A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

Riddles and confusion. You can see in this strange little novel that Mark Twain has a few scores to settle with the Catholic Church and romance literature, but I'm not as sure about the good old American can-do capitalism. Is that parody, or is it good old American can-do capitalism? I tried this novel when I was a kid, attracted by the time travel science fiction premise, but bogged down. I started over and finished more recently but it certainly does have dull passages. The premise is only a device and there's little here to tickle the imagination about time travel. Mostly the point seems to be that the time traveler, Hank Morgan, is way ahead of the people in King Arthur's time in 6th-century England. It's possible that the point is Morgan only thinks he's way ahead of everybody (human hubris, don't you know), but it appears more likely he actually is way ahead, as he quickly sets up as a tycoon, building factories and getting that backward world up to speed with dynamite, a stock market, and even telephones. Good job! If he is ultimately defeated—because people are sheep, or something—he still knows what's best, and we're probably still intended to agree with him. I know I do, on general principles: democracy is to be preferred over theocracy and/or feudalism. The structure is episodic, per the usual Twain, but these adventures just aren't that interesting. He meets a woman who serves as his guide, calls her the most boring person he has ever known, and sure enough, the whole thing collapses in on itself every time she speaks. And it's not that funny or effective to make your main character a basic egotist. He's not sympathetic and his accomplishments are not at all believable. Some of the things he claims to be doing give some idea how far back in history this is set. He builds a match factory so he can smoke, for example. He might note in passing that smoking is entirely unknown in that time, and really matches should be more impressive to them than just evidence of his peculiar habit (and where did he get the chemicals and facility, etc.). I guess it falls under humor, which doesn't always age well and doesn't always work for me here. Twain obviously has more sympathy and respect for Connecticut Yankees than Knights of the Round Table, which I can go along with to a degree. Perhaps the best part of this book is Morgan's unswerving contempt for royalty and nobility. Huzzah! But a grasping American-style hustler is not much of an improvement. If that's the point, it ends up tiresome.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.