The Statesman and the Storyteller

February 1, 2016
Documentarian Zwonitzer examines the split in an otherwise warm acquaintance between John Hay—an aide to Abraham Lincoln before becoming his secretary of state—and Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), in this puzzlingly conceived account. The relationship between the two cooled around 1900 over America’s imperialist war in the Philippines, which Hay, as senior American statesman, helped direct for presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Clemens concluded that the U.S. had gone too far in trying to defeat the Philippine rebels and went public with his criticism. Unfortunately, that’s weak scaffolding for a book, and as winningly as Zwonitzer unfolds the tale, it’s really a parallel biography of two men whose lives scarcely interacted in significant ways. Given Zwonitzer’s interest in the Spanish-American War, his focus should have been on Hay, who has recently been the subject of John Taliaferro’s fine biography All the Great Prizes. Clemens, while brilliantly described, seems an afterthought and incidental to the main action. What Zwonitzer accomplishes is adding novelistic color to his rendering of both men in their years of friendship. Zwonitzer makes all of his subjects here spring alive, and the book is a delightful read, even if the central conceit doesn’t fully work. Agent: Philippa Brophy, Sterling Lord Literistic.

Zwonitzer follows the lives of old friends John Hay and Mark Twain as they achieved international prominence late in life, also paying significant attention to Theodore Roosevelt. Narrator Joe Barrett's strength is his skill in expressing the sense of the text and telling the story naturally. His voice is curiously husky, almost hoarse, at times sounding strained, but that doesn't distract or impede his ability to tell the story or to indicate different speakers, such as Twain, or Britons, or women. His accents, though somewhat unconvincing, at least serve as indicators (of national origin, etc.); his best effort is the slight drawl he gives to Twain. Overall, Barrett's intelligence and ability to control expression and pacing keep this history pleasantly listenable throughout. W.M. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine