Mark Twain

He was guid.

have only read "tom sawyer abroad", though. fun OK but a bit boring and not great. maybe it was a joke

I will read the others, one day

maybe you remember, too!

We have at least improved on the previous state of this thread!

I have it, yes, in one of these collections, along with the "unfinished" "huck finn and tom sawyer among the indians"

it's funny to think about an author's feelings about their most famous creation(s)

"Maryborough is a railway station with a town attached"

haha pwned

I love Tom Sawyer but still have never made it through Huck Finn all the way, despite seeing film versions and so forth. Go figure.

As for his other work, all hail The Innocents Abroad -- well worth finding the collection of original newspaper pieces it's based on.

I like the way RJG likes him.

If anyone ever finds his "collected" writings anywhere, or "Letters From Earth," a compendium of off-hand jottings, serious first drafts that never went anywhere, etc., you should get it; his story about the alarm system he buys for his new house is just staggering and must have just killed the crowd when Twain told it round the dinner table. His unlikely combination of conservatism and practicality -- and his preference for the essay and short form -- remind me both of Thurber and Flann O'Brien, but he's more open-hearted than those two, I think; and also sloppier.

huck's one-line review of pilgrim's progress - "a book about a man who left his family, it didn't say why" - is one of my favorite things ever.

"Life itself is only a vision, a dream."

It was electrical. By God! I had had that very thought a thousand times in my musings!

"Nothing exists; all is a dream. God -- man -- the world -- the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars -- a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space -- and you!"

"I!"

"And you are not you -- you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream -- your dream, creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me....

WTF?! The episode with Tom Sawyer shows how horrible and selfish and spoiled TS truly is, making Jim the pawn of his stupid little games based on stupid books when he knows the whole time (SPOILAR WERNING!) that Jim was freed already. It's hardly a save the day type moment and it's completely in keeping with the satirical and cynical tone of the book.

it's funny that tom sawyer and huck finn are inevitably grouped together since they really have little in common besides featuring the same characters. the former is a mostly affectionate, sentimental reverie about childhood with some funny moments and the latter is a bitterly realistic, unsentimental attack on a corrupt, hypocritical, basically evil society. twain went back to visit his hometown between the writing of the two books and was shocked at how much reality conflicted with his vivid memories of growing up; dealing with that was surely part of the reason it took him 7 years or so to write HF.

Which would be nice to believe, but it's not really true. Twain didn't really have a clue how to finish the book, and the last few chapters are self-admitted "Will this do?" climax. I don't think Twain intended Jim's entrapment to be satirical, or a comment on Tom's character. I think he just thinks its a good wheeze -- a bit of old-fashioned slapstick to round off the seriousness.

"Puddn'head Wilson", though, is fantastically underread -- possibly the only of his (novel-length) comedies that doesn't compromise it's satirical conceit, as "Huck Finn" does.

I haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

^^^ http://byfiles.storage.live.com/y1pCSbryvw6ox8gIpCxTJOyCTJS4uEntiS5oJdKNuFyozrfkCLIdczygp6a0xwz_UriTtfNLP-bfJg

he had some outspoken opinions, that mark twain

The Mysterious Stranger is scabrous and hot to the touch, a fabulous read. J.D. otm about Tom Sawyer's cameo in HW.

"1601" is class.

He's got a new essay out.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98248440

lol, when I'm in Austin next week Hal Holbrook is performing Mark Twain Tonight! Pretty sure I'm not going, but how weird wd it be to see the same actor doing solo show 40 years after I saw it on TV?

this is INSANE

is it real?

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/after-keeping-us-waiting-for-a-century-mark-twain-will-finally-reveal-all-1980695.html

Exactly a century after rumours of his death turned out to be entirely accurate, one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published.

The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.

That milestone has now been reached, and in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography. The eventual trilogy will run to half a million words, and shed new light on the quintessentially American novelist.

Holy shit!

"By publishing Twain's book in full, we hope that people will be able to come to their own complete conclusions about what sort of a man he was."

Er, maybe what sort of man he was at the end of his life, when he was notoriously bitter. But since I've read about 90% of his published books, I'm pretty sure I'll look into this one, too.

"Although it is difficult to predict much with confidence from my present and somewhat precarious perch, I am calling it right now: Destruye's Rubies will get a 10.0, 96 years to the date from the very day on which I affix my signature to this page. hen fap or die, Samuel L. C."

holy shit - is that real

Yeah, what Aimless said there -- I have a feeling this thing is going to out-bitter Bierce.

I only riffled through a copy of the autobio (got it for bro-in-law), but it looks more like "notes on an autobio," no seeming chronological or other structural organization.

Went w/ ian to last day of Morgan Library exhib:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/books/18twain.html

also saw 1931 film version of A Connecticut Yankee on TCM last week starring Will Rogers! Haven't read the book yet, but nearly all the scathing social satire seemed excised in favor of pre-Python anachronisma and lariat routines, tho.

Pretty good

yeah, I read some of the General Grant stuff, pretty labored.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/131507

The Mysterious Stranger is scabrous and hot to the touch, a fabulous read [...]

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, October 1, 2008 10:40 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup!

Any thoughts on what the definitive version is, though? I just read what I'm assuming is the 1916 publication compiled by Paine (the one set in Austria), but Wiki informs me that it has since been deemed a fraud.

Larry Kramer sez he was hella gay

pics or it didn't happen