Organization

Although Charles Neider's version of the The Autobiography of Mark Twain is organized chronologically, the material within each chapter still reflects Twain's original intent to impose no structure on the material other than that which was created by his freeform dictations. This lack of formal organization forces the reader to pay greater attention to details, since the details are not neatly packaged. The lack of formal organization also creates links between subjects that might not be there in a truly chronological autobiography, and thus provides an insight into the author's thought patterns.

For example, in the chapter where Twain first talks about his mother, he describes her extreme compassion, writing, "my mother would not have allowed a rat to be restrained of its liberty." In the next paragraph he abruptly switches gears, and talks about how, when he was a boy in Missouri, "everybody was poor but didn't...