The Not-at-All-Funny Life of Mark Twain

In his last, most pathetic years, Mark Twain threw himself behind the crackpot theory that the true author of Shakespeare’s plays may have been Francis Bacon. View MoreRon Chernow’s Mark Twain forces a similar conclusion about its subject: clearly an idiot, and a born sucker. Mark Twain By Ron ChernowTwain’s exposure to bad ideas had begun much earlier. “Mark Twain had given the world laughter and now had gotten only misery in return,” Chernow writes. This article appears in the June 2025 print edition with the headline “The Not at All Funny Life of Mark Twain.”