Re-read it, it's a pretty bad book. Pudd'nhead Wilson is a good book that got ruined by sticking it inside a bad book or, as is claimed by some, a good book gone bad. It would have been better if he'd left out the title character, completely, though I think he wanted him mostly for the "Calendar" aphorisms he began the chapters with. I have to wonder if Benjamin Franklin, who is famous mostly for his Poor Richard sayings than any of his serious writing had anything to do with Twain's science tinkerer-"free thinker".
If Twain had just used the story of Roxy and the two boys and given it a more realistic narrative conclusion and relegated Pudd'nhead Wilson to his own book he might have produced a book that was better than Huckleberry Finn. Roxy, even in that bad book, might be the fullest female character Twain ever invented or imagined, though he could have cut down on the dialect to better effect. I have never been able to warm up to his treatment of Joan of Arc though he, himself, considered it his finest book.
From what I read in this paper by Anne P Wigger (inventing my own "institution" in order to get Jstor access, I'm sure Twain would have done it if he were in my position) I was right that his ridiculous fingerprint plot device was inspired by him reading Galton's book on fingerprints. The concluding court scene for which he used it is some of Twain's worst writing, it was pretty clear to me that he wanted to get the thing done and dusted as expeditiously as possible - he claimed writing the first draft was easy, the revision almost killed him. The idea that fingerprint evidence would have been produced in a court in a murder trial in the period of the story is absurd enough, the idea that untrained judges, lawyers and jurors would have been able to discern their individuality as described in the story even so absurd that Twain must have known that even as he rushed to be rid of it so he could use Pudd'nhead and his cynical aphorisms.
The paper notes that the book began as a planned farce on the topical topic of a pair of Italian conjoined twins who had toured the United States and as Twain found that topic to be less useful for a book length treatment he expanded the two stories of Roxy and the switched babies and David Wilson and Judge Driscoll gluing together bits of all three to sell in serial form to a magazine even as he, as he said himself, "pulled the twins apart". The first book form of Pudd'nhead was, at Twain's direction, published with the story of the conjoined twins "Those Extraordinary Twins."
The paper is very interesting in that it notes that Twain's correspondence with his publisher and others about the novel as well as the manuscripts and published versions of the two works the first draft became gives an extensive insight into how Twain was writing in his later years.
Twain's carelessness in his final revision is notable, in the published version of Pudd'nhead Wilson, for instance, the twins are still described as "side-show riff-raff, dime museum freaks" - terminology which is meaningless once the twins have en separated. The twins are in fact, superfluous to the plot, and a more suitable character could have been introduced to serve as the murder suspect. Leslie Fiedler, in an article on Pudd'head Wilson, attributes these remnants of the earlier story to Twain's reluctance to separate the two stores. Lamenting that the "most extraordinary book in American literature" does not exist as a whole, Fiedler argues that Twain, on the verge of creating a "monstrous poem on duplicity," lost his nerve and separated the Siamese twins farce from Puddn'head's story, the vestiges of the earlier story pointing to his "lack of conviction" about the revision. But twain could have suffered no loss of never, for not only did he finish the "monstrous poem," which is, of course, the Morgan manuscript, but he also attempted to publish it. It is relevant here to remember that Twain, particularly during the 1880's and 1890's was motivated by financial as well as artistic considerations, and his desire for a profitable sale from Pudd'nhead Wilson runs like a refrain through his letters during the period in which Pudd'nhead was being written.
I think as extraordinary and evidence that Twain, himself, must have felt like he had to explain the mess he produced, was his introduction to Extraordinary Twins and the post script is an attempt at exoneration.
Looking at a list of the literary product of Mark Twain it is remarkable how much of it there is and how little of it has lasted in common culture. I doubt much more than the original Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Prince and the Pauper and a few of the short works are read in their entirety except by Twain Scholars. The later books in which Tom and Huck and Jim appear - such little read things as Tom Sawyer Detective, Tom Sawyer Abroad - did nothing to make me look more kindly on the original.
I have read that Twain left a number of unfinished books in which Huck was to have appeared - I've never read the existing fragments - which pretty much indicates that he was trying to recycle them for some purpose, probably hoping to repeat the success he had with them. Perhaps in terms of money as well as inspiration. Looking at the chronology of his published work, I think it's pretty clear that after Life on the Mississippi (1883) his best years were behind him.
