Thanks for the post.
What is striking about his comments is his obvious contempt for historical places, and what took place in them.
Even if your an agnostic, the Biblical stories did take place. The sites where they took place add perspective to the stories. So even if you don’t believe in God, the people who wrote those stories did. They did exist. They did have lives in these places. They did document things that took place there. You can find interest in that.
People over there could come to Twain’s (Clemens’) home in the states and find nothing of value there. The fact that a well known person lived there, would be of note, and cause them to picture that setting whenever they thought of him.
The same could be said of places and things he touched on in his writings.
Some times folks are too cute by half, and tell others a lot more than they might wish to have.
Twain seems a bit of a jerk in this presentation.
It was just Twain's style. When he wrote about the area I live in Roughing It in 1861 when he commented that "[the area is so desolate] that even the birds carry provisions." Actually it is spectacular scenery here with 14,000' mountains and miles of beautiful open landscapes. People from all over the World come to visit this area now. He was near what later became Yosemite Nat'l Park when he wrote those comments.
Satire is so often wasted on the educated! Thin-skinned Christians are no better at judging his work than those idiots who call him a racist because Huck Finn repeatedly uses the term nigger.
Though Twain was a misanthrope, there are glimmers of respect for true faith in his writings though he openly called out the hucksters and the fools. If you really think his judgement of the trinket salesmen harsh, how do you view another’s anger that drove Him to pick up a whip?
He was a jerk I suppose, but an entertaining one. My recollection he liked nothing on that cruise. About the best thing he had to say about anyone is that the Brits had the good sense to carry their own soap, knowing no one else in Europe used soap. Funny what you remember.