Friends--
Here is the piece on SLC I wrote that appeared in the Hartford Advocate of
March 27, 1997. Any reproduction requests must be made through me.
Comments, observations and feedback are most welcome.
Kathy O'Connell
Hartford Advocate
P.S. to Shelley Fishkin and Susan Harris: hard copies are going in the mail
to you both, it is to be hoped by this afternoon.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 13:32:58 EDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Carolyn L Richey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: My Twain piece
I don't know if the same thing happened to anyone else, but the transfer
of this material came as gibberish. Must have been a transfer of one
type of textfile to another that didn't translate in the process. Can we
get your Twain piece again?
Carolyn
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:21:05 PDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mike Pearson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Please "open" the attachment
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
At 01:32 PM 4/7/97 EDT, you wrote:
>I don't know if the same thing happened to anyone else, but the transfer
>of this material came as gibberish. Must have been a transfer of one
>type of textfile to another that didn't translate in the process. Can we
>get your Twain piece again?
>
>Carolyn
>
Yes, mine too.
If you have an option in your settings to
"open the attachment in the body of the letter,"
we can all read it.
These letters can usually take a great lot of text in one transmission.
Hope to see it!
Mike
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 09:46:31 -0000
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Cliff Walker <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Help on the Net
MIME-Version: 1.0
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> Can someone tell me the Internet address(es) for any of the web pages on
> Twain? I've misplaced the addresses and haven't succeeded in finding
> anything through name searches.
Here's Jim Zwick's Mark Twain Resources on the World Wide Web:
[http://web.syr.edu/~fjzwick/twainwww.html]
Peter Salwen's Mark Twain Page is at:
[http://salwen.com/pstwain.html]
I hope you recover most if not all of your bookmarks.
Cliff Walker
http://rogue.northwest.com/~crt
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 15:16:34 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: David Caswell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: C Span
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Did anyone see that nitwit on C Span hawking his book and proposing that
Samuel Clemens had been involved in homosexual affairs? Surely people
won't actually buy that tripe. I'm happy to say, that most of the small
group
that attended, walked out before it was over.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 18:56:42 -0500
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: "Greg W. Zacharias" <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: Chair, Dept. of English; Director,
Center for Henry James Studies; Creighton University
Subject: [Fwd: Re: C Span]
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------3617963C70"
I think, David Caswell, that you're writing about Andy Hoffman. I saw
his talk and rather enjoyed it overall. What I don't understand is why
someone must be a "nitwit" when he holds a view some don't agree with.
In general his talk was interesting to me, anyway. Andy answered the
questions with good nature and a good spirit and with generosity. And
from the little I know of him he is a very generous and kind person who
simply calls it as he sees it. Why should anyone treat him any worse
than he treats others? If you don't like his book, say that and say
what you didn't like and why and offer an alternative. The homosexual
angle is surely nothing new. Andy's published on it before. But I
don't see any point in attacking him as a person on e-mail!
Greg Zacharias
Creighton University, Omaha
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 19:26:04 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Rick Hill <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: C-Span Pan
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
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From: TAYLOR::RCHILL "Rick Hill" 7-APR-1997 19:16:10.23
To: IN%"[log in to unmask]"
CC: RCHILL
Subj: RE: C Span
>Did anyone see that nitwit on C Span hawking his book and proposing that
>Samuel Clemens had been involved in homosexual affairs? Surely people
>won't actually buy that tripe. I'm happy to say, that most of the small
group
>that attended, walked out before it was over.
Missed it, but anybody who'd like to read the book and write an essay tying
it in with some other deliberately outrageous claims about Twain and his
work
(Leslie Fiedler comes to mind for starters) is welcome to send the
product for consideration in our volume-in-progress currently titled _Mark
Twain Among the Critics._
Please direct all manuscripts, proposals, queries, and comments to
Rick Hill <[log in to unmask]>
or
Jim McWilliams <[log in to unmask]>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 20:01:36 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: David Caswell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: C Span]
Comments: To: [log in to unmask]
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Because, Greg Zacharius, Hoffman's presentation is arrogant, outrageous,
contains, in my personal opinion, what would be slander and/or libel if
Twain
were alive and not a public figure. If he made such a preposterous claim
about me, with no more evidence than he has regarding Clemens, he would
be up to his eyeballs in lawsuits. You might be amazed at the mountain of
email I have received from members of this list who feel exactly as I do.
Further, you sound a little like you enjoy the titillation of these
pointless and
baseless allegations yourself. If you do, then you, too, sir, are, in my
personal
opinion, a nitwit.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 20:30:39 -0700
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jeff Sargent <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: C Span]
In-Reply-To: David Caswell <[log in to unmask]> "Re: [Fwd: Re: C Span]"
(Apr 7, 8:01pm)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Barring a "Secret Diary", we will never know Clemen's sexual preference for
certain, but it is NOT a ridiculous notion that he might have dabbled - many
of
the intelligencia of the day did - stated opinion or otherwise (it was not
uncommon to denouce such things in public with cries of "sodomite",
"unnatural", and even "nitwit", while revelling in them behind closed closet
doors). But this is idle speculation. There is no evidence to directly
suggest
that he was "so" inclined.
I believe the gentleman was objecting because your vehement disavowal
implied
that the suggestion of Clemens being gay was in some way an insult (which it
is
not), and that your tone carried the sulphurous stench of homophobia at
worst,
and intellectual elitism at best, into the sacred and democratic precints of
scholarly debate. Correct me if I'm wrong. As long as it is on topic (or
within
a reasonable tangent) why not discuss the possibility?
I for one would be interested to see what bent that would put on some of his
character relationships. Any takers?
Oop. Home again home again, jiggity jig.
Cheers!
Sarge
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 00:27:50 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: query
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
If you were asked to teach a ten-week non-credit course on Mark
Twain, and could only assign one inexpensive, preferably paperback
collection, which one would you choose?
This is for an over-50s continuing education class, in which there
are no writing assignments or tests, and only voluntary
supplementary readings of other Twain works.
Wesley Britton
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 09:45:27 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Everett Emerson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: query
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
I recommend Tom Quirk's Penguin Classic--Mark Twain TALES, SPEECHES,
ESSAYS, AND SKETCHES. It includes selections from THE INNOCENTS ABROAD,
ROUGHING IT, OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI, the best stories and sketches,
plus able introduction, bibliography, p[recise NOTE ON THE TEXTS!
It is excellent!
Everett Emerson
130 Lake Ellen Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-1937
(919) 967-2652
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 09:53:25 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Shocked, Shocked!
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
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A legal point to our discussants. Calling someone homosexual, or saying
that someone has dabbled sexually that way, is not likely to be
slanderous or libelous in this day and age. (We're all enlightened,
right? Except mayby on the Twain list?) In any event, even if it
might be libelous in some cases, it wouldn't be in this one, because
Mark Twain is (a) a public figure, and (b) dead.
I didn't see Mr. Hoffman's interview, and I haven't read his book
though I bought it. So maybe he is a nitwit. It would depend on
things other than simply suggesting, etc.
For those who are interested, there's a growing literature on same-
sex affection or same-sex sex during the 19th century and earlier.
The concept of "homosexuality" is a late 19th century construction.
Prior to that, for the most part same-sex dabbling wasn't seen as
an orientation, so that an individual wasn't viewed as "a homosexual."
People did, however, have affectionate relationships and erotic
encounters with people of the same sex. To the extent that it became
public, it was sodomy and very very bad. (Vide Oscar Wilde--married
father of two by the way.) However, there's quite a lot of
evidence (which, like a lot of historical evidence, is not just
lying there with the degree of obviousness that would satisfy those
of you who are shocked, shocked by the very suggestion . . .) that
same-sex dabbling was fairly common. And not just in all-male
environments like ships, mining camps, and the like.
This Forum conversation has all the marks (get it?) of the kind
of presentism that we find everywhere in academia today. It seems
to me that there's not a whole lot to be gained by demanding that
Mark Twain or any other person who lived before our time be
identified as, or protected from "slander" based on, what are obviously
hang ups of our time and (some of) our Twainians. We've had a lot
of discussion lately to show us that Mark Twain didn't hold the
(enlightened?) racial attitudes of late 20th century academics. Maybe
we could just skip over the struggle and admit that he didn't have
the (enlightened?) sexual attitudes of late 20th century academics
(homophile or homophobic) either.
For myself, I'm very interested in what kinds of things might have
happened after dark in those mining camps, and what the people
in the camps thought about all of it. We're never going to know
absolutely for sure--well, how much do we know that way anyway?--
but the historical work of the past few decades
has shown us that a lot can be learned. So let Mr. Hoffman have
his say, and let's evaluate it rather than C Span interviews.
Besides, "nitwit" is weak. Not worthy of Twainians.
Glen Johnson
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 10:17:24 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Hugh Davis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Shocked, Shocked!
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Actually, as a legal point, calling someone a homosexual or saying that
they have experimented in such things, despite our enlightened age, is in
fact slanderous in all states in which homosexuality is illegal. If I
called a man a rapist and a murderer without proof, he (or his estate)
could sue me for slander and libel. The same is true in any state that
has "Crime against Nature" laws on its books (I think this is virtually
all states, except Hawaii and California, although I'm not sure).
Often, these laws are not active, so no suits occur, but legally they can.
I'm not sure if the Twain estate could sue if they wanted to, considering
how long dead he is. I haven't seen the C-Span interview, so I don't know
if there is cause to sue either.
--Hugh Davis
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 10:50:17 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Shocked, Shocked!
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Any lawyers involved can mediate. As I understand it:
You can't "libel" a dead person, period. An estate can't sue
for libel of the diseased.
There is a different standard for libel and slander when it
involves a public figure. That doesn't mean there's no
standard (Carol Burnett and others have successfully sued
tabloids), but it is relevant here. As I understand how such
things have worked, it is precisly the kind of statement that
Hoffman has made that first amendment jurisprudence expands to
cover when we're dealing with a public figure.
And one more thing: in the U.S., truth is an absolute
defense against libel. So if the diseased or his estate
could sue, then we could discuss the historical record, which
is what I suggested we do. But folks, that can be mighty
dangerous for a plaintiff. Witness Oscar Wilde: he ended up
in jail because HE sued the Marquis of Queensbury for libel.
Glen Johnson
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 10:51:32 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Shocked, Shocked!
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
By the way, Hugh Davis, thanks for equating homosexuality with
rape and murder. I guess I was right when I used "enlightened"
ironically.
Glen Johnson
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 12:08:42 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Kathy O'Connell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: My Twain piece
Friends--
Hope this solves the transmission problem. Once again, any comments or
observations are welcome, and please if you are going to quote it in any
form, the copyright is held by the Hartford Advocate.
Hard copies of the article are available by requesting a back issue,
March 27, 1997, for $3.50 each (to cover mailng costs) from: Hartford
Advocate, 100 Constitution Plaza, Hartford, Conn. 06103.
Thanks.
Kathy O'Connell
Staff writer
Will the Twain Ever Meet?
Scholars disagree over the life and times of Sam Clemens and still his work
endures
By Kathy O'Connell
[DROPCAP]Samuel Langhorne Clemens and Mark Twain. The two are, it can be
argued, not the same. But this writer and his alter ego are the literary
equivalent of television.
Like a TV set in a bar that is always on, Twain is always with us. Even
Twain scholars readily admit that Clemens' greatest book, Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn is second-rate measured against the best work of, say,
Henry
James. But James sparks no such passions or controversies; James has never
made an appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Twain alone among American writers best embodies every one of our national
contradictions, from our love-hate relationship with celebrity to our
determination to hang on to both our innocence and idealism. That helps
explain why, 162 years after his birth and 87 after his death, Samuel
Clemens
and his alter ego are still as hot a publishing ticket as anything that
might
turn up on Oprah Winfrey's book club. Maybe hotter.
For starters, there's the Oxford Mark Twain, a meticulously re-created and
massive 29-volume collection of his writings edited by Twain scholar Shelley
Fisher Fishkin. Then there's Fishkin's own book, Lighting Out for the
Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture, published last
month, also by Oxford University Press. Finally there's the problematic
Inventing Mark Twain: The Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens by Andrew
Hoffman, the first major biography of the writer since Justin Kaplan's Mr.
Clemens and Mark Twain in 1966.
Fishkin's new book probes the histories of the African-American communities
in Hannibal, Mo, Elmira, N.Y. and Hartford. She uses them to argue that the
evolution of Clemens' views on racism was as farsighted as it was radical,
given his background and the times. Hoffman, on the other hand, chooses not
to view Clemens in context. Instead, he uses late 20th century standards to
reassess not just Clemens and Twain, but a third persona, S.L. Clemens, "a
humble and rather conservative inhabitant of America's social and cultural
elite."
The divergent results are at once enlightening, sobering and prickly-not
unlike the recent day-long exchange of opinions at the March 8 Spring Twain
Symposium, sponsored by the Mark Twain House. The looseness of the title,
Mark Twain: A Legacy in Writing, was to effectively celebrate the
publication
of the Oxford Twain, but the focus was the endless debate over interpreting
Twain. Should we read him in the context of his times or of ours and are the
two eras really so different? The acuity of Clemens' vision hints that
they're not.
As editor of the series, Fishkin managed a rare coup in getting popular
writers to produce introductions. Having Judith Martin-Miss Manners to
you-reassess The Prince and the Pauper as a lesson on etiquette may rankle
some scholars, but when you think about it, it makes sense. You can surround
Mark Twain with pedants, but Twain's utter lack of artistic pretension
shines
through like Halley's Comet.
"Twain often strikes us as more a creature of our times than his," Fishkin
told symposium participants. "He appreciated the importance and complexity
of
mass tourism and public relations, fields that would come into their own in
the 20th century, but which were fledgling enterprises in the 19th. He
explored the liberating potential of humor, and he probed the dynamics of
friendship, of parenting and of marriage. He narrowed the gap between
'popular' and 'high' culture, and he meditated on the enigma of personal and
national identity."
A statement like that in Andrew Hoffman's hands, however, becomes a flaw
rather than an asset. Hoffman, primarily a novelist and currently a visiting
scholar at Brown University, suggests over and over in his
lavishly-footnoted
572-page biography that Clemens' creation of both Mark Twain and S.L.
Clemens
was the work of a man driven by contradictions. He craved fame even as he
distrusted it, yearned for bourgeoisie respectability even as he mocked it
and perhaps most of all sought literary cachet even though his distinctive
style broke every single accepted rule for "great" literature.
His greatest sin in Hoffman's eyes seems to be that Clemens invented
celebrity culture a good century before it became our pervasive, TV-driven
national obsession. He was, according to Hoffman, a tireless self-promoter
who sometimes entertained questionable practices to sell his books and who
very specifically cultivated several images that had little or no rooting in
Sam Clemens the man.
