Stephen Leacock has been called the “Canadian Mark Twain” and this may seem confusing to people who are looking to find Canada’s versions of Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer or jumping frogs. When the comparison between the two men who were writing at the roughly the same time as each other is made, it is not directed toward Twain’s more famous fictions, but his non-fiction. Twain’s reputation as a humorist began while he was still alive and only later expanded to embrace him as the country’s greatest humorist. At the time he was building that reputation, it was deserved primarily on the basis of his non-fiction and not the fiction which would only posthumously come to define his career.
The comparison of Leacock to Twain becomes immediately apparent when reading the Canadian’s essays. The dominant mode of both men is one that made them about a century ahead of their time. Irony drips from the essays of Mark Twain like blood from the scalpel of a freshly slice neck. There is Twain standing behind his victim, a twinkle in his eye as he enjoys a reputation that disallows any immediately suspicion that just because he’s holding the bloody blade he must also have darkness in his cold black heart. Anyone who has read his literary analysis of the writing of James Fenimore Cooper can attest that beneath that twinkle Mr. Twain did possess, somewhere, if very deep inside, a very black heart, indeed:
“Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred other handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leatherstocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.”
The ironic tone here is deceptive. It is fierce—ferociously fierce—but subtle. Twain does not quite possess the light touch of his doppelganger to the Great White North who was busy writing opinions of such subtlety that even when expressing the exact opposite of views he was well-known to hold publicly his irony would often be mistaken for sincerity. Few ever mistake Twain for sincerity when he has sharpened his literary scalpel to a fine edge such as that with which he surgically eviscerates the living fiction of Fenimore Cooper and, fortunately for the sake of avoiding confusing, he usually did bring a sharp blade to an ironic fight with those who deemed unworthy. Among those considered unworthy he even indulges in irony:
“No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted.”
Irony is to be found in the fiction of Mark Twain, of course. But it is in his essays and assorted non-fiction that Twain reveals his true prescience. As if foreseeing the coming of the 21st century when the ironic stance has all but obliterated even the attempt at sincerity from fear of appearing hopelessly uncool, Twain’s essays set the template for an entire epoch of American literature.
