The sketches of Mark Twain...

"PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR, Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance."

- Mark Twain

I DO NOT RECALL, but I may have used this quote before. It is no matter; it is acerbic Twain on introducing his novel "Huckleberry Finn", which is truly a novel of adventure and living with a wild spirit. Some authors have to insist upon occasion that there are no subtleties, because critics tend to heave assumptions about them and eventually no-one really knows what the novel is about because there are so many discussions and variations of perception. Not everyone likes a preface, and some people don't even insist that they know fully what the book they have read is about. Twain's amusing introduction is a sly recognition that he himself was simply writing from a loose end and the untamed aspect of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". 

  

"We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. " (ch. 12, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

A hot-breathed and alcoholic father imprisons "Huck" in a wooden hut nearby the Mississippi river and after breaking free he rafts away towards liberty and vagabondage. Charismatic tricksters and swindlers are met upon the way, and although the world Huck is met with is akin to a medicine show so overflowing with deception and life that it looks like at any moment it might go up in flames. Really, Twain is just describing the world he perceives: a world in which not many folks are on the level with each other but that is no matter; as long as that shambling raft continues to break the water, it's fine. There's an understanding here:

"H'aint we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town." (ch. 26, Ibid)

It's similar in "Roughing It", that ramshackle description of the pioneer's journey to the West. Twain never wants to settle in one place; he understands it all too well. If Twain means to have no central plot or thread leading towards the end, other than the journey West itself then maybe that's plot enough in itself; he never much thought about what what he was doing in traveling out there, so what does that say about the rest of people? He shows bewilderment at sectarianism in Utah, bemusement at the hollowed out realms of the "gold rush" and laments often at the requirement placed upon him to work. It is a literary prod at himself and the folks that he meets; a veritable accusation: "I don't know what I'm doing but you don't either.". All he seems to maintain is a sense of identity and value for telling things as they are, which is something Twain is (or should be) revered for:

"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."

- Notebook entry, January or February 1894, Mark Twain's Notebook, ed. Albert Bigelow Paine (1935)

Really, what else could Twain have done but note down what he saw and speak in good faith what he thought, either through an almost slapstick irreverence for narrative (as found in "Huckleberry Finn", "Roughing It" and "A Tramp Abroad") or speak quite seriously at times as in "Tom Sawyer;" something that can be tiresome as an author. So, take away motive, meaning and plot, then replace it with the faith in which it is written and the faith to observation and understanding of life that characterized Twain so well. Then you will find before you a book that is as filled with value as life itself and gives a certain timelessness to the author himself. 

"Preparations for escape."

This is how you evade scrutiny and write not to get people to think about one thing, but simply to provoke the reader to think.