Short Story Review, “About Barbers” by Mark Twain

Short Story Review, “About Barbers” by Mark Twain

Don’t believe in this story.  It’s a detailed account given by someone who has religious affliction and stationary prejudice- in the “fiction” he (the narrator) believes everything in a barber’s shop of his time represents the whole history there has ever been with barbers and barber shops.  Stationary prejudice like this can lead a believer into thinking that anything different compared to the nature he’s used to is devilish and this religious affliction only shows ignorance of humanity’s changes in societies all over.  His account includes truths about what’s in the barber shop he’s going to before a train ride, but reveals a false life from misjudgment.  This is most certainly understandable.  Without video, without internet, without movies, without film, how could he ever know what any society is like?  Truth on his line is figurative where it counts and in the end leaves us with a distortion of reality.  People didn’t have cars back then either.  On a side note, Wilcomb E. Washburn in his book Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell, 1625-1660 suggests that driving in the wilderness today takes about an hour when the moment permits it whereas walking or wagon-loading, old fashion, could’ve taken years.  What does this mean?  This means that the narrator of Mark Twain’s “About Barbers” should’ve known better about nature because of the train rides he’d likely take.  With there being no mention as to what train he was late for there’s a lot of room for interpretation and I’m forced into bookish manners from Twain’s missing pieces to the puzzle.  Much is to be said over this problem.  Then again, perhaps Mark Twain would’ve assumed that readers would’ve been eligible for both fashion and religion since the narrator believes an individual’s hair is cut by a barber’s plow for eternal magic.  At least the wrong judgement is very clean and gives up doubts for truths.  Seriously, how does that help me?!  I’m not just going to take a mixed bag of facts and myths while we’re at the story for entertainment purposes, especially when knowledge is pleasing and useful.  Hair gets its luck from whatever local source imagined and built and it’s not uncommon for a barber shop to die with its virtues and individualism.  Bottles and other barber materials are expressed about well in the sense of facts and yet bad judgement doesn’t make them applicable.  Fashion, as in barbers and hairs, often involves the vain attempt at defining reality while an assumption for halted discoveries is hardly a creed.   

https://books.google.com/books/about/About_Barbers.html?id=c_f1jgEACAAJ