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The American Claimant

Chapter 5: THE WEATHER IN THIS BOOK.
By Mark Twain
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About This Book

The narrative follows Colonel Mulberry Sellers and a convoluted claim to an English earldom, setting off identity swaps, impersonations, and transatlantic confusion involving a viscount, a claimant, family members, and assorted comic figures. Episodes include domestic scheming, a hotel fire, stolen goods, misdirected funerary remains, courtships, and a culminating marriage, all rendered in farce and satirical observation. The structure is episodic and anecdotal, alternating humorous set pieces with pointed mockery of social pretensions, commercial opportunism, and the clash of manners. Sellers’ inventiveness and hopeful scheming anchor the action while repeated misunderstandings produce ironic reversals and public spectacle.

THE WEATHER IN THIS BOOK.

No weather will be found in this book. This is an attempt to pull a book through without weather. It being the first attempt of the kind in fictitious literature, it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth the while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in just the mood.

Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing breaks up an author’s progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad for both reader and author.

Of course weather is necessary to a narrative of human experience. That is conceded. But it ought to be put where it will not be in the way; where it will not interrupt the flow of the narrative. And it ought to be the ablest weather that can be had, not ignorant, poor-quality, amateur weather. Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article of it. The present author can do only a few trifling ordinary kinds of weather, and he cannot do those very good. So it has seemed wisest to borrow such weather as is necessary for the book from qualified and recognized experts—giving credit, of course. This weather will be found over in the back part of the book, out of the way. See Appendix. The reader is requested to turn over and help himself from time to time as he goes along.