1 - Mark Twain as an American Icon

Summary

That Mark Twain parades on as a prominent American icon is obvious - visually, audibly, and palpably. The fact is validated by the most dynamic force in the United States - the profit-driven economy. To reassure customers who worry that “this country is running out of natural gas,” a corporation prints a full-page ad depicting a bushy-haired, white-suited, cigar-smoking Twain under the heading “The reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated.” To highlight the case against reregulation, the Association of American Railroads disseminates a photograph of a solemn Twain, holding a book rather than a cigar but again in basic whites, under his maxim “Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.” In a newspaper ad, a bank (“We frown on get-rich-quick schemes, but we are not opposed to helping people make money”) features his “I'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position”; the experts in subliminalism at its ad agency reinforced this with a Huck Finnish boy fishing. But a cemetery, selling “dignity and simplicity in a setting of great natural beauty” through a full-page spread in the Los Angeles Times, understandably prefers a close-up of a solemn, elderly Twain along with his epitaph for Susy Clemens.