For immediate release Contact: Peter Salwen 917-620-5371 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - EXPLORE MARK TWAIN'S NEW YORK A Birthday Walking Tour of Mark Twain Landmarks in Manhattan => When: 1:00 PM Saturday, November 28 and Sunday, November 29 => Where: Broadway and Spring Street, southwest corner - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - New York, November 10, 2009 -- November 30th will be Mark Twain's 174th birthday, and admirers of the country's greatest humorist are invited to celebrate on Saturday and Sunday, November 28th and 29th, by joining writer and Twain expert Peter Salwen for a walking tour of "Mark Twain's New York." The 2 1/2-hour excursion, liberally sprinkled with Twainian anecdotes and epigrams, starts from Broadway and Spring Street (southwest corner) at 1:00 PM and visits a surprising number of sites in Soho and the Village where Mark Twain lived, visited, did business and generally made himself conspicuous. "Samuel Clemens made himself a universal figure through the writings he signed "Mark Twain," Mr. Salwen says, "But he also enjoyed a special and almost life-long relationship with New York City. In fact, the creator of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn actually spent considerably more time near the Hudson River than on the Mississippi, and for many years he was one of the Big Apple's pre-eminent citizens." The oldest extant writing in Clemens's hand, for instance, is a letter home from Manhattan written in 1853 ("I have taken a liking to the abominable place," he confessed). In the 1860s, Twain's New York connections helped him make the leap from a regional humorist to a national literary figure. Later, he owned a publishing house near Union Square and had three different NYC homes in Greenwich Village, in Riverdale, and on Fifth Avenue. In his final years he was almost universally adored as the city's sage and commentator, his opinion sought and his comments widely repeated on every conceivable subject. "Twain's observations never feel out-of-date," Salwen says. "Take his comment on New York just after the Civil War: "They have made 5,000 men wealthy, and for a good round million of her citizens they have made it a matter of the closest kind of scratching to get along." That could have come from this morning's Op Ed page." Some other timeless Twainisms: "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." "It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them." "The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet." "Mark Twain's New York" starts at the southwest corner of Broadway and Spring Street at 1:00 PM and ends about 3:30 at Twain's turn-of-the-century home on West 10th Street. Fifteen dollars. No reservation needed, but guests can email [log in to unmask] for more information or just to let us know you're coming.