The Twain the public saw had a cultivated rawness and an equally rough
charm-acerbic but accessibly folksy. He was nothing at all, Hoffman argues
without subtlety, like the brooding, driven and deeply insecure man who
created him. That view rubs more than a few Twainiacs, scholarly and
otherwise, the wrong way. So did the "bomb" Hoffman dropped at Elmira in
1993. Before a group of scholars assembled at Twain's summer home, Hoffman
announced his belief that while a young man in the West, Clemens might have
had a series of homosexual affairs. Some of that lingers in Inventing Mark
Twain, but it's treated so tentatively it comes close to being irrelevant.
"Fantasy in Clemens and Twain is such an arresting force it can trap the
unwary and Andy may have been trapped by a beast," says David Sloane, a
Twain
scholar at the University of New Haven. He adds that it was once assumed in
literary studies that all of a writer's work proceeded directly from his or
her own life. "So therefore, Samuel Langhorne Clemens must be Mark Twain,"
Sloane adds. "But is Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry?"
Writes Hoffman in his introduction: "We will never know the complete truth
about Mark Twain, because he changes shape as we study him. A fool, a
tyrant,
a philosopher, a humorist, an unschooled literary genius, a friend to
revolution, a confidant of presidents and industrialists, an insatiable and
sophisticated reader of history, a glad-hander, a sham, a self-destructive
narcissist. Each of these epithets describe Mark Twain; their contradictions
create a persona that is at once both larger and smaller than a real
person."
In Lighting Out for the Territory, Fishkin also explores Twain's persona.
She documents how Twain's iconographic countenance was used to sell
everything from "White & Fancy Goods" (for a store in New London, no less)
to
Bass Ale (Clemens preferred Scotch) even while he was alive. She also
recounts how certain Twain stories-most notably The Prince and the Pauper,
"The L1,000,000 Bank-Note" and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court-have fared in assorted reincarnations.
Fishkin, however, makes a convincing argument that Twain's persona was
anything but small, especially the way it still creeps in and takes over
debates about race and national identity. "His fictions brilliantly
illuminated the world in which he lived and the world we inherited, changing
it-and us-in the process."
Mere celebrities don't do that. They engage us for a while and we grow
tired
of them and move on to the Next Big Thing. So far, no one seems weary of
discussing who Sam Clemens really was and what Mark Twain was trying to say
to us. There is something contemporary about his work even now.
But, as Sloane and others debated at the symposium, it is precisely the
extent of that fame that has allowed Twain's image and influence to be
plumbed with such varying results. Writer Susan Harris, whose The Courtship
of Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain has just been published by Cambridge
University Press, said at the symposium, "I'm always disturbed by those who
try to bring [Clemens] out of his time. He was a man of his times, but at
the
same time, he wanted to get outside them, and he did."
Maybe Harris is more right than she realizes. The personas he created for
himself, as well as the real man at the center of them, allowed Samuel
Clemens his own version of the time travel he had Hank Morgan embark on in A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Except unlike Morgan, who moved backwards to Camelot, Mark Twain looks
ahead, giving us a clearer sense of who we are, where we come from and where
we're going. Ultimately, how we interpret his work and what we think about
his life probably says more about us than it does about either Clemens or
Twain.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 13:06:41 EST
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Frank Henninger <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: University of Dayton
Subject: Re: My Twain piece
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
Kathy O'Connell writes:
"Even Twain scholars readily admit that Clemens' greatest book,
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is second-rate measured against the
best work of, say, Henry James."
"Whoa! Hold on there, little lady" ! (Yosemite Sam)
You call me on of your "friends" and then you try to get that
curve ball over the outside?!
As a life-long teacher of both Twain and James, a teacher in
courses devoted to those authors in particular, I don't recall ever
saying, admitting to or even thinking anything like that.
James was profound, terrifying, powerful. I keep thinking of
his as a man who truly matured into a complex and broadly
understanding adult. _The Portrait of a Lady_ leaves me breathless
and disturbed, needing to share its insights with others. Twain, as
his wife indicated, was always in some ways a "youth." Part of him
seems never to have grown past fourteen, maybe twelve.
BUT I have never ranked any of James' novels among our five
best. And I have always thought of _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_
as one of those. In fact, in recent years I've expanded the list to
six with _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_. Score: Twain
2, James 0.
We all come to such judgements with our own biases. Many
will disagree with my estimates of Twain's relative value. But your
statement is far too broad to be accurate.
Otherwise, I enjoyed your article and, since I couldn't be
there, thank you for sharing your knowledge of the conference with
us.
Viva!
Frank Henninger
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 13:52:52 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jim Zwick <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Web news: Two First Chapters & a Riddle
MIME-Version: 1.0
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For any of you who don't already have the books, the Chapter One
library at the Washington Post has portions of the first chapters of
Shelley Fisher Fishkin's _Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections
on Mark Twain and American Culture_ and Andrew Hoffman's _Inventing
Mark Twain_ online at the following addresses:
Lighting Out for the Territory
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/
lightingoutfortheterritory.htm
Inventing Mark Twain
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/
inventingmarktwain.htm
There are also links at the tops of the chapters to the Post's
reviews of the books.
Also, when I checked my e-mail I was deluged with the following
question:
Name at least one of the two people who Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
considered to be the 19th century's most interesting characters.
If you think you know the answer, go to
http://www.dujour.com/mondotrivia/
It's the Riddler Mondo Trivia question of the day (April 8). If you
need a clue, the name of one of them is on the Biography & Criticism
page of my Twain Resources page at
http://web.syr.edu/~fjzwick/twainwww.html
Jim Zwick
[log in to unmask]
http://www.rochester.ican.net/~fjzwick/
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 13:09:23 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: David Caswell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Shocked, Shocked!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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Hugh Davis was equating homosexuality with rape and murder only to the
extent that all are illegal in most states. And he was quite correct in
what he
said.
Glen Johnson would deprive all of us of our freedom of speech by saying that
if we are offended by the outrageousness of Hoffman's statements, we are
homophobes. This kind of claim is as outrageous as was Hoffman's
unwarranted assertions. However, as several of the more reasonable
members of this list have reminded me, if we make this thing more
controversial it might sell more trashy books than if we simply ignore the
comments of one who would defame an international icon in the interest of
commerce.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 11:03:04 PDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mike Pearson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: C Span]
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Early in his career, Mr. Twain might denounce his targets with high-pitched
streams
of comical invective.
Twain called Human beings "Descended from Apes"-- "The Damned Human Race"
-- not primarily for being sensuous, but for cruelty, superstition,
steadfast
imperviousness to knowledge, and neglect of compassion.
Whatever your verdict on this issue, have a sense of proportion. The world
is sparked by one pole, but is built and sustained by the much more lavish
telephone
system at the other pole.
Mike
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 14:25:37 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Mooster call
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
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Oh wow.
Fellow Twainians, read what I wrote. Read what Mooster wrote.
Consult your freshman logic textbook. And that's the last you'll
hear from me on this one.
Glen Johnson
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 16:36:59 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: David Caswell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: C Span]
MIME-Version: 1.0
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No, Mr. Pearson, I suspect that most of these people are anything but
bashful.
I was reminded, correctly and repeatedly, that to create controversy will
sell
books. I was further reminded that the book in question did not deserve
comment. These people were entirely correct, and I have nothing further to
say on the subject.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 17:53:17 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: "Marcus W. Koechig" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Shocked, Shocked!
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
At 10:50 AM 4/8/97 -0500, Mr. Glen Johnson wrote:
>Any lawyers involved can mediate. As I understand it:
>
>You can't "libel" a dead person, period. An estate can't sue
>for libel of the diseased.
Just as one cannot sue for libel of the deceased, I presume.
Marc
Marcus W. Koechig
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 19:21:45 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: query
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
This sounds like a good tip--I'll be sending out for examination
copies of this one, the Penquin, and the Portable, all
of which have their followers.
wes britton
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 19:30:08 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Shocked, Shocked!
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
I still think the issue is NOT homosexuality or what anyone
thinks about it; it's that Hoffman's arguement is
pure speculation without a word of evidence. What If sloppy
logic is not scholarship, and
that's what we're unhappy about. It's simple
acedemic honesty.
wes britton
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 15:24:53 EDT
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Taylor Roberts <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Reviewer needed for Messent, _Mark Twain_ (Modern Novelists)
The Mark Twain Forum needs a reviewer for the following book:
Messent, Peter. _Mark Twain_. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
(Modern Novelists.) Pp. ix + 235. Includes notes, bibliography,
index. Cloth, 5-1/2" x 8-3/4". ISBN 0-312-16479-3.
The dust jacket reads:
This book provides an overview of Mark Twain's work and a close
critical analysis of his major texts, and includes chapters on
_Huckleberry Finn_, _A Connecticut Yankee_ and _Pudd'nhead Wilson_.
Using recent cultural and literary theory to re-examine Twain's
travel writing and fictions, and written in a refreshingly jargon-
free and accessible manner, Peter Messent begins by discussing one
of Twain's oddest but most comic short stories, 'The Stolen White
Elephant'. This tale of an elephant on the loose, causing havoc
wherever it goes, and hunted by the logical but myopic Detective
Blunt, serves as a revealing point of entry to Twain's narratives
as a whole, with their stress on shifting perspective, incongruity
and constant undecideability.
The book focuses on Twain's attitudes to Europe and the American
West, and discusses his representations of boyhood, race relations,
capitalist expansion, and technology. Twain's work reflects
anxieties both about changes in the social and industrial order in
post-Civil War America and the status of the individual subject
within it. His moves between different genres and his formal
difficulties, which were to result eventually in the unfinished
stories of his late career, must be seen in the light of such
anxieties.
The clear and incisive analyses of individual texts, together with
the siting of those texts in terms of the larger issues of realism,
fantasy, modernization, and personal and cultural identity, will
make this a particularly valuable book for students. It offers a
long-overdue comprehensive and stimulating reassessment of Twain's
remarkable body of work.
The author: Peter Messent is Reader in Modern American Literature
at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of _New Readings
of the American Novel_ and _Ernest Hemingway_. He is at present
editing a book on postwar American crime fiction.
As usual, the review must be of publishable quality, and it would be due
within two months of your receipt of the book (i.e., due mid-June 1997).
The deadline is particularly important, as we are making every effort
for Forum reviews to appear before print reviews. If you are inclined
to procrastinate, please don't offer to review the book.
If you would like to see the general content and style of Forum book
reviews, feel free to browse the reviews that have so far appeared,
which are available under the "reviews" link at TwainWeb, at the
following URL:
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/forum/twainweb.html
If you're interested in writing this review, please send me both your
home and institutional mailing addresses and phone numbers. If I don't
already know you, it would be helpful for you to explain in what respect
you're qualified to write this review. (If we haven't exchanged e-mail
recently, it might be a good idea for you to remind me of this info.)
I look forward to hearing from you.
Taylor Roberts <[log in to unmask]>
Coordinator, Mark Twain Forum
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 18:56:07 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: David Caswell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Shocked, Shocked!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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Bravo, Wes Britton, for saying it all succinctly, precisely and honestly.
David Caswell
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 08:04:37 PST
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: "EDDINGS, DENNIS - Humanities" <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: WOU
Subject: Re: query
Only one cheap paperback? The Viking Portable Twain.
dennis eddings
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 12:38:51 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Sylvia Wendel <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Shocked, Shocked!
On the other hand, the argument (with which I agree) that one must not judge
the past by today's lights is not best served by coining yet another instant
-ism. Then you don't have an argument or concept. What you do have is
shorthand and symbol. Will academics and others who still think about these
things end up like fast-food workers, punching buttons with cute pictures on
them because, like, words are hard n' take too long 'n stuff? Wait a minute
-- hasn't this already happened? <g>
Spell it out, folks. One picture is not worth a thousand words. The right
word
("and not its second cousin") can still be worth a thousand pictures.
Anytime anyone wants to write a 10,000 word essay on "presentism", I'll
read
it. But let's not indulge in name-calling, bomb-throwing, symbol-slinging,
or other pursuits better suited to politicians and others of limited
intellect.
Sylvia Weiser Wendel, M.F.A.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 11:40:55 -0600
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jim McWilliams <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Shocked, Shocked!
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I hesitate to add anything to the Hoffman debate since I've not read his
book, but, nonetheless, I will make one comment:
One of my heroes--the late, great Carl Sagan--said that extraordinary claims
must be supported by extraordinary evidence. While Sagan was talking about
UFOs, astrology, and the like, I've kept his dictum in mind as far as
literary criticism. In other words, if someone is to argue that Twain had
homosexual relationships (certainly an extraordinary claim!), the argument
had better be supported by concrete facts, not suppositions.
At any rate, I like forward to reading the book.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 09:26:47 -0700
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Scott Canon <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: The Kansas City Star Co.
Subject: whiskey and water
Comments: To: [log in to unmask]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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A question to the group:
Did Mark Twain ever write anything along the lines of ``Whiskey is for
drinking and water is for fighting over.''
I'm a newspaper reporter and once wanted to use the quote in an article
about water rights. I looked everywhere I could think of and even called
a few Twain scholars and nobody could place it. Although I had seen
another newspaper, years earlier, attribute it to Twain, I couldn't
verify that. I ended up writing something like ``it's been said
whiskey's for fighting over ...''
Does anybody know if the line traces to Twain or if not him, whom?
Scott Canon
Reporter
The Kansas City Star
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 14:34:32 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: David Caswell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Shocked, Shocked!
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Jim, I have already said too much on this subject. I enjoyed your comments
very much, but I cannot help wondering why you would care to read such a
book as Hoffman's. It is not, of course, to be feared. Any fool can say
anything about anybody. It seems to me that is deserves to be ignored.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 15:45:51 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Lawrence Howe <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Shocked, Shocked!
Comments: To: David Caswell <[log in to unmask]>
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
David Caswell--
I agree with you; you've already said too much on this subject.
If people like Jim McWilliams want to read Hoffman's book, that's their
business. In the span of 24 hours you've gone from worrying about giving
the book unwitting publicity to actively trying to prevent other's from
reading what Hoffman has to say because it offends you. Why don't you
live up to your promise from your second to last posting and say no more!
--Larry Howe
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 16:51:45 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: David Caswell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Shocked, Shocked!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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Jim Mcwilliams made some very astute observations, then added that he
looked forward to reading the book. I questioned the dicotomy of positions.
If
that constitutes "actively trying to prevent others from reading what
Hoffman
has to say" than your ideas on what constitutes active effort is very far
removed from mine. But I'm sure Hoffman will appreciate your extending the
discussion once again.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 00:35:17 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Hoffman
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
??From: IN%"[log in to unmask]" 9-APR-1997 05:32:04.54
Subj: RE: [Fwd: Re: C Span]
Would you consider forwarding these wonderful comments to the
entire list?
