Recently, I just finished reading No. 44, or The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain's final novel. Now, I'm not that big of a Mark Twain fan; the last book of his I remember reading was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer back in 5th grade. I just happened to pick it up while at the Mark Twain House one summer, and it seemed to be one of the more interesting out of all his books. Reading it, it is like almost nothing I have ever read before. Mark Twain certainly had something he wanted to say with this story.

I wish he didn't die before saying it. (Warning: I am going to spoil the whole book, but given the way it ends there's not much to spoil.)

The book takes place in 1490's Austria, where the young August Feldner serves as a printer's apprentice out of an abandoned castle. One day, a, well, mysterious stranger arrives at the castle, going by the wonderful moniker "Number 44, New Series 864,962". Seemingly being a similar age to August, 44 begins to work as an apprentice in the shop in exchange for room and board, secretly befriending August and revealing to him what the back cover describes as "the hidden possibilities of the mind". A better description would be absurdity. 44 can speak to animals, read August's mind, prevent August from talking whenever he feels like it, take the form of anybody he desires, summon things from throughout time and space(one time he calls up a minstrel. The racist vaudeville kind), create duplicates of people, turn time backwards and assumedly anything else a mystical being that lives outside of reality can do. 44's main goal appears to make the local magician, Balthasar Hoffman, out to be one of the greatest magicians that ever lived for undetermined reasons. This is mostly done by messing with print shop affairs. For instance, most of the printing staff go on strike(in the 15th century, mind you) in an attempt to force the master to essentially fire 44 because he seems like a show-off(and honestly, he kinda was). In order to solve this problem, 44 first summons "spirits" to run the presses, and then creates duplicates of the entire print house staff, August included, to finish a book order. August joins in the magic fun too, being granted a secret word by 44 that makes him turn invisible.

While all of this sounds like insanity of the highest order, I enjoy this. I love absurdity, and the plot twists get wonderfully convoluted. For instance, August gets caught up in a love triangle with himself. You see, 44 didn't actually make duplicates of August and the others; he brought their dream-selves, the you you are when you dream, into the real, waking world. Somehow, the dream-selves have their own personality and even their own names. August discovers that whenever he touches Marget, the printmaster's niece, while invisible, it hypnotizes her and brings her dream-self, Elisabeth von Arnim, to the fore. Elisabeth is head-over-heels in love with August, who she calls "Martin von Giesbach"--but Marget is indifferent, if not repulsed. Instead, she loves August's dream self, Emil Schwarz. I'm not joking, this is all in the book.

The book was perfectly enjoyable--and then it just...ended. No real climax, no resolution, nothing. One moment August and 44 are gathering the skeleton ghosts of everybody who ever lived, and the next, 44 is telling August the world doesn't exist, it is all a dream, he is just a thought, God is terrible, and that's it! The book literally ends with August floating stunned and alone in the cosmic void. We never learn exactly why 44 is inflating the magician's reputation(besides the fact that he can), the siege on the castle by Father Adolf is left hanging, and it all just seems incredibly abrupt. I was having the time of my life reading this rollicking semi-satiric gothic novel, and then it ends with this big philosophical beatdown out of nowhere. I felt betrayed, somehow, conned out of a proper ending. Twain had apparently written this "ending" four years before the chapters immediately proceeding it; while beginning with the end in mind is a vital skill in writing and in life, it could've used a few more chapters before getting there.

This idea and story seemed to be very important for Twain to tell. He worked on and off on this concept for almost twelve years, between 1897 and 1908. There were three different versions with wildly varied plots and scenes between them( the one I read was the longest and supposedly "most complete"). The most famous version of the story, published in 1916 and heavily edited by Twain's biographer, was based on the first draft, which shares the setting of Eseldorf, Austria, but not much else. Looking at what is here of this story, I feel a little sorry for Mark Twain. He wanted to get this story right. There was an important sentiment here, even if it truly is "religion is terrible". Maybe it was going to be his swan song before he left with Halley's Comet in 1910. It is a travesty that he could never do this idea of his justice. If it's anything like the way the story was portrayed in the stop-motion film The Adventures of Mark Twain, it deserves to be read.