Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

eing their own honorary degree, while Mark Twain was never given this same honor there. So, Yale has
their man and Harvard has theirs. In an effort to not put too much emphasis on the importance of honorary
degrees, it should be pointed out that Harvard has given out thousands of honorary degrees over the years,
however, it does help to level the playing field somehow. With all that being said, it can’t be said
definitively that James was of the same relevance as Twain or that he, or anyone else from his era did or
even could measure up to what Twain did. There just are simply some parties that feel Twain is a literary
god and, like all gods, that kind of idea is largely illogical and unable to be proven.
But, did James just rehash Twain’s style or techniques? This, again, is probably not something that
can be proven. However, if you take a look at their work alone and compare them, it can be suggested that
they are ideological, if anything, twins only. James, from a prose point of view employs a completely
different style, with his tendency to write in a more buttoned up or mannered tone. The boxing world has a
similar comparison in its contemporary history. Two middleweight champions, both of equal importance,
Jake LaMotta and Sugar Ray Leonard were completely different fighter. Leonard was a precise, measured,
and perfectly trained fighter who fought with machine like accuracy, taking out his opponents by striking
pin-point, weighted blows by the dozens until his opponent was defeated due to just not being nearly as
skilled as he was. While, LaMotta, who possessed a great amount of skill, would go about boxing in a
different manner, he would stand in front of his opponent, calling him out, provoking him with harsh New
Yorker lingo and would fight like a Roman in the trenches, exchanging blows endlessly until he outlasted
his opponent, never afraid to get bloodied up. This is Twain, both with the skill and power of LaMotta, in
his use of rough and ready colloquialism, and inexhaustible prose that drives and drives on, until it ends
suddenly, almost leaving a reader exhausted by the end. Meanwhile, there is James, the psychological
writer, using many of the same techniques that Twain would employ, but with the skill of a tacticianer. Just
like in boxing, it is impossible to say which fighter would be more important, both James and Twain
deserve their own place in history for what they had done. No matter where loyalties lie, among the
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