Elmira College
Center for Mark Twain Studies

The Trouble Begins at Eight, Spring 2006 Series

New this season...

If you are unable to attend our series, consider listening online.
Within a week of each lecture, go to http://www.elmira.edu/twain
<BLOCKED::http://www.elmira.edu/twain> .  Click on The Trouble Begins at
Eight.  Click on the appropriate audio file.  Live audio recordings will
be available (with individual speakers' permission.)

Wednesday, May 10th, 2006, in the Barn at Quarry Farm, 8 p.m.
Mark Twain and the American Media Revolution
Bruce Michelson, Professor of American Literature, University of
Illinois

Sam Clemens began his professional life as a "printer's devil," an
apprentice in a Hannibal shop -- and throughout his life he kept up a
keen interest in every phase of printing and publishing. Living through
the most dramatic changes in those media since the time of the
Gutenbergs, he tried to be a leader and a tycoon in these new
industries. In his prime years as an author, he involved himself in the
entire process of making a book. How did these interests affect the way
that Mark Twain wrote? What did he see as the possibilities of a printed
book -- as a multimedia experience, a national or global sensation, and
a cultural force? Amid a storm of printed words and pictures, how do his
hopes and fears about this media revolution turn up as important themes
in his most memorable books?

Doors open at 7:30.  The Trouble Begins at Eight.