Chasing the Last Laugh: Mark Twain's Raucous and Redemptive Round-the-World Comedy Tour

by Richard Zacks Narrated by George Guidall

Overview

From Richard Zacks, bestselling author of*Island of Vice*and*The Pirate Hunter,*a rich and lively account of how Mark Twain's late-life adventures abroad helped him recover from financial disaster*and family tragedy-and revived his world-class sense of humor

Mark Twain, the highest-paid writer in America in 1894, was also one of the nation's worst investors. “There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate,” he wrote. “When he can't afford it and when he can.” The publishing company*Twain owned was failing; his investment in a typesetting device was bleeding red ink. After losing hundreds of thousands of dollars back when a beer cost a nickel, he found himself neck-deep in debt. His heiress wife, Livy, took the setback hard. “I have a perfect*horror*and heart-sickness over it,” she wrote. “I cannot get away from the feeling that business failure means disgrace.”
* * *But Twain vowed to Livy he would pay back every penny. And so, just when the fifty-nine-year-old, bushy-browed icon imagined that he would be settling into literary lionhood, telling jokes at gilded dinners, he forced himself to mount the “platform” again, embarking on a round-the-world stand-up comedy tour. No author had ever done that. He cherry-picked his best stories-such as stealing his first watermelon and buying a bucking bronco-and spun them into a ninety-minute performance.
* * *Twain trekked across the American West and onward by ship to the faraway lands of Australia, New*Zealand, Tasmania, India, Ceylon, and South Africa.*He rode an elephant twice and visited the Taj Mahal.*He saw Zulus dancing and helped sort diamonds at*the Kimberley mines. (He failed to slip away with a*sparkly souvenir.) He played shuffleboard on cruise*ships and battled captains for the right to smoke*in peace. He complained that his wife and daughter made him shave and change his shirt every day.
* * *The great American writer fought off numerous*illnesses and travel nuisances to circle the globe and*earn a huge payday and a tidal wave of applause.*Word of his success, however, traveled slowly enough that one American newspaper reported that he had*died penniless in London. That's when he famously*quipped: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
* * *Throughout his quest, Twain was aided by cutthroat Standard Oil tycoon H.H. Rogers, with*whom he had struck a deep friendship, and he was*hindered by his own lawyer (and future secretary*of state) Bainbridge Colby, whom he deemed “head idiot of this century.”
* * *In*Chasing the Last Laugh,*author Richard Zacks,*drawing extensively on unpublished material in notebooks and letters from Berkeley's ongoing Mark Twain*Project, chronicles a poignant chapter in the author's*life-one that began in foolishness and bad choices*but culminated in humor, hard-won wisdom, and*ultimate triumph.

Editorial Reviews

JULY 2016 - AudioFile

Zacks gives a detailed account of Twain’s late-in-life around-the-world speaking tour to recoup his fortunes after bad investments. Narrator George Guidall has the natural gift of geniality, bringing the listener unobtrusively into sympathy with the book. He expresses the sense of the text conversationally but clearly and denotes Twain by making his voice deeper and gruffer, an effective technique. As for other voices, Guidall doesn’t distinguish them beyond softening his speech slightly for females, but that’s sufficient. While he tends to insert pauses randomly in some sentences, that harmless mannerism won’t distract most listeners. The audiobook’s level of detail is sometimes tiresome, but Guidall keeps the narrative, like Twain, sailing along, making the listening a pleasure. W.M. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

★ 02/15/2016
In 1895, at the age of 60, Mark Twain, the nation’s highest-paid author at the time, faced financial disaster. To raise cash, he launched a yearlong lecture tour of 122 performances spanning several continents. As Zacks (The Pirate Hunter) relates in this deeply entertaining account, Twain’s rugged journey was redemptive. While restoring his spirit through the excitement of travel, the laughter of audiences, and the admiration of global high society, Twain made good money. Zacks’s book brims with side adventures, including intercontinental sea voyages and visits to African diamond mines. Australia welcomed Twain as a superstar with billboards calling him “the greatest humorist of the century.” Twain was fevered and sick in India, a land he nonetheless ended up adoring. His precarious finances became a well-known gossip item, but Zacks stresses that the public loved him all the more for his fortitude in crisis and successful efforts to pay off his debts. Twain spent four years in Europe after the tour and then returned to America to receive unprecedented tribute and adulation. Zacks’s narrative is well-researched with rich detail, some drawn from unpublished archival material at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, and it will strike ardent Twain fans and history lovers as fresh and inspiring. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