Wes Britton wrote:
> Are we really having such a dirth of acedemic thought to get so
> embroiled in what is pure speculation? It is one thing, as
Fiedler did, to
> deal with homosexuality for literary criticism, another to make
odd claims on
> biography and expect a civil dialouge. What Hoffman has done,
> as many have pointed out, is create a case of innuendo and the
worst logical syllogism
> in literary history: there were gays in the west, Twain went
west, Twain
> was gay. The real point is, there is no evidence, so why is
anybody bothering
> to give Hoffman the time of day? Titillation, outrage, wishful
thinking,
> whatever, our fuel only sells more of his books.
> My major concern is how many people will get sucked into putting
that
> book on library shelves and forever damning Twain scolrs to have
> to deal with this artificial issue. The request, for example, by
one Forum
> member to begin assessing Twain's works through the prisms of
possible
> homosexual connections is irresponsible. It does not take us
closer to the
> work of Mark Twain, but rather sheds light only on those
uninterested
> in true scolarship, what the works and words of a writer say to
us.
>
> Whatever the case, can we get back to the business of real
> Mark Twain discussion and get out of
> fantasyland? He deserves better and so do we.
>
> wes britton
Since I sent this note to Messr. Mooster, the folowing analogy came
to mind--at one Hartford conference, the following claim was made:
1. Sleeping with prostitutes in the West was, of course common.
Many of these ladies were black.
2. Mark Twain very likely slept with prostitutes, very likely black
ones.
3. This accounts for his sympathetic portrayal of Roxy in
_Pudd'nhead Wilson_.
This is exactly Hoffman's logic.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 08:17:09 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: David Caswell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: racial sensitivity
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Twain grand sensitivity to racial issues, even when brought to light with
agonizing examples of the status quo, obviously had a positive impact on
racial conditions in this country. This makes it ironic that there are
those who
would ban Huckleberry Finn based on the use of the "N" word. It was, of
course, Twain's intent that is would be objectionable. Much as his irony
and
sarcasm in The War Prayer, was to make the point of the futility of war.
Although it is quite correct, as Wes Britton points out, that the likelihood
exists,
that Twain may have patronized prostitutes, including those of color, I have
no
more interest in that than in any other issue regarding his sexuality. I
would
have no objection to the discussion by others, however, because there is
some evidence to support it. This discussion, is a historical question, and
not
one drawn from the imagination of a yellow journalist.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 10:19:12 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
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Let me ask:
What about the famous shirtless photo of Mark Twain, which is
usually published with some kind of comment about it not being
known how it came to be taken.
Is there an element of eroticism, maybe even [____]eroticism,
in that photo? I know of no similar shots of 19th century
authors or celebrities. So this is unusual, and it's unusual
in a particular way.
Now, you guys who want to deny that there's any "evidence" of
any of this sort of thing, well, I invite you to prove the
non-eroticism of such a photo by supplying the Twain Web with
a bare-chested photograph of yourself. How about it, Mr. Caswell?
Mr. Britton?
Mouseketeer
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 09:54:32 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: your mail
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
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TO all: I was about to sign off of this list when the recent explosion
occurred. Things have been fascinating the last couple of days. At
times, I have felt like I've been sitting in on the academic equivalent
of the Geraldo Rivera show. It is good to know that academics have all
the attributes of the rest of the human race. Keep it up - this is fun.
WFS
W. F. Strong, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Communication
University of Texas - Pan American
Edinburg, Texas 78539
210-381-3583
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 09:56:29 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Lawrence Howe <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: your mail
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Mouseketeer--
Nicely done.
--LH
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 10:05:49 PST
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: "EDDINGS, DENNIS - Humanities" <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: WOU
The barechested photo of Twain, identified by Kaplan as probably a
practical joke, was taken for creation of the bust whose photograph
occupies the frontispage of "Huckleberry Finn." I forge the source
of this information, and so apologize for my own sloppy scholarship.
dennis eddings
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 12:29:03 -0600
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jim McWilliams <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Barechested Photo
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Come now, we all know that the photo was intended to titilate Howells.
Twain a practical joker? You must be kidding.
Jim McWilliams
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 12:36:58 -0700
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Robert Hirst <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Barechested Photo
In-Reply-To: <l03010d02af72e0c3e2c3@[198.206.239.85]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
See Louis J. Budd, "`A Nobler Roman Aspect' of *Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn*" in *One Hundred Years of Huckleberry Finn,* ed. Robert Sattlemeyer
and J. Donald Crowley, 1985, pp. 26-40. Columbia: University of Missouri
Press.
RHH
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 16:25:52 -0700
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Robert Hirst <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Budd on photo
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Mr. Henninger,
Lou Budd's essay is about the heliotype of the Gerhardt bust of Clemens
that serves as one of the frontispieces to *Huck Finn*. His comment on
the photograph comes entirely in his footnote 3: "Twainians have wondered
over a stripped-to-the-waist photograph, reproduced in Milton Meltzer,
*Mark Twain Himself* (New York: Crowell, 1960), p. 182. Perhaps it was
posed for the use of Gerhardt, who wanted photographs of his subject; see
the anecdote in *Mark Twain-Howells Letters*, 2:498."
The simplicity of this observation belies its power. First of all, the
photograph had already been independently dated 1884, just on the basis of
its similarity to other known photos of that time. Second, as any sculptor
will tell you, it is necessary to see the shoulders in order to get the
neck right. Third, the Gerhardt bust shows Clemens without so much as a
shirt collar or necktie. In short, the argument uses one document (the
bust) to explain the existence and purpose of another (the photo).
Elegant.
I'd note further that the lack of this or any comparable explanation also
helps explain previous comments on the photo. Justin Kaplan printed the
photo in his 1966 biography with the following caption: "Nearing 50,
probably a private joke." But Kaplan has no *evidence* that the photo was
part of a joke, private or otherwise--he's just projecting his own
reaction onto it (`since it seems funny to me, its purpose must be a
joke'). Naturally other readers will project other feelings and
conclusions and guesses onto what seems both odd and unexplained, as we've
seen already on the FORUM. It's hard to make any progress that way. Budd's
argument may prove mistaken in the end, but at least it is based on
documents, on physical evidence. It's what used to be known as
scholarship.
RHH
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 21:44:06 EDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Andrew J Hoffman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: C-Span Pan
We received e-mail intended for "Rick"... Andy (Hoffman) is in
California, won't be back for a few more days. Judy (Andy's wife).
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 03:54:00 +0000
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <[log in to unmask]>
From: Frank Henninger <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Budd on photo
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
Dear RHH,
Thank you very much.
This certainly does seem the best supported and most likely of
the hypotheses. And, as I remember the expression on Twain's face,
it seems a bit more pained than amused. Of course, such an
expression could be used as part of a joke, but it is more likely to
indicate uncomfortable compliance with an undeniable request, exactly
the sort of response any of us might have to a sculptor who asked us
to get cold and uncomfortable for a while.
Viva!
FJH
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 09:37:42 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Budd on photo
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
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I agree that Budd's hypothesis is a sound one. But it's hardly
air-tight. For one thing, the photo is not a "bust": that term has
a quite specific meaning in art (including photography), and a
waist-up shot isn't a bust shot.
Second, the idea that somehow Mark Twain "had to" pose for this
photo because the bust maker had to have a shot of his shoulders
is a bit peculiar. There are lots and lots of busts of 19th century
people; there are no other bare-chested photos that I know of.
As for whether or not Twain looks uncomfortable in the shot, well,
that's speculation--fine, I think, but the kind of thing that has
been castigated soundly on the Twain list over the past couple of
days. Though not now, evidently because it fits the castigators'
views.
And there's still an unexplained element to this very peculiar photo.
What we've seen on the Twain list over the past couple of days are
examples of precisely the kind of thing historicists have been pointing
out over the past decade or so. "The truth" is to a great extent a
cultural construction. The term "evidence" has been used here as if
it had some kind of absolute definition and validity. But the
rules of evidence are conventional, and they change. What
we've seen here lately is that almost all of us are quite ready
to push forward SOME interpretations as "evidence" and at
the same time deny, overtly or indirectly, any validity
to other interpretations that we don't like or that make us
uncomfortable. The history of criticism is full of this sort of
thing, and it's a bit depressing (though not surprising) to find people
on the Twain list still trying to slam the door on any speculation
other than what they're committed to or comfortable with.
Face it folks: Sam Clemens can't care less. He's dead and smiling
down (or grimacing up) at us. The Twain of the Twain list is a
construction, and we've been having fun constructing him, haven't we?
And, before that "M.F.A." person jumps on to rant about the term
"historicist," I should point out that "presentism," subject of her
previous rant, is a perfectly legitimate English word which (according
to the Shorter OED) goes back at least to the late 19th century. So
it's a word contemporary with Mark Twain, and somebody ought to be
able to use it without being castigated herein!
Mouseketeer
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:16:14 EDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Carolyn L Richey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: your mail
RE:
>. Things have been fascinating the last couple of days. At
>times, I have felt like I've been sitting in on the academic
>equivalent
>of the Geraldo Rivera show. It is good to know that academics have
>all
>the attributes of the rest of the human race. Keep it up - this is
>fun.
>
I also agree that things have been fascinating and lively lately. I
couldn't help considering what Twain would say to all of this.
>From Ayres' _Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain_, about the recent debates:
Re: THE FACTS
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you
please."
"The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but when you come to REALIZE your
fact, it takes on color. It is all the difference between hearing of a
man being stabbed to the heart, and seeing it done."
"We do not deal much in facts when we are contemplating ourselves."
Re: THE CRITICS
"I like criticism, but it must be my way."
"One mustn't criticize other people on grounds where he can't stand
perpendicular himself."
"It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a
man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained
that there were too many prehistoric toads in it."
"I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell
the truth about me. But when they descend to telling the truth about me
I consider that this is taking an unfair advantage."
"It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and
congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden."
Personally, I think he'd be in the thick of this.
clr
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 02:12:00 EDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Lela Tong <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: A Question about a Long Letter
In his book entitled "Maverick," Ricardo Semler claims that Mark Twain
"once apologized for writing a long letter becaue he didn't have time
to write a short one." (p.144)
Does anyone know which of Twain's work contains this apology?
I have searched the Net and looked at Jim Zwick's quotations. I tried
to do a search on the Twain-L. I have read a lot of Twain's stuff, but
can't remember this.
Many thanks!
Lela Tong
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 16:52:47 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: "Thomas D. Zlatic" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: A Question about a Long Letter
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
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I don't know about the Twain connection, but I believe that Blaise Pascal
first made this "apology."
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 18:24:41 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: "Marcus W. Koechig" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: A Question about a Long Letter
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Actually, if memory serves me correctly, it was either Rene Descartes or
Pascal (of Pascal's Chruch of the best bet, not the computer guy) who
originally said that.
Marc
Marcus W. Koechig
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 00:26:32 +0200
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Christopher Felker <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Review: Hoffman, _Inventing Mark Twain_
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Hoffman Andrew. _Inventing Mark Twain: The Lives of Samuel Langhorne
Clemens_. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1997. xviii + 564 pages.
Cloth, 6-1/8" x 9-1/4". Index. $30.00 ISBN 0-688-12769-X.
Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Christopher D. Felker
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI
Copyright (c) Mark Twain Forum, 1997. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.
Andrew Hoffman's book was written with the intention, in part, to provoke
and to sell many copies. Evidence of provocation has already been present
in conversations between Twain scholars on the Mark Twain Forum, on
C-SPAN's Booknotes and will almost certainly be echoed in many subsequent
reviews of the book. Hoffman's controversial stance in relation to
Clemens' life rests on several unsubstantiated claims that he may have
experimented in bohemian homosexual activities in his youth and, to a
somewhat lesser degree, that he was followed throughout his life by a
variety of psychic distresses. In other words, Hoffman's book, coming as
it does rather late in the genealogy of Twain biographies, "invents" a host
of late 20th-century concerns to attach to Clemens' life story.
Even at this early stage of audience reception, critical opinion of
Hoffman's presentism and dubious scholarship is quite negative. As the
author of a book with "invention" in the title, I am usually quite
sympathetic to revisionist critical stances, but as any Twain scholar can
attest, Clemens' life was extraordinarily varied and rich and such a life
needs little embellishment, particularly where the factual evidence of such
claims as homosexuality is absent. For a biographer removed from his
subject by history and exclusive access to the original archive of
materials, it is a common ploy to "invent" eyebrow-raising claims in an
effort to secure one's book a place in a crowded field.
Having read the book, I must say in Hoffman's defense, that the sexuality
thread that formed the basis of his March 1995 article in _American
Literature_ is, in the completed biography a small and ultimately
insignificant concern of the larger narrative.
In fact, Hoffman's biography strikes out on three counts. Many readers of
the book will feel cheated, on the basis of dubious scholarship and
methodology, by the claims about Clemens' psycho-sexuality. But Twain
scholars should be at least as concerned by the fact that _Inventing Mark
Twain_ is a poor literary biography, one that does little to synthesize
recent critical opinions with a careful study of Clemens' work as a writer.
For a book of this magnitude, the fact that so many opportunities to
discuss the range and implications of Hoffman's research by re-reading
parts of Twain's own literary output is a stunning omission. Finally,
Hoffman's introduction of a sequence of previously unpublished material
held by Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company (as trustee of the Mark Twain
Foundation) is often shallow and anecdotal.
Persons with a genuine interest in Twain will, naturally be drawn to this
book, and the publication of it by a trade publisher will ensure a wide
distribution; but for students and scholars of Twain, Hoffman's biography
is a weak offering, not only because of his strained argument about
Clemens' sexuality, but also because it offers little new in the
interpretation of Twain's literary output. Instead of a gripping tale of
one of America's most complicated personalities, Hoffman's account is a
cynical, awkward and unfocused effort.
To understand Hoffman's "take" on Clemens, it is important to note the
adjectives he uses in his Preface to describe the identity politics of
Samuel Clemens and his literary double, invented personality and alter-ego
Mark Twain. On his first page, Hoffman says "Because he appears to be
alive, Twain grows and changes so frequently that writing a biography of
him is like writing a biography of a liar" (ix-x). [1] Hoffman goes on to
argue a truism in Twain scholarship, that Twain/Clemens can be molded into
a variety of forms because he intentionally cultivated a confusing and
oftentimes contradictory identity. Part of the undeniable fascination of
Clemens, I think is the possibility of reading this contrariness in ways
that are not as cynical as Hoffman suggests, but are instead, natural
consequences of the time in which the writer labored.
