[Following is from Shelley Fisher Fishkin. I hope it appears ungarbled, as
it does in the archives at
https://listserv.yorku.ca/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1803&L=twain-l&T=0&P=929]


I want to thank Kevin and Mark  for their moving tributes to Barry
Crimmins. Reading Crimmins was always a bracing adventure. He managed to
channel Mark Twain in original and powerful ways.  I’d like to take this
occasion to remind folks on the Mark Twain Forum of a piece he contributed
to the Japanese journal Mark Twain Studies in 2006 for an international
forum on “The War-Prayer” in that journal (edited by Takayuki Tatsumi and
myself).  His  essay, “The Sermon on the Mark,” was reprinted in the
Reprise section of the Journal of Transnational American Studies, where it
 is available online at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5nz25228


Let me quote some of what he said:

“Despite repeated attempts to sanitize Mark Twain’s already pure messages,
some of us still read his works that sass the ever-oppressive status quo. A
status quo that’s been unbearable for a landslide majority of human beings
ever since Twain took up their cause long ago. His allegedly glum
summations have provided booster shots of hope at the most unexpected
times. When  'The War-Prayer’ was discovered by my generation during the
Vietnam War, we found someone we could trust who was over 30. Over 130!

"The War-Prayer’ is the final word on war. It is a truly holy work because
it peacefully resists the frothing madness required to stand on an altar to
promote war. It mocks the brainlessness of nationalism and challenges
people of any land to take a truly brave stand by separating themselves
from the parochial mob to join anyone from anywhere smart and courageous
enough to work toward resolving differences with reason rather than
violence.

"Even after learning how he was muffled, if not silenced, and knowing that
many of the great works of his later life are still universally dismissed,
even though mostly unread, I chose a course that even the premiere
navigator of American letters couldn’t safely negotiate. But as they like
to say in the war movies, I’d go to hell for that guy. Although it is more
fun going with him and so that is why I always tuck a volume or two of
Twain into my suitcase before I hit the road to take my argument for the
improvement of the human condition onto the stage, page, or airwaves.

“I’ll never achieve even a fraction of what Mark Twain accomplished but I
can aspire to emulate his bravery when it comes to be one of 'those rash
spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its
righteousness.’ Since first reading  ‘The War-Prayer’ I have wandered in a
‘wilderness of flags’ for over 35 years. I have performed and written
material in the ever-darkening shadow of a Stars and Stripes that has been
dragged through the mud, blood and treachery of one unjust war after the
next. At times I’ve inoculated myself from an audience’s silence and/or
jeers by thinking, ‘It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic,
because there was no sense in what he said.’……

“It is a joyous and rare day when another ‘War-Prayer’ passage does not
impale my heart,  “..tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;
help us to cover their smiling faces with the pale forms of their patriot
dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their
wounded, writing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a
hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows
with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little
children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags
and hunger and thirst….for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their
hopes, blight their lives,  protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy
their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the
blood of their wounded feet!"

"There’s never a day when I fail to think of the author of the greatest
spiritual offering since the Sermon on the Mount and realize that
regardless of what a century of jingoists would have you believe, Mark
Twain was anything but a lunatic, because there was perfect sense in what
he said.”



Read the entire piece.  There was perfect sense in what Barry Crimmins
said. I will miss his voice.


Shelley Fisher Fishkin