Customer Reviews:
 Epic literature bogged down in politics August 30, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
For me this was my first sojourn into the madness of Mark Twain, sadly it was an unfulfilling one.
Yankee tells the wonderful story of a chance meeting with a fellow in Windsor castle who professes to unravel his past in a fantastical yarn of his life in the time of Camelot and Arthurian Britain.
Having read other reviews on Amazon regarding this I chose to take a chance and was both elated and deflated periodically throughout the book. Where you are warned that fans of King Arthur should stay away, please ignore. This IS a book about Arthur's Britain and will add a layer previously unseen to the readers knowledge of the period; however, at the same time be prepared for a heavily satirical look at the world of politics that can drag on for many a page and turn the lightest of eyelids to a curtly shutting door.
To truly enjoy the entirity of this book I would recommend both an interest in politics and Arthurian legend otherwise you may find yourself skimming the pages for the "good bits".
 Revolution May 31, 2006
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Mark Twain's time-machine drops the main character of this book in the 6th century of King Arthur's Great-Britain.
What he sees is a nation of slaves under the heel of king, Church and noble ('a privileged class is but a band of slaveholders'): 'sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, go naked that they might wear silk and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them.'
But the slaves were so poor-spirited that they took the thanks (cuffs and contempt) and the attention they got as an honor. They were completely under the spell of the Church: 'a united Church means death to human liberty, and paralysis to human thought ... in two or three little centuries it had converted a nation of men to a nation of worms... she invented 'divine right of kings'; she preached (to the commoner) humility, obedience to superiors, the beauty of self-sacrifice, non-resistance under opression and she introduced heritable ranks and aristocracies.'
No wonder that the nobility, 'tyrannical, murderous, rapacious and morally rotten as they were, were deeply and enthusiastically religious.'
In order to fight against the forces of darkness and to free mankind Hank Morgan Twain creates teacher factories.
But he is confronted with the problem of heridity and social conformism: 'There is no such thing as nature; it is merely heredity and training. All that is original in us can be covered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest inherited from a procession of ancestors that stretches back a billion years.'
His teacher schools liberate only a few dozens of pupils. With their help, he has to dynamite the whole British aristocracy in order to install his ideal of universal suffrage ('when every man in a State has a vote, brutal laws are impossible').
This comical science fiction story is ultimately a very actual political diatribe against exploiting privilege, pure indoctrination and class (in)justice.
A must read.
A blazing satire: on Medieval UK AND (still)contemporary USA November 30, 1998
12 out of 17 found this review helpful
DON'T LISTEN TO "A READER, 5 APRIL"!!!!!!!!DON'T read this book if you want a nicey nicey comedy, because Huck Finn gives you a (mistakenly) warm glow, OR to find out about Arthurian legends (read E. R. White instead!) It isn't intended for either of those reasons, and you need to go back to the Children's section. Read this book because you want to be challenged, because you want your view of literature and economics to be turned upsode down. If you want an incisive insight into Mark Twain's take onstorytelling and how it affects our lives, OR to see how corporate America searches and destroys alternative cultures and communities, then this is one of the finest books that literature can offer you. AND it's funny. Medieval England had lots of dragons (Twain explains how come), but corporate America has infinitely worse breeds sucking our communities dry.................... read on
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