For Hoffman, "the unreality of Mark Twain is the primary reason this book
cannot be a biography of him. . . . Mark Twain had a biographical life, but
it is a life of a public image, not a flesh and blood man" (x). Hoffman
therefore places Clemens, and not his double at the center of the book,
suggesting that this fact makes his text an improvement over Albert Bigelow
Paine's _Mark Twain: A Biography_ (1912) and Justin Kaplan's _Mr. Clemens
and Mark Twain_ (1966). Hoffman calls Paine's book "more an autobiography
that a biography", a familiar charge leveled at "official" biographers by
others who follow in their wake. Of Kaplan, Hoffman suggests that time has
eroded the value of _Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain_, the appearance of new
scholarship and the fact that "Kaplan missed the essence of Samuel
Langhorne Clemens" suggested that a new volume was necessary.
So then, with the "actual" person of Clemens as the focus, what opinion is
conveyed in the opening Preface? Hoffman wants us to take Clemens as "a
pioneer of the American soul" (xviii) and that soul is portrayed as
"[making] it up as he went along, coping with a strange existence;" as an
"uncertain self" who "prefigures contemporary neuroses;" as a person
plagued by "ephemerality and inherent falseness;" and, most importantly, as
a hollow man at the core, resulting from "the odd configuration of his
childhood" reinforced later in life by experiences that showed that an
image of a person, "likely to be callow, cruel, frightened and selfish" was
more important than a man's essential identity (xiii, xvi-iii). Hoffman's
Clemens is a man about to enter Dante's _Inferno_, with the aid of a
psychoanalyst. Much of what Hoffman claims to be true of Clemens has in
fact, been applied to many of the canonical American authors.
Hoffman repeats the conclusions of many scholars that the appearance of new
print technologies (and in Twain's case the viability of a performative
lecture and dramatic culture) and ideologies in America enabled the
relatively easy production of fictional spectacles. Often, in the case of
American Renaissance writers in particular, those older Atlantic Monthly
writers Twain would eagerly try and impress, the fictional spectacles
created brought the relative social formlessness to expression with new and
experimental forms. New categories of readers (and audiences) interested
in "authenticity" were subjected to various episodes of "eventalization",
whereby artistic activity was transformed into proof of American
exceptionalism--a new ground where connections, encounters, plays of
forces, marketing and business strategies and discontinuity all were
essential aspects of cultural fame and audience reception. Thus, for
Hoffman, "Twain was as much a cultural phenomenon as a writer" and reflects
the huge national ambitions of America as a collective (xiii, xvii). If
Hoffman were to adopt this stance and use it to frame his discussion of
Clemens, we might have had an interesting, if somewhat derivative and
academic biography. Instead, Hoffman chooses to adopt novelistic
strategies, not altogether unfamiliar ones at that, since his own brief
biography lists "novelist" along with "academic" and "visiting scholar" at
Brown University as parts of his own portfolio. Hoffman, paving the way
for what many will feel is unlicensed speculation regarding homosexual
proclivities, says
Speculation is a necessity in biography. As a biographer, I could blur the
facts to create a reason, or I can admit the uncertainty of knowledge--and
guess. An interesting thing happened once I began to guess about the
uncertainties in Clemens' life These surmises--not random choices, but
conclusions based on circumstantial evidence--began to form patterns.
Earlier guesses determined later ones, forcing certain conclusions. If I
had continually guessed wrong--that is, misunderstood the state of Clemens'
mind at these crucial points--it would have become increasingly difficult
to make the guesses suit the known facts. In fact, Clemens' habits of mind
became clearer as I went along. I cannot say that I proved myself right; I
can only say it began to seem less and less likely that I was wrong (xii).
"Less and less likely that I was wrong," there is the phrase that will
separate this book's detractors and supporters. Many practicing scholars
will be profoundly unsettled by this definition of literary and historical
method. And they should be uncomfortable. If one is prone to accept
speculation and hypothetical reality as an adequate substitute for kinds of
material typically expected of undergraduate and graduate essays in
American literature, then Hoffman's book will have been constructed on an
adequate premise. Like Twain's eccentric neighbors in Nook Farm, Hoffman
needs a good dose of mesmerism to make his observations align.
Hoffman's most controversial speculations occur in chapters two, four and
the center of the tempest, chapter seven. The first 15 chapters, treating
Clemens' life before his marriage and publication of _Innocents Abroad_
form a fairly distinct division. In chapter two, Hoffman describes John
Clemens, Samuel's father as a befuddled, beaten man facing bankruptcy and
addicted to the narcotics found in Cook's pills. For the boisterous young
Samuel, Hoffman describes the passing of his father as "an impossible
weight, a burden that enraged Sam even more after he obtained a horrifying
glimpse, through a keyhole of Dr. Hugh Meredith opening his father's body
for an autopsy" (20). To make this claim stick, Hoffman suggests in a
note, he took a comment from Sam's brother Orion on the back of a letter
sent in February 1861 suggesting that their father had doctored himself to
death, consulted with a pharmaceutical historian on the composition of
Cook's pills (which were known to include mercurous chloride and laxatives
but not, in their typical composition narcotics) and drew the conclusion
that because any pharmacist of the time could have added other drugs, "we
can guess what else the pills included" (n. 515). Such convoluted
reasoning is necessary, because a chemically-dependent father whose
failures in finances and prestige make for a good psychological trauma.
In order to make chemical addiction a running theme, Hoffman repeats
exactly this theorem for Clemens' brother-in-law Charley Webster, his
financial representative in a variety of concerns (and one of several close
associates who embezzled from Clemens). In chapter 35, Hoffman claims that
Webster took excessive quantities of Phenacetin laced with the narcotic
codeine, perhaps because he accidentally shot and killed a three-year -old
girl (333). This legacy is combined with the apocryphal tale of the
existence of the corpse of Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell's (a founder of a St.
Louis medical school) 14-year-old daughter in a glass-lined copper cylinder
and Sam's inside journalistic knowledge of the pornographic adulterous
relationship behind the murder of Thomas Hart by John Wise, key elements in
Sam's psycho-social development. The sordid reality of Hannibal as a
frontier and liminal community works well, if selectively, for Hoffman's
attitude that Samuel's youth contained the requisite combination of
repression and shock necessary for a latter blossoming of implicit
psychological maladies.
In chapter four, Hoffman finds it consequential that Sam's early, idealized
(and presumably platonic) love for Laura Wright ended abruptly when she
impulsively threw her arms around his neck and embraced him.
Circumstantial proof of this, reading the tale "Adam and Eve" as an
allegory with Eve standing in for Ms. Wright, is scattered allusively
throughout Hoffman's narrative. In chapter five, recounting an 1861
meeting with the fortune-teller Madam Caprell, Hoffman recalls "The
fortune-teller astounded Sam by describing Laura Wright perfectly . . .
Madam Caprell touched a nerve when she said no matter whomever Sam courted,
he would always think of Laura Wright first" (59-60). Much later, after
his marriage with Livy and on a trip to the Louvre in Paris, Clemens
supposedly "found himself appalled at Titian's "Venus," who stares frankly
back at the viewer while apparently masturbating " (267). It is one of the
confounding qualities of Hoffman's argument that Clemens, apparently phobic
of feminine attention in some places, is in fact just as often guilty of
excessive passions. How, for instance, could a scholar responsibly make
the following assertion, and more to the point, why would such an assertion
need to be made: "Though Sam and Livy were devoted partners, they did not
communicate the kind of passion that might inspire an adolescent. In all
probability, the sexual component of their relationship had dwindled with
Sam's unreliable [an ironic reference to Clement Rice, Clemens' journalist
and friend in Virginia City?] performance due to age and business worries"
(336).
Let's look at a few more examples of this fascination with sex that
permeates the book. The episode sure to raise the most eyebrows is the
thesis put forward in chapter seven. There Hoffman writes, "The exact
nature of sexuality in the American West will remain a mystery, but
behavior in Nevada took its cue from San Francisco, which even in its early
days showed a surprising acceptance of sexual bonds between men" (77).
Clearly at this point, we are not going to be told of bunk-house
experiments by 11-year olds at lakeside camps, we are instead bringing the
issue into a communitarian, even national context. This year, I took a
year away from teaching in the US to teach students at the American
University in Cairo. The fact that I was writing this review came up in
one of my classes. Knowing I would have to account for Hoffman's
homosexual hypothesis, my students, many of whom are from Cairo where it is
a common sight to see men holding hands, walking arm in arm and kissing in
the most public of places like the subway (but nonetheless live in a
society where same-sex romantic relationships are considered targets of
some of the worst forms of official and cultural oppression) were
incredulous. On the mere basis of anthropological misunderstanding, how
could Hoffman begin to construct such a hypothesis?, they asked. Hoffman
continues his reasoning thus, "Though most western men appear to have
visited female prostitutes, they also typically lived in male pairs,
sharing resources and beds. . . . Many ties between men were strong and
loving. . .[and] often understood as metaphorical marriages. . . . There is
no simple way to define the sexual connection between two men who visit a
bordello together and then go home to sleep in the same bed. Are there any
changes detectable between a relationship that moves from simultaneous
masturbation to mutual masturbation" (77)? Yes indeed.
This is a novel and thorny issue for Twainians who must ask themselves
these questions in connection with Twain's associations with: Artemus Ward,
"[t]hrowing himself into a flash romantic attachment with Ward, Sam also
watched this traveling star carefully for clues to his success" (85);
Clement Rice, "the fact that they lived together in Virginia City, and the
fact that they escaped together for a week of revelry in Carson suggested a
deeper bond than that of just two friends on a lark" (76); Charles Stoddard
(after his marriage to Olivia), "His weeks in England with Sam left only
scant evidence as to the nature of the bond" (214) and "Whatever pleasure
Sam got from his companionship with Charley Stoddard, he found himself
craving Livy's company, too" (215); and Anson Burlingame (the US minister
in China who anointed Twain's literary genius) also helped expose Clemens
"to the lasciviousness surrounding the burial rites of Princess Victoria
[allowing] him to see that his own sexual and social choices had seemed
wild only in comparison with the restrictive morality of the American
Protestantism" (109-10); Isabel Lyon who "served Sam in more capacities
than as secretary and frequent card partner. . . .it is likely that for
more than two years. . .Lyon fulfilled many wifely duties for Sam, a
relationship known, though not endorsed by members of his circle" (461);
and, in a spasm of virility, Gertrude Natkin, "the fifteen-year-old girl he
had met outside Carneige Hall. . .his relationship with Gertrude was
personal and playful, almost romantic" (470). In what has to be considered
as controversial chapter as the one in which he replays the homosexual
thesis, Hoffman writes in "Heaven is Populated with Angelfish," "Sam's
friendship with Gertrude Natkin whetted his appetite for further
association with young girls, who replaced his own children, no longer
young, and revived the scintillation of courtship that he had enjoyed with
Laura Wright, Emeline Beach and Livy. He liked trim, well-educated virgins
in their teen years" (476). Hoffman, in his chapter titled "Hostage to
Bohemia" implies that Clemens purposefully expunged the record of his two
years in San Francisco from the book _Roughing It_ perhaps in an effort to
cover up his true activities, "[t]his suppression leaves a tantalizing
vacuum, which the city itself fills with suggestive answers" (91). The
critical backlash, even in a protean form, will be long and pronounced on
this point, and I think Hoffman should be held to a higher standard of
proof than the one he puts forward in this book.
One can see inconsistencies throughout the middle portion of the book
itself. Hoffman, whose bibliography lists Laura E. Skandera-Trombley's
_Mark Twain in the Company of Women_, appears to have been schizophrenic in
his contemplation of that book's conclusions. In particular, Hoffman's
suggestions about Clemens' alleged homosexuality selectively ignore
Skandera-Trombley's very cogent assertion that Twain was "an author so
dependent upon female interaction and influence that without it the
sublimity of his novels would have been lost" (xvi). Interestingly, in
chapter 26, Hoffman begins a thread he will continue in chapter 53, noting
that one of Clemens' first acts in his Nook Farm community was the creation
of a Saturday Morning Club modeled on one in Boston. Hoffman writes "Young
women had always appealed to Sam. Livy's girlishness had attracted him as
much as her womanliness" (241). Is Clemens to be considered bisexual? Or
is it the fact that Hoffman has latched onto figurative, perhaps even
deceptive prose that implies one thing but, in fact, might camouflage
privately held concerns?
During the first week of April, there has been a significant exchange of
opinion based on Hoffman's comments to interviewers at C-SPAN. Glen
Johnson, one Twain Forum correspondent remarked, "For those who are
interested, there's a growing literature on same-sex affection or same-sex
sex during the 19th century and earlier. The concept of "homosexuality" is
a late 19th century construction. [The] Forum conversation has all the
marks . . . of the kind of presentism that we find everywhere in academia
today. It seems to me that there's not a whole lot to be gained by
demanding that Mark Twain or any other person who lived before our time be
identified as, or protected from "slander" based on, what are obviously
hang ups of our time and (some of) our Twainians. . . Maybe
we could just skip over the struggle and admit that he didn't have
the (enlightened?) sexual attitudes of late 20th century academics
(homophile or homophobic) either" (8 April 1997). No better example of
Clemens' own inconsistent opinion could be found than the assumed lesbian
relationship between Susy Clemens and Louise Brownell which Hoffman claims
began in Susy's freshman year at Bryn Mawr. "Although it is not clear how
frank [Susy and Louise] were about the sexual nature of their
relationship," Hoffman writes, "Livy returned to Hartford exhausted and
unnerved enough to stay in bed two weeks. . . .[Sam and Livy] regarded her
homoerotic desires as an illness, one that distance and the right spas
might cure" (367-8). Given Hoffman's evidence, we can assume Clemens gave
little thought to sending Susy to Carson Nevada for a restorative.
In a recent article in the _ Hartford Advocate_ (March 27, 1997), Kathy
O'Connell recalls a moment in 1993 at the Mark Twain Conference when
Hoffman dropped a "bomb" in Elmira by announcing his belief that while a
young man in the West, Clemens might have had a series of homosexual
affairs. As O'Connell notes "some of that lingers in _Inventing Mark
Twain_, but it's treated so tentatively it comes close to being
irrelevant". Without doubt, the skies will be filled with puffery on this
issue, one only hopes that we don't succumb to the ill-effects of breathing
second-hand smoke. Colleagues, whose opinion on matters pertaining to
Twain I deeply respect, have offered little support for the "low-rent,
few-bed" hypothesis. Their opinion is not far from that expressed by my
Egyptian students: "one shouldn't judge a book by its cover". Hoffman's
comments about Clemens' sexual proclivities, meaning to sound sincere, are
rather irresponsible.
Twain's 1866 journey to Hawaii was a watershed moment in his career.
