The following review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Doug Bridges.

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AUDIO RECORDING REVIEW

_Mark Twain's Letters from Hawaii_ as performed by McAvoy Layne. Auburn,
CA: The Audio Partners Publishing Corporation, 2004. 3 hours 9 minutes. 3
compact discs. $24.95.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Doug Bridges

Copyright (c) 2005 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.

The Queen of Excess, Mae West, said it best: "Too much of a good thing is
wonderful." More of Mark Twain, in any format, truly is wonderful. The
Audio Partners abridged version of _Mark Twain's Letters from Hawaii_ is
tasty enough to make a cat cry. Like a young lady's skirt should be, the
audio is long enough to cover the subject but short enough to be
interesting. At three hours, the recording is a comfortable evening
escaping television or is just the balm to ease the morning and evening
commute for a week or so. It does not contain all the material previous
book versions of the same contain. So what? The unwashed masses probably
have not read the printed editions--but they might enjoy a tidbit delivered
through the ear--and that might stir them to read something else of Twain.

The content of the recordings is based on a series of twenty-five letters
that a relatively unknown journalist named Mark Twain wrote for the
_Sacramento Daily Union_ in 1866 when he spent four months in Hawaii, known
then as the Sandwich Islands.

McAvoy Layne is a Mark Twain impersonator and former resident of Hawaii.
His career there included working as a news director of a few different
radio stations. Layne's performance is clear, distinct, properly
interpretive and convincingly emoted. He lightly massages the
multi-syllabic native Hawaiian words such as "ahahui kaahumanu" and
"Kamehameha" effortlessly and convincingly. Layne's diction and
pronunciation truly are admirable. However, even Layne misses a note now
and then, mispronouncing a few words such as "pestilence" which he
pronounces "peshtilence" and "conjecture" which comes out as "conjecshture"
and occasionally comes short of perfection in intonation. But this reviewer
is not pedantic and will take his sugar with a bit of grit mixed in and
still be happy.

Nothing is perfect. There are minor faults with the abridgement. A bit too
much time is devoted to the death and funeral customs of a certain princess
(not Diana) and I could have stood a little less of the wreck of the
clipper ship _Hornet_ (big news then, but now...hardly). But the good
trumps the bad and when I hear McAvoy Twain tell about his journey on the
mule Oahu or about his attempts to ease the seasickness of passenger Brown,
or about his keen-eyed enjoyment of the local custom of nudity among the
young native girls while swimming, then I snicker, giggle, chuckle and
guffaw. And when I hear again about Captain Cook's slaying by the native
Hawaiians, hearing both the English history and the native version of the
event, I believe both sides of the story and even remember being there
myself, so convincing is Twain/Layne.

As noted, the audio is an abridgment of previous print versions of Twain's
letters. There are no reference notes to indicate which printed edition the
producers used for their source material. This reviewer compared the
recordings to the University of Hawaii Press edition of 1975. The audio
contains only about one-fifth of the material in that book. The audio is
organized such that it follows the organization or order of the material in
the book, but in no case does the audio contain a full chapter or letter
from the book. One assumes that marketing considerations drove the design
and content of the audio, but one wonders about the actual editing that
resulted in tedious details about the clipper ship _Hornet_ while leaving
out hilarious commentary on the poor quality of cigars available in Hawaii
in Twain's day, when Twain said it took a couple tons of the local smokes
to satisfy one man one evening. And the recording has at least one instance
of possible bowdlerization. In the book, Twain once referred to Balboa as
an "infatuated old ass" but the audio is satisfied calling him an
"infatuated old man." Since no source for the letters used in this
production is given, the question of who made such editorial revisions
remains unanswered.

The bottom line? The audio is a good effort, entertaining for Twainiacs
undoubtedly.
____

The reviewer, Doug Bridges, teaches American literature at Polk County High
School, Columbus, NC. He is a Twainiac, which explains a lot.