"[A] colorful and fun read."
—The Washington Post 

"[D]ense in action and experience. . . . Chasing the Last Laugh brings Twain’s comedy close to its wider context, and enlivens both. By situating the writer in his world and his time, biography actually makes Mark Twain funnier.”
—Flavorwire 

"Not since Michael Shelden's spellbinding Mark Twain, Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years has such an impossible-to-put-down book emerged that yields fresh information about episodes in Twain's life on every page.... Zacks manages the nearly impossible feat of maintaining the momentum of his narrative while filling in the behind-the-scenes factors that add immeasurably to our grasp of the significance of each occurrence.... By committing to narrate only a portion of a pivotal decade--a biographical period often neglected except by scholars interested in Twain's growing distaste for the colonial imperialism he witnessed at firsthand--Zacks is able to explain many incidents with greater contextual background than any full-length biography can possibly allocate to them. The result is a joy to read and a lesson in what can be done to bring an era to life."
—Mark Twain Journal 

“[In] Chasing the Last Laugh, Richard Zacks’s entertaining account of the international lecture tour Twain undertook in 1895 to pay his debts...Zacks’s absorbingly detailed reconstructions of [Twain’s] performances—the carefully honed timing, the shrewdly reworked and reshuffled greatest hits—will increase your appreciation of him as a show-biz craftsman.... Zacks packs page after page with the flavorful marvels he’s culled from the writings of Twain and others.” 
—Bookforum

"Zacks is a gifted storyteller in his own right, which is as it should be; a master storyteller such as Mark Twain deserves nothing less. He brings that world to vivid life and finds the nuances in Twain’s interpersonal interactions.... Through thorough investigation of Twain’s notes – as well as the letters he exchanged with his two daughters who remained home – Zacks has recreated a small piece of an important and fascinating life. It’s a beautifully researched work.... This book services Twain fans of any degree – there’s plenty here for the hardcore, but the story is so quintessentially Twain that it works even if you’ve only a passing familiarity with his work. It’s an intimate look at an incredible experience, with ample helpings of the humor that made its subject so great.... Chasing the Last Laugh is a funny and revealing reminder of just how great he was."
—Main Edge

"Twain could not have picked a better chronicler than Zacks.... [H]e brings a deep knowledge of U.S. history to the task of viewing the late-19th century world through the eyes of one of the keenest literary minds America ever produced.... Zacks’ writing...shines.”
—St. Louis Post Dispatch
 
"Zacks does an admirable job of giving us a taste of Twain’s performances and quoting his best commentary without, for the most part, overwhelming the narrative with block quotes.... Zacks also casts new light on Twain himself."
—Washington Free Beacon

"[T]horoughly enjoyable.... In fascinating detail, Zacks documents the construction of Twain’s talks, for which material was mined from his books." 
—Columbus Dispatch 

“[D]eeply entertaining. . . . Zacks’s narrative is well-researched with rich detail and it will strike ardent Twain fans and history lovers as fresh and inspiring."
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"An amusing, singular account of the world tour by the nation's most famous humorist. . . . [A] rollicking history perfect for Twain's countless fans."  
—Kirkus 

“[F]ast-paced. . . . A diverting—and revealing—look at a neglected episode in Twain’s life.”
— Booklist

“[I]mpeccably researched and thor­oughly engaging. . . . Zacks...is an accom­plished guide through Twain’s travel escapades."
—Bookpage 

“Chasing the Last Laugh is a funny and poignant account of Mark Twain’s late, epic struggle against debt and death. Richard Zacks has a brilliant eye for detail and the narrative gifts needed to bring out all that is strange, zany, and ultimately inspiring in this remarkable story of money, honor, and literary genius.”
—Stephen Greenblatt, Pulitzer Prize-winning author The Swerve: How the World Became Modern and Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
 
“Chasing the Last Laugh is an intimate and fascinating account of what was basically the world’s weirdest book tour, starring the funniest writer America has ever produced. Mark Twain’s own notes and letters enrich every chapter, illuminating not only his cranky genius but the private fears and turmoil that compelled him to pack up his family and hit the road.”
— Carl Hiaasen, bestselling author of Bad Monkey and Strip Tease
 