Hoffman's section has the requisite information on Clemens' meeting with
Anson Burlingame and the fortuitous coverage of the Hornet disaster, but it
was disappointingly thin. Since the trip resulted in the culmination of
_Roughing It_, this chapter (9) points to a larger deficiency in the work
as a whole. Hoffman's descriptions of Twain's writing is conveyed in a
matter of fact style with ample information regarding the publication
history of each work, but scant attention to interpretations (his own or
those of other critics) of that work. Especially odd is the fact that many
of Hoffman's acute observations are frequently disengaged with the actual
content of Twain's narratives. Invariably, Twain's works are given a
cursory and rather superficial reading in a few pages at most [2]. Such
glosses are, sad to say, typical of the book and raise the question of what
became of the copious observations listed in the many works cited in the
bibliography? One excuse might be drastic editing on the part of Morrow,
but the avoidance of such discussions is a serious flaw.
In the end, Hoffman's text demands both that readers be very familiar with
most of the Twain oeuvre (since he does little explication of his own in
the book) and stresses too greatly the economic and chronological order of
Clemens' life. So much material passes undigested that Clemens often looks
puckish, little more than a cartoon-figure routinely robbed by his friends,
uncertain whether he is solvent or hemorrhaging money, playing out a
bourgeois drama of language lessons, spas and clinics for his anemic
family, traveling out of urges to escape and, most curiously, germinating a
succession of pedophiliac, anti-imperialist and nostalgic roles. This
apparent contradiction--of Clemens as a nuanced archetype for his age--and
as one buried in amalgamated business and personal correspondence and
itineraries, is most conspicuous (and annoying) in the last 19 chapters.
Hoffman does a good job of comprehensively rendering these later, chaotic
years of Clemens' life. His account is truthful and meticulous, but lacks
the same thing as George Bush; the "vision thing" is absent from Hoffman's
text, leaving us with what seem paranoid and even "manufactured"
conclusions that might prove more dangerous to future interpretations than
helpful. To cite just one of several examples of the bias Hoffman creates,
in chapter 53, "Heaven is Populated with Angelfish" he says of Clemens:
Schoolgirls represented more than grandchildren to Sam. . . .They
replicated both his platonic sweetheart, the dream ideal of romance first
embodied in Laura Wright and then realized in Livy until time had abrogated
her youth; and the lost girlhoods of his own children, which Sam missed
because of his dedication to writing, publishing, and the typesetter. In
his old age, he could recapture a taste of girlishness, a chance to remake
opportunities he felt badly about having squandered (483).
Leaving aside the implications of Clemens as a sort of unbridled Lewis
Carroll, looking for children as something to be appropriated or fixed in
an adult's egoistic gaze, such a passage lends an emphasis to Clemens'
activities that seems off-color and unnatural given the pedantic details
that make up most of the chapters in the book. Because of an unusually
strong bias in Hoffman's account, I would urge readers to consider also
looking at Randall Knoper's _Acting Naturally: Mark Twain in the Culture of
Performance_, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Knoper's
discussion of Twain's dramatic experience as a means of managing
status-anxiety gives better clues that Hoffman provides for Clemens'
journey eastward after the Civil War. "Twain's series of poses and
unveilings, Knoper asserts, came from an attempt by a white, middle-class
male to find his concept of self in the midst of gender, class, and racial
identities in a largely unstable social environment" (Britton, Wesley.
Review for Mark Twain Forum, 22 February 1996). This approach is central
to understanding at least some of the forms of his relationship with
William Dean Howells and the Atlantic Literary circle and the propertied
world represented by Elmira and Jervis Langdon.
Richard S Lowry. _Littery Man: Mark Twain and Modern Authorship_.
(Commonwealth Center Studies in American Culture.)New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996, offers a more insightful view of Clemens'
strategies for manipulating the literary marketplace than Hoffman is able
to muster. The American Publishing Company figures very prominently in the
central chapters of _Inventing Mark Twain_, but rarely does Hoffman's
discussion rise above a mere recollection of details to offer a systematic
explanation for the rivalry between subscription publishing and the trade
press. Finally, Bruce Michelson's _Mark Twain on the Loose: A Comic Writer
and the American Self_ Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1995, gives a
far more substantial account of Twain's exhibitionism and its impact on his
literary output.
In an otherwise excellent bibliography (the index was omitted from my
review copy but I assume this is equally useful) Michelson's and Lowry's
books are unfortunate omissions. Hoffman's notes are very good, though it
must be said many of his more controversial and risky interpretations are
explained in the fine-print. There are no illustrations and, while I
heartily endorse Henry James's dictum that one should give an author the
latitude appropriate to his own subject, I found many of the chapter
epigraphs (many drawn from the more obscure Twain writings, especially
given the expected general readership of this volume) to offer little in
the way of clarity or to suggest a meaningful anticipation of topics
discussed within each chapter. This is also true of Hoffman's use of
previously unpublished material held by Manufacturers Hanover Trust. As
Hoffman notes near the book's conclusion, many of Twain's remaining
unpublished material lies in the hands of private collectors, and so one
surmises that his contract with Morrow helped free up some of this material
for _Inventing Mark Twain_. Many of the several dozen quotations from the
Manufacturers Hanover Trust material are of peripheral interest. Two I
found especially interesting: 1) the letter Clemens wrote to Charley
Stoddard after Stoddard's publication of _A Troubled Heart_ outlining
Clemens' "pragmatist's spiritual quest" (327) and; 2) written instructions
for an after-dinner introduction where Clemens asks that the moniker Mr.
Mark Twain be used, "for my private name embarrasses me when used in
public" (350).
The book deals awkwardly with the important influences of Langdon family
wealth and the Nook Farm faux-progressivism on shaping Clemens' social and
aesthetic consciousness. Hoffman realizes the titillating thrills shared
by Clemens' community in the Henry Ward Beecher adultery case and the faith
healers, but makes assumptions about Clemens that stretch belief. A
typical Hoffman formulation oversimplifies as in the following example: the
Beecher trial "Sam thought, [might] reprise the illicit pleasures he had
found in Richard Blennerhasset's conduct of the Hart-Wise murder trial in
Palmyra, Missouri, two and a half decades before" (226-7). 25 years is a
long time for associating any idea, but the assumption that Clemens would
connect the dots between two local instances in the manner suggested by
Hoffman is awfully presumptuous.
The repetitive pattern of dysfunction--fratricidal jealousy, paternal
mimicry, sleepwalking, close encounters with chemically dependent relatives
and business associates, implied bisexuality, homosexuality,
pedophilia--all without reliable documentary or textual parallels, makes
for an unpalatable stew. In his methodology, Hoffman has diminished and
made too prosaic Clemens' complicated relationship with William Dean
Howells. Aside from communications coordinating advance reviews of Twain's
books, the two friends are more frequently spoken of at moments where they
share in family tragedy. The distortion, which begins as I said earlier in
a limited way in the first 13 chapters, becomes progressively stronger
until, near the end, the reader shares in a disorienting alienation that
would surprise even Clemens' himself.
Although Hoffman claims to believe that Twain is the most familiar and
internationally recognized author since Shakespeare, those attracted to the
man and his work feel protective of him as one might of an uncle accused of
abusing neighborhood children. There are highly important intersections
that could have been explored: the Twain-Howells juncture, the admixture
of entrepreneurial judgment and inherited wealth, the cross-cultural
reversal of Anglo-American values Twain managed; but instead, the
psychological organization Hoffman insisted on was unfortunate. I still
think, a decade after reading it, that John McAleer's literary biography of
Emerson, _Days of Encounter_ (1986), remains a paradigm for others to
follow. Clemens' life was dominated by meaningful encounters, each one of
which, according to an inner dynamic, provides insights into the writer and
his interests. Hoffman nearly achieves this style in his description of
his friendship and lecture tour with George Washington Cable, but in many
other instances (notoriously Clemens' friendship with Howells and Stoddard)
the reader is never fully informed as to the extent (or implication) of the
friendship.
I hope the sales of Hoffman's book are encouraging enough to justify his
efforts; those interested in viewing the aspects of Clemens' life in
genuinely revealing new contexts will be better served waiting for the next
effort. In this time of Hale-Bopp and Heaven's Gate it might be wise to
read Hoffman's concluding words with a highly cynical eye, "I revere Mark
Twain, as I have since I first began reading him seriously, but I love Sam
Clemens. If he is gazing down on us from a comet somewhere, I hope he can
see that love in this book" (505). Let us also hope Sam Clemens is
incapable of reading and communicating easily with the _New York Times
Review of Books_. Hoffman, given his unique perspective on Clemens, might
hear a grumble or two from the great beyond.
NOTES
[1] My version of Hoffman's book was comprised of uncorrected bound
galleys. Actual page references in the published edition may be different
from those I've noted here. In addition, each chapter usually contains
between 12-25 footnotes, all of which were unnumbered in my edition.
References to Hoffman's notes are, therefore, somewhat incomplete.
[2] Hoffman discusses the following major works "at length" in these
places in his text, _Innocents Abroad_ (159-160); _Tom Sawyer_ (242-44);
_Prince and the Pauper_ (291); _Huckleberry Finn_ (315-17); A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ (345-46); _Pudd'nhead Wilson_ (387-88).
Christopher D. Felker
American University in Cairo Department of American Thought & Language
113 Sharia Kasr El Aini Michigan State University
PO Box 2511 293 Ernst Bessey Hall
Cairo 11511 EGYPT East Lansing, MI 48824-1033
[log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 04:10:42 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Dennis Kelly <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VENUS ON THE MOVE
In Christopher D. Felker's review of Hoffman Andrew. _Inventing Mark Twain:
The Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens_. he quotes:
"Much later, after his marriage with Livy and on a trip to the Louvre in
Paris, Clemens supposedly "found himself appalled at Titian's "Venus," who
stares frankly back at the viewer while apparently masturbating " (267). "
Isn't that painting in the Uffizi in Florence?
I can recall the moralistic dudgeon with thich Twain writes about it, but
can't remember where that writing is.
Venus on the Move
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 16:50:45 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Barbara Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: VENUS ON THE MOVE
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
MIME-version: 1.0
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Titian's Venus in the Ufizzi in Florence is described in Chapter
50 of _A Tramp Abroad_. (Page 578-579 of the Oxford edition.)
Barb
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 20:59:20 PDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mike Pearson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: VENUS ON THE MOVE
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Hoping one of you brave souls you can shed some light on this...
Dennis Kelly wrote
>Isn't that painting in the Uffizi in Florence?
>I can recall the moralistic dudgeon with thich Twain writes about it.
At 04:50 PM 4/13/97 -0500, Barbara Schmidt wrote:
>Titian's Venus in the Ufizzi in Florence is described in Chapter
>50 of _A Tramp Abroad_. (Page 578-579 of the Oxford edition.)
Can anyone resolve the apparent contradiction between Twain's
"moralistic dudgeon" and his claim that the Moral Sense is to blame
for most human shortcomings?
What did he say, anyway, but I can look it up tomorrow. Either way,
was he acting in the pattern of Jesus, ie. preventing the
stoning of a woman who lived by the kindness of strangers, asking
"Whoever among you has not sinned, let him (or her) cast the first stone."
-or-
Is this an example of a family man who regrets his wild younger days
in Virginia City?
-or-
Was he now "playing the game" of his polite society, after previously
believing in a more free-wheeling rulebook from his life among a rougher
crowd?
Mike
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 21:02:59 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Barbara Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Ashcroft-Lyon manuscript
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A 1970 news report indicates Twain's Ashcroft-Lyon manuscript was
purchased by the New York Library - Berg Collection for a price
in excess of $25,000.
Subsequent books related to Twain including H. Hill's _Mark Twain:
God's Fool_ (1973) reference the Ashcroft-Lyon manuscript as being at
MTP.
Is the 1970 news report inaccurate or is there some other reason the Berg
Collection is not referenced as the owner of the Ashcroft-Lyon
manuscript?
Barb
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 05:57:49 PDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Ryan Wilson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: cult and twain
Content-Type: text/plain
Recently someone had mentioned that in one of Twain's writings there
was a reference to the $5.75 that the recently departed cult members
had also carried on their person. If someone could tell me which story
or writing that is from I would appreciate it.
Ryan M. Wilson
University of Florida
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 10:11:21 -0600
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mark Coburn <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: VENUS ON THE MOVE
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Mike Pearson wrote:
>
> Hoping one of you brave souls you can shed some light on this...
>
> Can anyone resolve the apparent contradiction between Twain's
> "moralistic dudgeon" and his claim that the Moral Sense is to blame
> for most human shortcomings?
I've seen at least one place (a letter? somewhere in the
Autobiography?) where Twain notes the paradox, and berates himself for
snarling at people for doing what they are programmed to do. The same
point comes up in the Morgan Le Fay section of CONNECTICUT YANKEE. Hank
says something like, she does as she's been trained to do...but
adds that he'll hang her for it if he gets the chance.
But I think a broader answer to your question, Mike, is that we often
expect a consistency from the dead that we never expect from ourselves.
No one who has ever bought a product because the label said "Old
Fashioned" and then bought another because the label read "New!!"
should belabor Clemens for his inconsistencies.
To me, much of Twain's appeal is that his paradoxes are so much our
own--e.g., yearning for simplicity and also craving goodies; wanting
public adoration, yet often seeing people as damned fools.
Mark Coburn
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 11:56:14 -0700
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: "David S. Barber" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: A Question about a Long Letter
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
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I may be wrong and I don't know what my source it, but I've thought for
years that the one who apologized for writing a long letter because he
didn't have time to write a short one was -- CICERO.
Dave Barber
Univ. of Idaho
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 20:12:37 -0700
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A Question about a Long Letter
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
MIME-version: 1.0
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All right, sports fans, I hate to break up a good round of speculation,
but: "I have made this letter so long only because I have not had the
leisure to make it shorter" is attributed to Pascal, _ Lettres
Provinciales_, XVI. My source (I do not blush to admit it, though I
probably should) is Edward M. Stack's _Reading French in the Arts and
Sciences_. It is my hope that writing this message will impress upon me
forever that Pascal is the source--I usually chicken out with, "as the
Frenchman said . . .," since I can never remember which one.
Peg Wherry
Weber State University
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 13:41:26 EDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Lela Tong <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: A Question about a Long Letter
Thank you very much, Peg!!
Lela Tong
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 23:19:36 PDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mike Pearson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: VENUS ON THE MOVE
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
At 10:11 AM 4/14/97 -0600, Mark Coburn wrote:
..
> No one who has ever bought a product because the label said "Old
>Fashioned" and then bought another because the label read "New!!"
>should belabor Clemens for his inconsistencies.
Belabor him, I will not. Would we not like to put him on the spot, though
over a drink of his choice? You're a good friend to stand up for him,
but
I would not belabor him....only conversing.