I can't think of a single piece, book length or short, that stands up in full. Huckleberry Finn almost does till Tom Sawyer reappears - the beginning with him isn't the best part of the book, either. And that's his best novel. Some of it is great writing, there are some great chapters, perhaps, there are some good stories but most of the best of it lasts the length of an aphorism.
There are certainly better American writers. I'd rather read the writing, particularly the non-fiction, of Black authors to get Twain's main theme directly from them. It is a pretty disgusting scandal how much of the academic, literary discussion of Black experience and history rests on the fictitious character of Jim written by a white man when real people and THEIR ACCOUNTS OF THEIR REAL LIVES could have taken up that time.
One of the most interesting things about Pudd'nhead Wilson is that the switched babies, one born to the slave Roxy the other to the Judge's slave owning brother's wife (who as so many mothers in American fiction, then conveniently dies) looked almost identical (as the Italian twins are almost identical) which certainly must have indicated to all but the dullest readers that they were half-brothers, perhaps closer than that considering the liklihood that Roxy was more closely related to the father of the white baby as so many slaves raped by their owners, the fathers, brothers, grandfathers and uncles of the owner rapists, would have been. But I doubt Twain could have gotten away with writing too explicitly on that theme in Jim Crow America. If I could write and I was a Black American writer, I'd certainly be tempted to take the material that Twain left in that book and tell a truer story than he managed to tell with it. I'd leave out the Pudd'nhead stuff, entirely and the Extraordinary Twins. I'd try to make it truer to the period than Twain did with that fingerprint trickery. If he hadn't shoved that into the story he could have saved himself the embarrassment of having written that awful writing of the courtroom scene. Sometimes the junk in that book reminds me of nothing so much as the incoherent improvisation of an Ed Wood movie.
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In looking more at the idea that his inability to come to a view of Christianity that got past the unreconstructed Presbyterian Calvinism of his youth colored everything he said about religion in general and Christianity in particular and, as it is with Calvinism, it was the extreme form of eternal damnation doctrine mixed with predestination to eternal damnation that was the central issue with Twain. It is a shame that in his extensive reading - Twain was a great reader - he didn't read the Greek theologians who were being translated and published in such volume in English during those years, especially Gregory of Nyssa.
I don't recall him talking about the Universalist Church which had been one of the stronger Protestant sects in 19th century America but which was probably fairly considered to be in decline by the early 20th century, They could have steered him to the texts that refuted the ideas Twain found so difficult, though I think by that time it was probably more a matter of how to be seen as manly.
There's always a struggle between Twain the moralist - his anti-racism, anti-sexism (understanding he maintained a rather romantic view of women) anti-imperialism and pro-unionism prove that he had a sincere and deep moral sense - and Twain the barroom cynic and agnostic.
Certainly the organized churches earned a lot of the derision he gave them, it's not as if there isn't a constant history of internal self-criticism, struggle and division even within sects and denominations. But I think Twain thought of religion as more properly women stuff and an opportunity for a man to reveal himself as an easily conned fool. He certainly knew that there was more to Christianity than that - one of the problems with the "social safety net" of his time was that it was mostly the work of Christian churches, not the secular government or institutions. And it was certain that like Pudd'nhead Wilson, he could get easy laughs and the approval of those he wanted to think well of him among men by ripping off cynically about pretty much everything. I think a lot of his work is more damaged by his humor - much of which is more than just dated, a lot of it was never very good to start with - than helped by it, there is more dross among those gems than there are gems.
Update: Oh, sorry, I intended to include this as a footnote:
A young boy approached Mark Twain one day, after spotting the famous author standing alone on a stone bridge in Redding, Conn. Twain was a familiar presence in the community, and the boy had awaited such a chance to express his admiration. “I was glad that he was alone,” Coley Taylor recalled years later in an article in American Heritage. “I had wanted to tell him how much I had enjoyed Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.”
But Twain’s response to the young boy’s praise was shocking. “I had never seen him so cross. I can see him yet, shaking that long forefinger at me,” Taylor recalled. “You shouldn’t read those books about bad boys!” the author scolded. “Now listen to what an old man tells you. My best book is my Recollections of Joan of Arc. You are too young to understand and enjoy it now, but read it when you are older. Remember then what I tell you now. Joan of Arc is my very best book.”
Twain made similar comments in other settings. “I like Joan of Arc best of all my books,” he wrote shortly before his death, “and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none.”
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