Joan of Arc (1896 original; edició 1989)

This is the only book out of thousands that I have ever abandoned and never come back to. It is so dull and plodding that I just could not pay attention to it. I tried the audio book and just could not concentrate on it. Then I tried to read it with a similar result; I would go through pages and not retain a thing due to its dilatory pace. Maybe it gets better but I have a better use for my time.

Twain considered it his best book (?). ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this history on the life of Joan of Arc. During a recent trip to Quebec, I came upon a statue of Joan and wanted to learn more about her. All I seemed to know was that she had visions, heard voices and was an important figure in the Hundred Years War. Unfortunately, she was doomed from the start of her military career. Throughout history and life, we seem to encounter weak-willed people who perform dastardly acts. Poor Joan appears to have suffered and died at the hands of such characters. I loved every bit of this book and had no idea that Mark Twain had written this memoir. For what it's worth, I highly recommend this book. ( )

econium on Joan of Arc

Words can't even begin to describe this book. It is one you have to read yourself, but it is well worth a read. I don't know how anyone could read this book and not be an awe of Joan of Arc. I can't say it enough, it is one you have to read for yourself. ( )

She was an unschooled country peasant that lifted the fortunes of her uncrowned King and nation on her shoulders, but when she needed them was abandoned. Joan of Arc stands alone among Mark Twain’s bibliography as a historical novel about the one person in history he admires above all others.

Twain’s account of Joan of Arc’s life is written from the perspective of a fictional version of Joan’s former secretary and page Sieur Louis de Conte written at the end of his life to his great-nephews and nieces. The first part of the book focuses on her life in the village of Domremy, essentially where all but the last two years of her life occurred, and the beginning of her visions then quest to fulfill the commission she received. The second part is her successful meeting with the King, formal acknowledgement of the Church that she wasn’t a witch, then her year-long military campaign—with numerous breaks due to political interference and foot dragging by Charles VII—that saw her mission completed, and finally her capture by the Burgundians. The final part of the book was of her year in captivity and the long grueling “legal” process that the English-paid French clergy put her through to murder her as a heretic. The final chapter is of Conte giving a brief account of the feckless Charles VII waiting over two decades to Rehabilitate his benefactor after allowing her to be murdered by not paying her ransom all those years before.

This was a labor of love for Twain to write and it was easy to tell given how professionally researched it was in every detail. While many 20th-Century critics and other Twain admirers don’t like this book because it’s not “classic” Twain because of his praise of Joan given that she’s French, Catholic, and a martyr when he disliked or hated all three; they didn’t seem to understand his hero worship of this teenage girl who put a nation on her shoulders to resurrect its existence. Yet, while this was a straight historical novel there are touches of Twain especially in Conte’s “relating” the adventures of the Domremy boys when they were not in Joan’s presence, especially Paladin.

Joan of Arc is not the typical Mark Twain work, but that doesn’t mean one can not appreciate it for well, if not professionally, researched historical novel that it is. ( )