As he said at the end of "The Mysterious Stranger," ...you are but a thought
-- a vagrant thought , a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering
forlorn among the empty eternities!" Would he worry about my little
question?
>To me, much of Twain's appeal is that his paradoxes are so much our
>own--e.g., yearning for simplicity and also craving goodies; wanting
>public adoration, yet often seeing people as damned fools.
>
Cheers, for that makes sense!!
The question was,
Can anyone resolve the apparent contradiction between Twain's
"moralistic dudgeon" and his claim that the Moral Sense is to blame
for most human shortcomings?
Barbara Schmidt's page
http://www.tarleton.edu/activities/pages/facultypages/schmidt/Mark_Twain.html
has some of his references to the Moral Sense.
Mike
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 12:15:10 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Sylvia Wendel <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Sam and Orion
Dear friends,
I would like to know if there are books or articles dealing specifically
with
the relationship of Samuel and Orion Clemens. In a cursory way, I know
Orion
was a "dreamer" who was largely supported by Sam in various crackpot
schemes.
I know Orion had a wife and kids. i have (in my "Portable MT") at least
some correspondence from S. to O. Does a collection of all their letters
exist? Didn't Sam at one point become disgusted with Orion and refuse to
provide him with any more $$?
Any info regarding these two will be welcomed. Thanks.
Sylvia Weiser Wendel
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 11:28:45 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Barbara Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Ashcroft-Lyon manuscript
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
I am forwarding to the list the definitive answer from Bob Hirst on this
question. His two attempts to post the answer to the list have
somehow gone astray:
>The Berg did in fact buy it in 1970 (after years of rumors of its
>existence), only to be challenged by the original owners, who prevailed
>in court and had the document returned to them as having been stolen from
>them and therefore not legally sold to the Berg. Berg got its money back,
>but got rather burned in the exchange, especially since the owners turned
>right around and gave it to Berkeley. The original owners were two
>granddaughters of Charlie Langdon: Mrs. Eugene Lada-Mocarski (now dead)
>and Mrs. Bayard Schieffelin, both of New Jersey. Basically it's a classic
>case of not being able to show clear title, but you can imagine that the
>Berg was not too happy at the way things played out.
Thanks, Bob.
--Barb
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 11:41:55 CST
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Matthew Miller <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Sam and Orion
>I would like to know if there are books or articles dealing
>specifically with the relationship of Samuel and Orion Clemens.
I remember hearing about an autobiography of Orion that was
TOO truthful and painted a somewhat pathetic picture of Orion, at
least that's the way I remember the reference. I think it was in the
recent edition of Twain's autobiography, but I could be wrong. I'll
try to track down the reference as soon as I have the time... (Time,
what's that?)
Matthew Miller
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 19:16:31 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Sam and Orion
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
No single book comes to mind, but check out the various articles
on the subject. Some focus on specific letters, such as the "My Dear Bro"
letter,
and check Mark Twain A to Z and the Mark Twain Encyclopedia for basic
information.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 21:11:34 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Kathy O'Connell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Sam and Orion
Dear Sylvia,
Justin Kaplan's MR. CLEMENS & MARK TWAIN has some good info on Sam's
relationship with Orion.
Kathy O'Connell
Hartford Advocate
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 22:50:31 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Sam and Orion
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Also see the works of Fred Lorch, who specialized in the Iowa years.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 07:57:40 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Review: Hoffman, _Inventing Mark Twain_
In-Reply-To: <l03010d01af75b8ca3b58@[193.227.54.235]> from "Christopher
Felker" at Apr 13, 97 00:26:32 am
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Stipulating for the moment that the charges which have been leveled
against Andy are true, why was he able to get his ideas published in
_American Literature_? I had though that the journal formerly edited by
Twain scholar Louis Budd would not publish unresponsible speculation; and,
if it did, would soon correct the problem.
Are there any refutations of Andy's ideas in any literary journal? Should
I regard articles in literary journals with the same skepticism that I
give supermarket tabloids?
I don't wish to address the questions raised about Andy's book here since
I would not hold his publisher to the same standard I expect of journals.
And please, I don't wish to start a repetition of the debate concerning
Andy's motives and scholarship. I simply want to know how ideas are
debated in literary journals, how much credibility is given to ideas
published in journals, and how the process corrects itself when a
misleading article is published. And if it always seems to get so personal!
I hope I don't divert us from our Twain focus. Thanks.
larry marshburne [log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 14:31:11 -0600
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jim McWilliams <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: E-Mail Address for McWilliams
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
My e-mail address will change at the end of the month, so I want to repost
the call for papers that Rick posted not long ago.
While we've lined up a few potential contributors, we are still seeking
more. We certainly will not complain if ALL of our contributors come from
the ranks of this forum!
MARK TWAIN AMONG THE CRITICS: CALL FOR ESSAYS
Twentieth-century critics have often concerned themselves with various
sub-and extra-literary questions about Mark Twain--whether he practiced
"bad faith" in his work, whether he subverted his genius to the status quo
of the Gilded Age, whether he was a plagiarist, an opportunist, a racist, a
sexist, an imperialist, a drunkard, a psychopath, a homosexual, a
pedophile, etc. etc. Unpublished and recently published essays on the
skeptical side of these questions (and essays on the implications of such
questions) are invited for a proposed volume edited by Jim McWillams and
Rick Hill. Payment will be in copies of the book and/or a small honorarium,
pending final arrangements with the publisher. Essays should be 10-20
manuscript pages and follow the Chicago manual of style. Send one paper
copy of abstract or complete manuscript (or a photocopy of published work)
along with a vita and S.A.S.E. to Rick Hill, Department of English, Taylor
University, Upland IN 46989 by August 1, 1997. For further information,
call or e-mail:
Rick Hill: (765) 998-4971; [log in to unmask]
Jim McWilliams: (308) 436-4804; [log in to unmask]
Jim McWilliams
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 00:42:56 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Sylvia Wendel <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Sam and Orion query
Thanks to everyone who's responded to my query regarding the relationship
between Sam and Orion Clemens. You've helped me pinpoint my search. Now,
if
I only had time to go to the library ...
Thanks again,
Sylvia
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 03:14:49 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Dennis Kelly <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VENUS ON THE MOVE
In Christopher D. Felker's review of Hoffman Andrew. _Inventing Mark Twain:
The Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens_. he quotes:
"Much later, after his marriage with Livy and on a trip to the Louvre in
Paris, Clemens supposedly "found himself appalled at Titian's "Venus," who
stares frankly back at the viewer while apparently masturbating " (267). "
Isn't that painting in the Uffizi in Florence?
I can recall the moralistic dudgeon with Which Twain writes about it, but
can't remember where that writing is.
Venus on the Move
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 10:59:57 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Everett Emerson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Sam and Orion
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
A very good discussion can be found in Kent Rasmussen's MARK TWAIN A TO Z.
Everett Emerson
130 Lake Ellen Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-1937
(919) 967-2652
On Tue, 15 Apr 1997, Sylvia Wendel wrote:
> Dear friends,
> I would like to know if there are books or articles dealing specifically
with
> the relationship of Samuel and Orion Clemens. In a cursory way, I know
Orion
> was a "dreamer" who was largely supported by Sam in various crackpot
schemes.
> I know Orion had a wife and kids. i have (in my "Portable MT") at least
> some correspondence from S. to O. Does a collection of all their letters
> exist? Didn't Sam at one point become disgusted with Orion and refuse to
> provide him with any more $$?
>
> Any info regarding these two will be welcomed. Thanks.
>
> Sylvia Weiser Wendel
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 14:32:26 -0500
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mike Heffernan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: What inspired 1601?
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Someone mentioned that a diary relating intimate details of Queen
Elizabeth's court surfaced in time to shock the Victorians and inspired
Twain's 1601.
Where can I lay me hands on said diary?
Mike Heffernan
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 11:29:01 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: "Marcus W. Koechig" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Innocents Abroad and The Ugly American
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Today I was speaking to a professor friend of mine who wondered whether
Twain's portrayal of the pilgrims in Innocents Abroad could be considered
the first portrayal of "the ugly American." Now I am wondering the same
thing. All thoughts, comments, well-reasoned diatribes and suggestive
innuendo, sexual or otherwise, will be welcomed.
Marc
Marcus W. Koechig
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 16:59:04 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Organization: Chowan College
Subject: Re: Innocents Abroad and The Ugly American
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
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Marcus W. Koechig wrote:
> Today I was speaking to a professor friend of mine who wondered whether
> Twain's portrayal of the pilgrims in Innocents Abroad could be considered
> the first portrayal of "the ugly American." Now I am wondering the same
> thing. All thoughts, comments, well-reasoned diatribes and suggestive
> innuendo, sexual or otherwise, will be welcomed.
Part of the to-do made of Twain's first book, as I recall, was that,
unlike previous books, especially travel books, and unlike other
American writers, such as Washington Irving, it contained a narrator
and others who were not awed by the grandeur of Europe or swayed by
pomp and circumstance there. The unimpressed refrain, "Is he dead?,"
said of so much shown them, partly summarizes their attitude: Europe
is old, decaying, dying, not vibrant, fresh, and exciting like the
U.S.; Europe is living on its past, not looking to the future: Trot
out your fresh corpses; we've seen too many of the old ones.
These Americans are brash, loud and, for some tastes, rude and crude;
thus, they probably predate, in literature at least, the familiar
stereotype of the ugly American. But Mark Twain plays a strong role
in ending the "listening too long to the voices of Europe," of which
Emerson complained. Brash, rude, or ugly, the break--literarily, any
way--had to be made. Basically, what Twain did was to take the
American as-is to Europe, not the American lightly stepping to avoid
European toes, as in earlier books, but the American he knew--the
American in Virginia City, in Angels' Camp, in "Journalism in
Tennessee," the American, Scotty Briggs, who came to arrange a
funeral for his friend, Buck, with the Eastern minister--and the
Americans Charles Dickens regretted meeting on a visit to the U.S.
and then satrized savagely in -Martin Chuzzlewit- a few years before
the publication of -Innocents Abroad-. Twain returns Dickens'
attack, though not against the British and not as hatefully, but
certainly some of the Americans on his voyage come across as the "Put
'er there, pard" types that repulsed Dickens. Do I recall that
Dickens' novel furnished some of the motivation for Twain's book? Is
the ugly American tourist partly a response to the uptight European
visitor?
In any case, I believe that the answer to your query is probably yes.
Remember that, unimpressed by what had been touted about this
foreign scenery, Twain, who had been up and down the Mighty
Mississippi River, says later that he'd be afraid to let a European
river out at night because a dog might lap it up.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 14:14:39 PDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mike Pearson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Innocents Abroad and The Ugly American
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Absolutely not! It takes some cultural cross-referencing to realize
The Great Wall of China was built as a reference to
"The Ugly American!" Their obsession (with pretty faces in
the mirror) impelled them to build a 1500 mile long monument
to "enlightened" managementto keep out the uglies.
Of course, they were then invaded from the other direction.
But by that time they had managed to float a barge made of marble
-- a complete vindication of their university system!
Previous "Ugly Americans" had crossed the Pacific by
land bridge or clever raft to escape the "tyranny of the pejoritive."
Alice Walker in _The Color Purple_ gives a clue why Europe
was inhabited by "white folks" -- because they were too ugly to
stay in Africa! (That's a loose paraphrase; regards to the author
and to all the accused).
Now, of course, the ugly people of the world all come to America
to be with their own kind.
And you didn't know this?
(No wonder they "profess" instead of "actualizing!")
Best wishes,
Mike
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 20:46:01 -0600
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Barbara Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Review: McWilliams, _Mark Twain in the St. Louis-Post
Dispatch_
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BOOK REVIEW
McWilliams, Jim. _Mark Twain in the St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, 1874-1891_. Troy, NY: The Whitson Publishing
Company, 1997. Pp. 291. Cloth, 6-1/4" x 9-1/4".
Index. $29.50. ISBN 0-87875-469-5.
Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Barbara Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>
Tarleton State University
Stephenville, TX
Copyright (c) Mark Twain Forum, 1997. This review may not be
published or redistributed in any medium without
permission.
Occasionally a book comes along that fills a long-standing void in
Mark Twain studies and paves a smoother way for additional Twain
research. Jim McWilliams' _Mark Twain in the St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, 1874-1891_ is such a book.
McWilliams began researching the microfilm of the St. Louis Post-
Dispatch newspaper in 1987 with the intention that what he found
would be destined for a "Mark Twain Journal" article. McWilliams'
research is all the more impressive when viewed in light of the
fact that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has no comprehensive index
of stories. Thus, McWilliam's research involved examining every
page of every paper that was published over an eighteen year
period.
Eighteen years of newspaper reports produced over 300 articles
related to Missouri's favorite son Mark Twain. In the interest of
scholarship and a desire to produce a comprehensive picture of the
way Mark Twain was portrayed in one of the leading papers of the
Midwest, McWilliams declined to eliminate even the slightest
references to Twain-- the Journal project died and his collection
has now been released in book form with full text of most of the
articles.
McWilliams begins his volume with a brief history of the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch. Each article that has been retrieved from
microfilm is referenced by date, day of the week, and the page
number that it originally appeared on. McWilliams also provides
well-documented reference notes to many of the news items giving
background information related to the story and informing the
reader when the story was inaccurate,completely false, or couldn't
be verified. In addition, McWilliams provides the original source
of the story if the Post-Dispatch has reprinted it from another
newspaper or journal.
_Mark Twain in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1874-1891_ is a varied
potpourri of items written by Twain; interviews of Twain; speeches
by Twain; anecdotes about Twain; and extracts from letters not
since reprinted. Numerous gossip column items designed to amuse
and entertain the newspaper reader-- and sometimes designed to
launch an insult at Twain are also presented.
The collection begins with a January 9, 1874 article which quotes
from a letter written by Charles W. Stoddard describing his
activities in England with Twain and ends on December 6, 1891
with a Twain essay sent from Bayreuth, Germany. Between 1874 and
1891 are noteworthy articles such as those relating to Twain's
John Calvin bust-- written by an anonymous correspondent;
interviews with Horace Bixby-- Twain's former mentor during his
river pilot days; Twain's 1881 letter to President Garfield
written in support of Frederick Douglass for a public office; a
backstage interview with Twain during his lecture tour with George
Washington Cable; an interview with Twain reminiscing about his
days in Washington when he was secretary to Senator Stewart; an
anecdote on the Hartford house plumbing; Twain's letter written in
response to a pension fund mix-up; a humorous and salty letter
written in response to new postal regulations; an account of a
George Washington Cable April Fool's joke; an article on the
obscene Huck Finn engraving; Twain's eulogy to a watch; and
Twain's account of how he removed his own tattoo via the wart
removal method. The Post-Dispatch also provided continuing
coverage of Twain's efforts on behalf of an international
copyright agreement. Some of the longer articles and essays that
appeared in the Post-Dispatch will be familiar to Twain scholars
from having appeared in Twain's _Sketches, New and Old_, _A Tramp
Abroad_, and _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_.
