What Is Man? and Other Essays

About the book

The title work stages a conversation between an Old Man and a Young Man about whether people act freely or follow motives formed by temperament and experience. Their disagreement repeatedly returns to claims about generosity, merit, training, and the satisfaction sought in apparently selfless acts. The surrounding essays broaden the volume through personal loss, remembered turning points, language, literary friendship, travel, and comic practical experience. This variety prevents the collection from becoming merely an abstract statement of one theory. The account of Jean's death, for example, places grief beside the argumentative and humorous voices found elsewhere. Readers encounter Twain testing different forms of explanation, sometimes through sustained philosophical dialogue and sometimes through the resistance of a particular memory or incident to a comfortably general account of human life.

• Motivation and freedom
• Memory
• Human explanation

Why read it

For a varied late collection that places a provocative argument about human conduct beside intimate recollection and comic observation.

Dialogue and essay collection · English text