“Chasing the Last Laugh is something of a miracle. This book will be a joy and revelation for Twain fans. There is a lot new here. Twain’s trip around the world—in which he speaks truth, through humor, everywhere—is a wonderful lens through which to see the dawn of America, the collapse of the British Empire, the early stirrings of colonial discontent in India. A new world is just being born and we’re along for the ride as the sharpest observer watches and narrates it all. It is, also, a really good business book.”
—Adam Davidson, Co-Host of NPR’s Planet Money
 
 “If you read only one book on Mark Twain, I would recommend Chasing the Last Laugh. There is everything you could want here: Twain’s infinite humor and forbearance, the glistening world of the British Empire at its peak, five years on the road with possibly the funniest and wisest American of his time. Richard Zacks manages this vast subject with enviable skill. It’s a great read, entertaining as well as deeply moving, and I will be circling back to its pages soon.”
— Jay Parini, author of Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal and The Last Station
 
“A fresh and absorbing account (involving carbuncles, platypus jokes, and a surprising bottom line) of an aging Mark Twain's outlandish passage from ruin to glory.”
— Roy Blount Jr., author of Save Room for Pie

Library Journal

★ 04/01/2016
Zacks has penned popular books on subjects ranging from the pirate Captain Kidd to Theodore Roosevelt's antivice crusade in New York. His latest is a compelling exploration of a tumultuous period in the life of the American author Mark Twain. In 1895, prior to turning 60, Twain began an exhausting world tour to earn money to pay off creditors after his publishing firm collapsed. Embarrassed and nearly broke, he spent a year traveling constantly, while lecturing to spellbound audiences in North America, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa. He then wrote an account of his adventures in England and drifted throughout Europe with his family. By the time he finally returned home in 1900, he had paid off his debts in full and earned worldwide acclaim. Any book about Twain during those years can't fail to be lively, but Zacks's fluid prose and attention to broader contexts take his narrative even further, making it a rich and often revealing work, unmatched in its intimate details of the lecture tour and Twain's financial problems. VERDICT A welcome contribution to Twain scholarship, Zacks's book will also be relished by general readers. Recommended for most collections.—R. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA

JULY 2016 - AudioFile

Zacks gives a detailed account of Twain’s late-in-life around-the-world speaking tour to recoup his fortunes after bad investments. Narrator George Guidall has the natural gift of geniality, bringing the listener unobtrusively into sympathy with the book. He expresses the sense of the text conversationally but clearly and denotes Twain by making his voice deeper and gruffer, an effective technique. As for other voices, Guidall doesn’t distinguish them beyond softening his speech slightly for females, but that’s sufficient. While he tends to insert pauses randomly in some sentences, that harmless mannerism won’t distract most listeners. The audiobook’s level of detail is sometimes tiresome, but Guidall keeps the narrative, like Twain, sailing along, making the listening a pleasure. W.M. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2016-02-03
An amusing, singular account of the world tour by the nation's most famous humorist, chased by creditors. Zacks (Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York, 2012, etc.) journeys with Mark Twain (1835-1910) on his around-the-world tour in 1896, when he peddled his "greatest hits" to live admiring audiences in order to gain enough money to keep his creditors at home in check. Having made several disastrous investments—e.g., buying a publishing house and putting his nephew in charge and backing James W. Paige's pie-in-the-sky mechanical typesetter—Twain also had to support his heiress wife, Livy, and three daughters in grand style in Paris. On the advice of his friend and fellow investor, oil baron H.H. Rogers, Twain turned over all of his assets, including his book copyrights and Paige stock, to his wife to avoid persecution and embarked, with Livy and middle daughter Clara, on a world tour as essentially a stand-up comedian. He offered snippets from his more hilarious material while drumming up thousands of dollars to pay the creditors. Zacks has thoroughly mined the notebooks Twain kept on the tour—which detailed his "almost bizarre" range of interests: "religious preferences in ant colonies, worst public floggings, the anonymity of executioners, the insecurities of God"—and letters home to the two daughters who stayed behind, while tracking the family's progress across Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and London. Apparently, Twain was beginning to enjoy himself immensely, and these snippets of his performances are endearing and affecting. Although the news of the sudden death of daughter Susy in 1896 dampened the family's homecoming, Twain was able to recoup many of his losses with new publishing and magazine contracts—and thanks to the financial wiliness of Rogers. Between the dizzying sums lost and gained, Zacks offers a rollicking history perfect for Twain's countless fans.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171817626
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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