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Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2008 > November > 30 > Entry
the brilliance of Mark Twain
Today is the birthday of Mark Twain. He is one of my favorite writers. In my view he was also our greatest American humorist.
I’m re-reading Twain’s autobiography. In the preface he prepares us for what is to follow. Twain begins:
“In this autobiography I shall keep in mind the fact that I am speaking from the grave. I am literally speaking from the grave, because I shall be dead when the book issues from the press.”
“I speak from the grave rather than with my living tongue for a good reason: I can speak thence freely. When a man is writing a book dealing with the privacies of his life - a book which is to be read while he is still alive - he shrinks from speaking his whole frank mind; all his attempts to do it fail; he recognizes that he is trying to do a thing which is wholly impossible to a human being. The frankest and freest and privatest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter; the writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing. Sometimes there is a breach-of-promise case by and by; and when he sees his letter in print it makes him cruelly uncomfortable and he perceives that he never would have unbosomed himself to that large and honest degree if he had known that he was writing for the public. He cannot find anything in the letter that was not true, honest and respectworthy; but no matter, he would have been very much more reserved if he had known he was writing for print.”
“It has seemed to me that I could be as frank and free and unembarrassed as a love letter if I knew that what I was writing would be exposed to no eye until I was dead, and unaware and indifferent.”
MARK TWAIN
Twain certainly knew how to whet his readers’ appetites. And so he begins at the very beginning:
CHAPTER ONE
“I was born the 30th of November, 1835, in the almost invisible village of Florida, Monroe County, Missouri. My parents removed to Missouri in the early ‘thirties; I do not remember just when, for I was not born then and cared nothing for such things….”
Ah, never another like Twain are we likely meet again….
Vick Mickunas
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Comments
By Mark Gisleson
December 1, 2008 12:23 PM | Link to this
It’s funny how we venerate Twain yet treat anyone like him rudely today. Twain was an atheist and mocked the conventions of his day. He would have made short work of George Bush (either of them) and I doubt he would have found much to admire in McCain or Palin. Obama? I think Obama would have been a puzzlement to him.