Buying Siberia

Abstract Mark Twain’s writings about money, finance, and economics are puzzling in many respects, one being that while other similarly minded authors gravitated toward social realism, Twain’s financial fictions use some combination of burlesque, allegory, and melodrama. This article accounts for this generic mélange by working from the basic premise that Twain’s economic thinking has less to do with coherent ideas about political economy than with a quirky monetary imagination that is at the heart of his humor and creativity. Using Colonel Sellers as a primary case and example, this article explores the connections between Twain’s generic mixtures and his monetary imagination through the behavioral economic theories of Daniel Kahneman, especially his concept of thinking, fast and slow.