The following notice was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Kevin Mac Donnell.
~~~~~
_Mark Twain Playing Cards: Favorite Characters and Quotes_.
ProsperoArt.com, 2014. 52 card deck, plus two jokers, boxed. $9.95.
It may seem strange to review a deck of cards, but there's likely an
aphorism by Mark Twain that would be apropos in this situation, and
even if there isn't one then any old quote will glow with authority if
Mark Twain's name is appended to it. This is not the first time Mark
Twain has found himself featured in a deck of cards, but it seems to
be the first time he has ever had an entire deck of cards devoted to
him alone. Many versions of the popular card game, _Game of Authors_,
added Mark Twain to its pantheon of honored authors during his
lifetime, but no decks of cards were produced that were entirely about
Mark Twain, which seems remarkable for a fellow whose name has graced
cigars, whiskeys, wines. peaches, oranges, oysters, coal, a train,
some steamboats, fur coats, shirts, pants, shoes, schools, a lake, a
golf course, three dozen hotels, three soft drinks, and a stud horse.
This deck of cards is delightfully illustrated by Jan Padover, and is
part of a series that includes decks devoted to the _Bible_, Native
Americans, _Alice in Wonderland_, William Shakespeare and Jane Austen.
Mark Twain would approve of the other decks, but not Jane Austen*, and
despite the attractive design it's not certain whether he would
approve of his own deck. Each card contains one Mark Twain quote and
one illustration. Twain readers will recognize illustrations of Tom,
Huck, Jim, Miss Watson, Boggs, Hank Morgan, and even King Leopold.
However, some of the quotes might look suspect. Of the fifty-four
cards, thirteen contain quotes for which there is no evidence to
attribute them to Mark Twain. Four of those thirteen have been
discredited by the notoriously reliable twainquotes.com website. Most
of the other spurious quotes seems to have been plucked from
notoriously unreliable websites like brainyquotes.com, goodreads.com,
wikiquote.org, and thinkexist.com. For the record the foul quotes
appear on the 4, 5, and 6 of spades, the 9 of clubs, the 2, 3, 5, 8,
and 10 of hearts, and the 2, 3, 8, and 10 of diamonds. The other
forty-one cards have genuine quotes, and although none are sourced,
some sources are obvious in context. A few of those forty-one
authentic quotes are not verbatim and need an editor's tweaking.
Of course, it must be obvious that misattributed quotes on playing
cards are not nearly as grievously offensive as books filled with
errors that poison the well for future Twainians who might innocently
lower their buckets, but it's still annoying. Just because a quote has
appeared with Mark Twain's name attached to it in a stack of cheeky
self-help books, or on some popular online websites, don't make it so.
Mark Twain never said "Don't go around saying the world owes you a
living" (8 of hearts), or "Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind
the most" (6 of spades), or "Keep away from people who try to belittle
your ambitions" (2 of diamonds), but he did say "It is my belief that
nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good
chance to deceive" (_Following the Equator_) and "The glory which is
built upon a lie soon becomes a most unpleasant encumbrance. How easy
it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that
work again!" (_Mark Twain in Eruption_).
Twenty-five percent of the cards in this deck contains words by others
falsely attributed to Mark Twain. That's a most unpleasant
encumbrance, and hard to undo no matter how many times they are
reshuffled.
_____
*I think it was Mark Twain who once said that any deck of cards could
be improved by simply removing the Jane Austen cards from that deck,
even if they were the only cards in the deck.
NB: What Mark Twain actually said is "Jane Austen's books, too, are
absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a
fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it"
(_Following the Equator_).
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