagecoach from St. Joseph, Missouri. That trip was probably a major adventure all by itself.

But once on the job in Carson City, it didn’t take long for Sam to lose interest in government work. And, once again, his thirst for adventure kicked in. He decided to try to strike it rich as a silver miner. When that didn’t work out, he decided to try to get a job as a newspaper reporter– although he didn’t have a lick of professional writing experience. In any event, his brother was able to arrange an interview at the Virginia City Daily Territorial Enterprise and, for some reason, the editor decided to give Sam a chance. Initially, he covered everything from Indian raids to social events– at a salary of $ 25 per week. But it wasn’t long before he was assigned to cover the courts and territorial legislature in Carson City.

In 1864, he traveled further West to the booming state of California and soon became a world-hopping journalist for a California newspaper– and eventually became one of the best-known writers in the world. But it was while he was a fledgling reporter that, like many newspapermen of the day, Samuel Clemens began to use a pen name– Mark Twain. He later referred to his work in journalism as “literature of a low order.”

Twain drew upon his experience in the West to produce his first published work of fiction, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” which put him on the map as a writer. Later, he drew upon his experiences growing up in Hannibal, Missouri, and as an apprentice pilot on the Mississippi River to write his iconic masterpieces, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn.”

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Dennis Reeves Cooper, Ph.D

Dennis Reeves Cooper founded Key West The Newspaper (the Blue Paper) in 1994 and was editor and publisher until he retired in 2012. This column is part of a series: Famous Americans who started as newspaper reporters.