Scattered throughout the news reports are priceless Twain quotes
relating to the Bible, mosquito netting, and newspapers-- "I shall
never start a newspaper so long as I can buy three for less than
it costs to have my boots blackened" (p. 209).
On a deeper level, however, _Mark Twain in the St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, 1874-1891_ provides an overview of the critical
treatment a native son received at the hands of the St. Louis
press. At times it is a disturbing picture comparable to
twentieth century supermarket tabloid journalism. A preoccupation
with Twain's financial affairs, his Hartford mansion, and his book
sales runs rampant through the gossip columns of the Post-
Dispatch. The Post-Dispatch kept its readers informed of such
trivialities as when Twain had the mumps; the Quarry Farm water
troughs; the number of cigars Twain smoked a day; and when he was
feuding with George Washington Cable.
A surprising number of slurs and insults written by the Post-
Dispatch staff were hurled at Twain through gossip columns with
titles such as "Spice Box", "Post Pencilings", and "Men of Mark."
Whether the "Men of Mark" column was so named because of the
number of times Mark Twain's name appeared in it is a question
McWilliams has left unanswered. Following Twain's embarrassing
Whittier banquet appearance, the Post-Dispatch wrote "Had Mark
Twain lived at that early day he would have made the apostles
appear ridiculous at the last supper" (p. 80). In 1887 another
anonymous columnist wrote, "Mark Twain talks of endowing a home
for pumped-out humorists, and there are those who believe that
Twain ought to be given a front room in it." (p. 212). A more
comprehensive and in-depth analysis of Twain's critical treatment
at the hands of the Post-Dispatch is a topic McWilliams is
planning to address in a future essay.
McWilliams ends his research in 1891-- the year Twain and his
family departed for an extended stay in Europe. McWilliams
explains, "He did not literally die until 1910, but it is not an
exaggeration to say that creatively he had died in 1891." (p. 4).
Some Twain scholars may disagree.
_Mark Twain in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1874-1891_ should
prove itself a useful tool in Twain research and it is hoped that
it will inspire similar research to retrieve additional writings
long since forgotten.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 12:58:52 +0100
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jackie Smith <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Dickens and Twain
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Hi everyone!
I'm a newcomer to this list, and also a newcomer to the works of Twain. I'm
an English undergraduate student, currently doing a module which compares
the works of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens.
So far I've loved reading Twain's writings. I've so far read Huckleberry
Finn and his Tales, Speeches, Essays and Sketches. I also have to read
Pudd'nhead Wilson for my studies. I was wondering if anyone knows of any
specific literary works devoted to both Dickens and Twain? Or if not, any
recommendations on Twain alone would be very much appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Jackie
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 17:17:37 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Everett Emerson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Dickens and Twain
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
See Joseph H. Gardner, "Mark Twain and Dickens" PMLA 84 (1969), 90-101.
Everett Emerson
130 Lake Ellen Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-1937
(919) 967-2652
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 19:06:31 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Dickens and Twain
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
see my article in _American Literary History_, I think on Caryle, Clemens,
and
Dickens. I forget the forget the exact bib info; the MLA bib can help you.
See also the Mark Twain Encyclopedia and the Mark Twain A to Z.
Wesley Britton
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 21:59:13 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Howard Baetzhold <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Twain & Dickens
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For detailed discussions see Howard. G. Baetzhold, "Mark Twain and
Dickens--Why
the Denial?" in _ Dickens Studies Annual_, Vol. 16, New York:AMS
Press,1987, pp.189-220 and _Mark Twain and John Bull:
The British Connection__ Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press,
1970, See index.
Good luck on your project.
HGB [log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 00:56:44 -0700
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: "John W. Young" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: A Question
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
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I know that this question is not related to Twain in the strictest sense,
but can anyone point me to a verifiable date by which John Steinbeck read
_Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_? I know that Steinbeck _did_ read the
book, but I really need to know _when_ to help prove an argument I'm
working on.
Thank you,
John Young
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 06:27:55 -0600
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mark Coburn <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Review: McWilliams,
_Mark Twain in the St. Louis-Post Dispatch_
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Loud and fervent thanks to Barb Schmidt for an outstanding review.
After reading the first paragraph or so, I was thinking, "My God, why
would anyone waste the precious time to write a book like that? And who
on earth would want to read it?" I kept reading the review only because
I enjoy Barb's work.
By the end, I was ready and eager to order the book; yet felt I had a
good sense of its limitations, too.
What more can one ask of a review and reviewer?
I've been consistently impressed with the level of the reviews on TWAIN
FORUM, and this was among the best.
Mark Coburn
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 06:48:40 -0600
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mark Coburn <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Good discussions of American lit.
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Help! Can someone steer me to a good, lively mail list for general
discussions of American literature, particularly of Twain's era?
--The American Literature list, AMLIT-L, seems almost dead. (Or have I
just sampled it at a dead time?)
--H-AMSTDY is sometimes ok, but the real focus there is American
studies.
--I dropped the H-Net Gilded Age list because it's nothing but meeting
announcements and calls for papers. Further, the list owner made it
clear to me he likes it that way.
I've found nothing for American equal to the steady good talk on
VICTORIA, where simultaneous lively talk about 3 or 4 authors often
flourishes.
I'm seeking something like VICTORIA for American literature: A group
where chatter about Dickinson's influence on Frost, the impact of James
and Howells on each other, and some hot exchanges about Frank Norris
might all be going on at once.
Any leads will be appreciated. If you feel it more appropriate to
respond privately, that's fine.
Thanks,
Mark Coburn
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 09:47:56 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jim Zwick <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: MT Resources on the WWW has moved
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I have dismantled the Mark Twain Resources on the World Wide
Web site and created a new Mark Twain site at The Mining Company, a
new (it opens today) directory of topic-specific sites that have a
lot of additional features. The new URL is:
http://marktwain.miningco.com/
The new site has all of the links that the old one had plus short
weekly feature articles (which I'll often use to put additional
Twain texts online), an events calendar (currently filled with Twain
trivia for the month of April), and more. Sometime soon it will also
have Twain-specific bulletin boards for threaded discussions, and
live online chat (both will work within your web browser) that I
hope can be used for virtual conferences on a variety of topics --
teaching Huckleberry Finn, international discussions between classes
studying his books, author "appearances," etc.)
If you have upcoming events that you would like listed in the
calendar, please let me know. Also let me know if you would like to
consider scheduling a special event using live chat once its online.
I think that will open up some exciting possibilities but I have no
idea what all of them might be so I'll be very happy to hear
suggestions. I'll also welcome any other suggestions you have for
the site, including any public domain texts you'd like to see online.
Complaints also welcome!
Jim Zwick
[log in to unmask]
http://www.rochester.ican.net/~fjzwick/
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 10:34:25 EDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Carolyn L Richey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Good discussions of American lit.
T-AMLIT (teaching American literature) is another possibility, but there
is no "free" discussion. The moderator(s) decide(s) what goes through
and what doesn't, and then it is "cut," "censored," and otherwise
"condensed" to fit into a designated theme. And on top of that, I've
seen very little reference to Twain.
I'd also like to know any other addresses. Are there any other groups as
lively as this one?
clr
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 10:47:49 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Michael O'Conner <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Good discussions of American lit.
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Mark:
As facilitator over at AmLit-L, I recommend "starting" the discussions
over there--not complaining that the list is "dead." However, take a look
at the list of "Other American Lit Discussion Lists" on the www page,
American Literature OnLine at:
http://www.missouri.edu/~engmo/amlit.html
Perhaps one of those would fit the bill.
Michael O'Conner
Millikin University
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 10:53:45 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jennifer Hochschild <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Good discussions of American lit.
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
could you, and others, give full addresses for subscribing to t-amlit, and
to amlit, and to other suggestions that surface? thanks, JH
At 10:34 AM 4/21/97 EDT, Carolyn L Richey wrote:
>T-AMLIT (teaching American literature) is another possibility, but there
>is no "free" discussion. The moderator(s) decide(s) what goes through
>and what doesn't, and then it is "cut," "censored," and otherwise
>"condensed" to fit into a designated theme. And on top of that, I've
>seen very little reference to Twain.
>
>I'd also like to know any other addresses. Are there any other groups as
>lively as this one?
>
>clr
>
>
Jennifer Hochschild
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 10:08:12 PDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mike Pearson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Review: McWilliams,
_Mark Twain in the St. Louis-Post Dispatch_
Mime-Version: 1.0
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At 06:27 AM 4/21/97 -0600, Mark Coburn wrote:
>Loud and fervent thanks to Barb Schmidt for an outstanding review.
>
<snip>
>
>What more can one ask of a review and reviewer?
>
>I've been consistently impressed with the level of the reviews on TWAIN
>FORUM, and this was among the best.
Let me lend a second to this sentiment.
Few people know how hard our moderator, Taylor Roberts, works to
keep the level high. If not for his foresight, you would soon be
receiving my review of _Mark Twain at West Point_. But upon seeing
my first-week draft, he realized I was writing something unconventional,
and swiftly reassigned the review to someone else, and notified me with
great tenderness and tact.
Mike Pearson
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 13:14:55 EDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Carolyn L Richey <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Good discussions of American lit.
The address for T-AMLIT (teaching American Literature) is:
<[log in to unmask]> for
<[log in to unmask]>
It's been a while since I subscribed so I don't remember the how-to's.
Or which is the address to mail requests for subscription.
Good luck.
clr
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 16:45:40 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Innocents Abroad and The Ugly American
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]> from "Marcus W.
Koechig"
at Apr 19, 97 11:29:01 am
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I thought The Ugly American was more of an incompetent imperialist
missionary than a rude tourist. I would consider _M.T.'s Weapons of
Satire_--not _Innocents Abroad_--to be about The Ugly American.
thanks, larry marshburne [log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 15:11:42 -0700
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: William Hassebrock <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Twain's Contemplation of Suicide
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I am a new member of the forum, so please forgive me if I ask any questions
that have been previously addressed.
Some years ago I read that Twain seriously contemplated suicide while a
reporter for the San Francisco Call. I have been unable to find that
reference again and the issue is not discussed in any of the other Twain
biographies I recently consulted. Is there evidence to suggest that Twain
did indeed contemplate suicide and, if so, where can I find more on this
subject?
Thanks for your help!
-- Bill Hassebrock
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 23:03:12 +0100
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jackie Smith <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Dickens and Twain
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I'd just like to thank everyone for the extremely helpful (and speedy!)
information they've given me regarding Twain and Dickens.
I shall take your valued advice on the suggested reading. Hence, I may be
at the library for a long time to come, so if you don't hear from me for a
while....
Thanks again
Jackie
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 21:58:49 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Dennis Kelly <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Review: McWilliams,
_Mark Twain in the St. Louis-Post Dispatch_
I hope this joins a chorus of seconds to the praise for Barbara Schmidt's
review.
I had the same pleased reaction and even began to wonder if there were some
newspaper files lying around that I could dredge through so that she could
write about my work, too.
Dennis Kelly
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 20:44:03 -0700
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Good discussions of American lit.
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
So what about a listserv on American Realism and Naturalism? That would
allow for contextual and intertextual stuff beyond Twain but wouldn't be
as capacious and unfocussed as AMLIT-L (which was so active when I dropped
off a year or so ago that I have a hard time thinking of it as moribund).
Anybody up for starting a new list? Taylor will tell you how easy it is
(or isn't). I don't have tech support buy-in for listserv at my
institution (and besides, I'm supposed to be frying other fish). But
surely SOMEone out there at least knows someone who is so interested in
the possibility of such a list that a volunteer can be found.
I'll join!
Peg Wherry
Weber State University
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 00:05:30 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Twain's Contemplation of Suicide
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
I know of nothing biographical,
but the many references to wanting to die
in HF might be of interest.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 00:19:56 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: COMET POEM
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Just heard Gene Roddenbury
and Timothy Leary went
into space.
Hope they don't get disappointed
and run into the Heaven't Gate
crowd.
Hope they are up there
long enough for Halley's return
cause that would be a great
conversation.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 05:58:31 +0000
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: John Evans <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Twain's Contemplation of Suicide
MIME-Version: 1.0
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There is a similar reference in _Tom Sawyer_ concerning a death wish on
Tom's part.
He "contemplated the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while,
that he could only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without
undergoing the uncomfortable routine devised by nature."
I don't know if you'd care to characterize this as contemplating
suicide or not. It would be an even greater jump to categorize this as
autobiographical.
Regards,
John
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 06:56:48 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: "Joseph H. Towson" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Twain's Contemplation of Suicide
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Take a look at footnote 6, on page 325 of Mark Twain's Letters, Volume =
1. In 1866 Twain pointed a pistol to his head *but wasn't man enough =
to pull the trigger.*=20
Joe Towson
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 07:33:28 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Twain's Contemplation of Suicide
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]> from
"William
Hassebrock" at Apr 21, 97 03:11:42 pm
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"One night early in 1866 he put a pistol to his head." "The most
explicit of SLC's several references to the episode is a marginal
comment, Apr. 21, 1909, in his copy of J. R. Lowell's _Letters_, quoted
in Los Angeles _Times_, Apr. 15, 1951." (Kaplan, _Mr. Clemens and M.T._,
pp. 15, 391)
Yes, we have discussed this before on the Forum. Check the archives from
about a year ago.
larry marshburne [log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 09:37:31 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Ham Hill <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Twain's Contemplation of Suicide
Kevin McDonnell of Austin, Texas, currently owns Mark Twain's annotated copy
of Lowell's Letters in two volumes with the marginal comment that he, like
Lowell, etc., etc.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 17:09:03 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Everett Emerson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Review of Hoffman's book
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
I would be grateful if someone would forward to me the long review of
Hoffman's book recently published in the Forum. I lost my copy.
<[log in to unmask]>
Everett Emerson
130 Lake Ellen Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-1937
(919) 967-2652
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 17:00:57 -0600
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mark Coburn <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Good discussions of American lit.
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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My thanks to all who offered suggestions about good places to find
American lit. discussion groups.
