The Bohemian moment would continue in Boston, New York, and London, and would achieve immortality in the writings of Mark Twain. But as Harte’s star ascends-drawing attention from eastern taste makers such as the Atlantic Monthly-Twain flounders, questioning whether he should be a writer at all. Young and ambitious, Twain and Harte form the Bohemian core. The star of the moment is Bret Harte, a rising figure on the national scene and mentor to both Stoddard and Coolbrith. Twain and the Bohemians find inspiration in their surroundings: the dark ironies of frontier humor, the extravagant tales told around the campfires, and the youthful irreverence of the new world being formed in the west. He finds that the war has only made California richer: the economy booms, newspapers and magazines thrive, and the dream of transcontinental train travel promises to soon become a reality. Twain arrives by stagecoach in San Francisco in 1863 and is fast drunk on champagne, oysters, and the city’s intoxicating energy. Ben Tarnoff’s elegant, atmospheric history reveals how these four pioneering western writers would together create a new American literature, unfettered by the heavy European influence that dominated the East. The bards of the moment are the Bohemians: a young Mark Twain, fleeing the draft and seeking adventure literary golden boy Bret Harte struggling gay poet Charles Warren Stoddard and beautiful, haunted Ina Coolbrith, poet and protectorate of the group. A global seaport, home to immigrants from five continents, San Francisco has become a complex urban society virtually overnight. Far from the front lines, the city at the western edge roars. The Gold Rush has ended the Civil War threatens to tear apart the country. The Bohemians begins in 1860s San Francisco.

Harvard Book Store welcomes author BEN TARNOFF for a discussion of his book The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature.

The Bohemians by Ben Tarnoff