“The Pleasures of the Text”: Mark Twain’s Following the Equator

Abstract

Mark Twain’s two-volume Following the Equator 1897 is a fascinating travelogue, displaying all the characteristic touches of the author: keen powers of observation, ironic commentary, scathing wit, and a vividly evocative narrative style. The second volume, which relates Twain’s trip to India, achieves moreover a fine balancing act: there is in it both a colonial discourse and its simultaneously oppositional subtext.