Please stick with this book, you will be missing out on one of the most
bizarre and hilarious scenes in any novel ever if you don’t read to the end!
Honestly, this book could drag, but there are some utterly brilliant
anachronisms that really make it worthwhile.
As the title rather explicitly suggests, this novel plants a (for Twain)
modern American, in the time of one of Britain’s greatest legends, and
basically causes chaos! The novel begins with quite a sense of adventure; how
will he survive? What will he do? But it quickly becomes apparent that these
knights are way too stupid to be of any threat and are easily manipulated into
business making tools. Then come the telegrams and coal mines and soap adverts
which make this novel so uniquely obscure. Just the images created by this
collision of two cultures, one so stuck in legend and tradition that to destroy
it is utter glee, are brilliant.
However, there is a lot of economic and political discussion that comes.
This may be the most intellectually meritable thing about this book and I did
enjoy the questions that were raised. Despite this, when it comes in the form
of frustrating one-sided conversations it can become, for someone who knows
little about these subjects, monotonous.
Like I said at the beginning though, stick it out, because you will be
missing out on more of Twain’s humour. I shall leave you with a little taste of
what to expect of this book:
“She had no more idea than a horse how to photograph a procession; but
being in doubt, it was just like her to try to do it with an axe.”
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