He talks about wiping out in his letters to the Sacramento Union about his
time in the Sandwich Island. This book has an illustration of it, too.
http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Twains-Letters-Hawaii-Twain/dp/0824802888/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
Maybe he didn't like to admit failure of this kind in his lectures.
Arianne Laidlaw
On Mon, May 4, 2015 at 1:08 PM, David Matuszak <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Mr. Griffin:
>
> I posted the inquiry below on the Twain Forum some time ago, but =
> received just a single response.
> =20
> Is there, by chance, any reference in any of the new Twain materials to =
> his surfing experience in Hawaii?
> =20
> I am attempting to document any Twain reference/comment to surfing =
> ("surf-bathing") other than his comments in his novel Roughing It. =
> (Twain attempted surfing while in Hawaii, failed miserably, and =
> described the experience years later in Roughing It.)
>
> My extensive review of the literature (including the Twain Project =
> website) revealed that Twain rarely, if ever, mentioned his surfing =
> attempt in his lectures. Given the novelty of "surf-bathing" or =
> "wave-sliding" at the time, it seems odd that Twain routinely omitted =
> the experience from his lectures.
>
> Questions:
> 1. Does anyone have a Twain lecture review that specifically mentions
> surfing ("surf-bathing" or "wave-sliding")?
> 2. Does anyone have any ideas or would like to speculate why Twain
> prominently mentions his surfing attempt in the novel Roughing It, but
> failed to routinely include it his Sandwich Island or Roughing It =
> lectures?
>
> I look forward to hearing from you,
> David Matuszak
>
>
> On May 4, 2015, at 11:14 AM, Benjamin GRIFFIN wrote:
>
> > There are going to be more stories in the press about this. It's great =
> that
> > there's interest in our next volume, but because some of the stories =
> are
> > pretty garbled, I want to clarify that no discrete "cache" or "trove" =
> of
> > anything has been recently found.
> >=20
> > Rick Bucci, a former editor at the MT Project who now lives and works =
> in
> > New York, has prepared a critical, annotated edition of Mark Twain's
> > newspaper correspondence from San Francisco to the Virginia City
> > Territorial Enterprise. Rick's painstaking work of many years is now =
> being
> > copy-edited and re-checked here in Berkeley.
> >=20
> > The discovery of new articles by Mark Twain is, as Forum readers will
> > realize, a constant process, not a single find. Of the things that are
> > "new" in this volume, some have been found by Rick, some by other
> > researchers, over a period of many years.
> >=20
> > --=20
> > Benjamin Griffin
> > Associate Editor, Mark Twain Project
> > The Bancroft Library
> > University of California, Berkeley 94720-6000
> > (510) 664-4238
>
--
Arianne Laidlaw A '58
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