Mark Coburn
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 08:04:58 PST
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mark Twain Papers <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Review of Hoffman's book
Dear Mr. Emerson: I will forward the review ASAP. Brenda J. Bailey,
Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 15:11:55 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Everett Emerson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Review: Hoffman, _Inventing Mark Twain_
Comments: cc: FS HELLWIG HAROLD <[log in to unmask]>
In-Reply-To: <l03010d01af75b8ca3b58@[193.227.54.235]>
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Thanks to several members of the Forum, I have now a copy of the extended
review of Hoffman's biography. I hope that the review will not keep Mark
Twainians from reading the book, which contains much information not found
elsewhere. The book has 16 pages of well-chosen illustrations. It
clarifies many issues, notably how much damage Charles Webster did to Mark
Twain. It is well paced, well written, clear. The sexual issues
identified in the review do not loom large in the book.
Hoffman has done his homework. He has made good use of Mark Twain's
letters, published and unpublished. (Incidentally, Mark Twain's letter to
Stoddard about "peace of mind" was published in 1969 by John T. Frederick
in a much-neglected essay on Mark Twain and Religion: THE DARKENED SKY:
NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVELISTS AND RELIGION, Note Dame University Press.)
I hope that other readers will offer comments on Hoffman's book. He
expresses gratitude to the Mark Twain Forum: "I thank you
all from the bottom of my heart."
Everett Emerson
130 Lake Ellen Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-1937
(919) 967-2652
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 12:40:10 -0700
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Robert Hirst <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Ashcroft-Lyon manuscript
In-Reply-To:
<[log in to unmask]>
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The 25 June 1970 news report is accurate, as far as it goes. News of the
sale
prompted the actual owners of the manuscript to come forward and
assert their claim to it. I'm not sure whether the dispute ever went to
court, but the result was that the Berg returned the manuscript to them,
the dealer returned the money to the Berg, and the owners decided to give
the manscript to MTP. It was appraised at that time (April 1973) for
$40,000.
The owners were Mrs. Eugene Lada-Mocarski and Mrs. Bayard Schieffelin,
grandnieces of Mark Twain on the Langdon side.
Bob
On Sun, 13 Apr 1997, Barbara Schmidt wrote:
> A 1970 news report indicates Twain's Ashcroft-Lyon manuscript was
> purchased by the New York Library - Berg Collection for a price
> in excess of $25,000.
>
> Subsequent books related to Twain including H. Hill's _Mark Twain:
> God's Fool_ (1973) reference the Ashcroft-Lyon manuscript as being at
> MTP.
>
> Is the 1970 news report inaccurate or is there some other reason the Berg
> Collection is not referenced as the owner of the Ashcroft-Lyon
> manuscript?
>
> Barb
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 08:16:21 PDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Ryan Wilson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Cpt. Stormfield
Content-Type: text/plain
I have been endlessly searching for _Captain Stormfield's Trip to the Moon_
and
have
been unsuccessful. I have found his trip to Heaven, however, it does
not say anything about the comet and money that relates to the Heaven's Gate
cult
in any way whatsoever. If someone can tell me what collection of stories
this
is
in or anything else that can help I would appreciate it.
Ryan M. Wilson
University of Florida
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 10:03:27 -0700
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Greg Camfield <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Cpt. Stormfield
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
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I believe you've been sent on a wild goose chase.
Gregg Camfield
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 13:26:43 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Barbara Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Cpt. Stormfield
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
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Ryan,
Several weeks ago Don Lattin (religion reporter for the San Francisco
Chronicle) also tried unsuccessfully to verify the passage in question.
He wrote me that he had been informed that a story titled "Capt.
Brassbrown's Conversion" contained the $5 + change passage.
Thus far, the author of "Capt. Brassbrown's Conversion" remains
unidentified and where one might find a printed copy of the
same remains unanswered.
Barb
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 15:08:45 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Organization: Chowan College
Subject: Re: Cpt. Stormfield
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
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I know of no such story as "Captain Stormfield's Trip to the Moon."
Mark Twain spent about forty years working on the Captain's visit to
Heaven; I don't believe that he or the captain took any side-trips
on the way. Both Mark and Stormfield would be fascinated by these
links between them and the Heaven's Gate group. I can only begin to
imagine what Twain would say or Stormfield would do. Twain could
certainly envision folks wishing to leave the planet he re-named "the
Wart," and doing via a comet would capture his thinking. In another
story, the character Mark Twain tricks his way into heaven by
switching tickets with an archbishop because humorists are not
welcome there; Twain says elsewhere that there is no humor in heaven,
but he would note not only note the darkness of that event in
California but also its dark humor. Truly, Twain appreciates the
God's laughter Faulkner exemplifies in -Life in August- when he
metaphorically pulls his camera high above the old farmer who,
carrying Joanna Burden's murdered body from her burning house as her
head, cut ear to ear, falls backward and turns completely around,
says, [paraphrasing] "Well now, if you'd a-been a-looking that way
when this happened, it might not've happened, would it?" Capt.
Stormfield's story does not seem exaggerated compared to earthly
events.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 15:52:31 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Bill Cosgrove <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Cpt. Stormfield
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Faulkner's _Life in August_?
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 22:53:00 BST-1
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Graham Allan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Cpt. Stormfield
In-Reply-To:
<[log in to unmask]>
> Thus far, the author of "Capt. Brassbrown's Conversion" remains
I think that's _Captain Brassbound's Conversion_ by GBS.
I apologize if this appears twice -- one message seems to have disappeared.
Graham
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 20:40:06 EDT
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Taylor Roberts <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: New MT Forum list manager
[If you want to sign off this list, send a message to [log in to unmask]
containing the single line, "SIGNOFF TWAIN-L".]
This brief message is to let you know that the administration of the
Mark Twain Forum has recently changed. The Forum has demanded an
increasing amount of time from me, while my other (non-Twainian)
responsibilities have multiplied. After considering giving up the Forum
entirely, Kevin J. Bochynski has come to the rescue by assuming
management of the e-mail list; I expect that my freedom from this task
will allow me to maintain my participation in the Forum by continuing to
coordinate and edit the book reviews, and maintain TwainWeb.
Henceforth, queries about your subscriptions to TWAIN-L should be
addressed to Kevin at <[log in to unmask]>, as I no longer have
any control over the e-mail list. Messages about book reviews, however,
should still be addressed to me.
Kevin has always been very helpful to me and to all Forum members, and
I'm looking forward to any new directions that he might bring to the
Forum.
Taylor Roberts <[log in to unmask]>
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 23:34:29 -0600
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jim McWilliams <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: New MT Forum list manager
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Let me be among the first to thank Taylor for devoting so much of his time
to the Forum. I know all subscribers will agree with me in saying that his
tireless efforts have made the Forum into such a wonderful place for
friends to chat about things Twainian.
I'm certainly glad that he isn't leaving us entirely.
Thanks, Taylor.
Jim McWilliams
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 21:48:49 -0500
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: MR BRIAN P O'SHEA <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: MT and Joel Chandler Harris
I am researching the relationship between Joel Chandler Harris
(Uncle Remus author) and MT. Does anyone know how I can confirm the
date of a visit by Harris to Hartford in the spring of 1883? It is
mentioned in several Harris research sources, and MT mentions the
visit (without a date) in his autobiography. But I cannot determine
when in the spring of 1883 this visit took place. I have checked
several of the books recommended by this forum; also checked standard
periodical indexes and the NT Times index for 1883, with no luck. I
even wrote to the Twain House in Hartford. They wrote back a nice
letter but did not know the date of the visit. My best guess is
between early April, when George Washington Cable was visiting Twain,
and mid-June, when Twain left Hartford to spend the summer in Elmira.
If anyone can answer this mystery or suggest resources to solve it,
I'd be grateful. If this visit took place, this was one of two
personal meetings between Twain and Harris, who admired each other
and corresponded over several years in the 1880s. The other was in
New Orleans in the spring of 1882, when Harris met Twain and Cable in
Cable's hometown.
Brian O'Shea
The Joel Chandler Harris page http://www.ajc.com/staff/oshea/snap.
htm
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 1997 07:39:52 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A [Steinbeck] question
In-Reply-To: <v03102800af80caf348b3@[207.104.75.147]> from "John W. Young"
at
Apr 21, 97 00:56:44 am
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John W. Young wrote:
> I know that this question is not related to Twain in the strictest sense,
> but can anyone point me to a verifiable date by which John Steinbeck read
> _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_? I know that Steinbeck _did_ read the
> book, but I really need to know _when_
In his comments on the demise of Twain scholar Pascal Covici Jr., Wesley
Britton noted, in the _M.T.Circular_, that Covici's second literary love
was perhaps Steinbeck. You might look at Covici's work to see if he ever
answered your question. And yes, I think questions of Twain's influence
on other authors are related in the strictest sense to this Forum's
purpose.
larry marshburne [log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 1997 09:07:02 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: MT and Joel Chandler Harris
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]> from "MR BRIAN P
O'SHEA" at Apr 25, 97 09:48:49 pm
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If I read _The Union Catalog of Letters to Twain_ correctly, Harris
mentions Clemens in a May 28, 1883 letter to Richard W. Gilder. I don't
know how to locate the letter or if it mentions the visit although the
timing is right.
larry marshburne [log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 1997 20:51:37 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Kathy O'Connell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: MT and Joel Chandler Harris
Brian--
I've got access to some obscure Connecticut things the MTH has neither the
staff nor money to do. I can poke around a bit for you to see what I can
come
up with, but it'll take some time, if that's all right. Let me know.
Kathy O'Connell
Hartford Advocate
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 1997 21:45:23 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jim Zwick <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: NY Times Review of Inventing Mark Twain Online
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A review of Andrew Hoffman's _Inventing Mark Twain_, written by
David S. Reynolds for the New Tork Times Book Review (April 27,
1997), is online at the New York Times site:
Never the Twain Shall Meet
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/27/reviews/970427.27reynolt.html
If you haven't used the NY Times site before, registration is
required for access. Registration is free for users within
the United States, but I believe there is a fee for users from
non-U.S. domains.
There are also links at the bottom of the review to seven
other articles about Twain from the Times archives.
Jim Zwick
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 15:21:11 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jim Zwick <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Hoffman's About Books segment on the web, etc.
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The April 6 segment of C-Span's About Books program with Andrew
Hoffman is now on the web in RealAudio format (64 minutes):
About Books, April 6, 1997
http://www.c-span.org/mmedia/abtbooks/ab0406b.htm
I just listened to it and have to say that it bears no resemblance to
what was described here earlier.
The Great Plains Chautauqua Society has a new web site for its
Writers of the Gilded Age project. There is information online about
Twain, Zitkala-Sa, W.E.B. DuBois, Stephen Crane, Jack London, and
Kate Chopin. There will also be a summer tour featuring
impersonations/readings of their works. The Twain page is at
http://www.gp-chautauqua.org/html/mark_twain.html
Also, Nicaragua is now advertising its connection to Mark Twain on
the web. There is an article in Spanish from the January 2, 1997,
issue of _La Prensa_ at:
http://www.nicaragua-online.com/mark_twain.html
Jim Zwick
[log in to unmask]
http://www.rochester.ican.net/~fjzwick/
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 23:54:51 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <[log in to unmask]>
From: Jim Zwick <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Opposition to suffrage?
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In his review of Hoffman's _Inventing Mark Twain_ (NY Times, April
27, 1997), David Reynolds writes:
"The dual nature of his experience with race relations extended into
adulthood. He sometimes seemed highly conservative, as when he
opposed suffrage for blacks, and elsewhere progressive, as when he
publicly praised Frederick Douglass.... "
I have never read that Twain opposed suffrage for blacks, and have
been going through Hoffman's biography looking for that without
success -- in fact, every discussion of his adult views on race
I've found in the book seems to indicate the opposite.
Does anyone have any idea what Reynolds is referring to there? Did
Twain ever oppose suffrage for blacks?
Thanks in advance.
Jim Zwick
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 03:27:53 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Dennis Kelly <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Fwd: Mark Twain translation
My daughter, Edith Kelly, did a quick translation of the _La Prensa_ article
on Twain mentioned in the Forum. I hope it won't become another case of the
French translation of _The Celebrated Jumping Frog_.
Dennis Kelly
---------------------
Forwarded message:
Subj: Mark Twain translation
Date: 97-04-27 22:29:33 EDT
From: EDIJKELLY
To: DenseKelly
The famous North American (american) writer of last century, Mark Twain (his
real name was Samuel Clemens) passed through Nicaragua at the end of
December
of 1866 en route to NY and his work as a correspondent was to write weekly
letters relating his personal adventures in his travels around the world.
MT, with his novel (as in new) literary style and formidable descriptive
capacity, took the place of video cameras at the end of the last century,
carrying to the American reader with his fluid narrative the images of
distant lands. According to an investigative work in this section of
"Revista" (that tends to mean magazine), MT was in Nicaragua and made the
journey between the two oceans through the famous "Ruta del Transito"
(transit route) which consisted of disembarking in San Juan del Sur, from
there going on a road to the port "La Virgen" on Lake Nicaragua where he
boarded a "vapor" (steamer, I suppose) to San Carlos. From San Carlos he
traveled in "lanchas planas" (flat launches?) to travel to San Juan del
Norte, the port where he boarded another ship to New York. During this long
trip through Nicaragua, MT was overly impressed by two beauties: that of la
Isla de Ometepe and that of the beauty of the Nicaraguan woman. During the
trip from "La Virgen" to San Carlos, MT had the oportunity to see Ometepe
Island up close and, fascinated by its beauty, described it as follows:
"From the cener of beautiful Lake Nicaragua grow (?) two magnificent
pyramids, dressed in the most smooth ("suave") and concentrated green, all
dusted ("espolvoreado") with shadow and sunlight, whose peaks penetrate the
spongy clouds. They look so isolated from the world and its noise, so calm,
so dreamy, so "empapadas" in sleep and eternal repose. Whata beautiful
house
you could build in its shadowy forests, in its sun-drenched coasts, in its
clearings where the breeze runs, after completely ridding yourself of work,
anxiety, and the "desasosiego" of this frenetic and aggressive world."
On this trip, the famous American writer, tru precursor of world tourism,
described two girls he found selling "mani" on the road from San Juan de Sur
to Cocibolca before embarking at the port of "La Virgen" as follows: "Two
of these picturesque local ("lugarenas") girls were extremely beautiful.
What liquid and sorrowful eyes! What "empurraditos" lips! What shiny and
abundant hair! And these expressions - so "arrebatadoras" and incendiary!
What a pleasure. Such voluptuous figures with such little clothing covering
them.
It is interesting to note that, already in this time, for MT the world was a
"frenetic and aggressive" plase...what if MT had been able to use a time
machine to journey to the 20th century, on the verge of the 21st? But even
though the world has changed, the two beauties MT described in 1866, that of
the Nicaraguan woman and Ometepe Island, stay true (?incolumes).
Taken from the book "Mark Twain's Travels with Mr. Brown"
New York, 1940
Published in "La Prensa" Managua, January 2, 1997
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 23:04:07 -0700
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Lawrence Gerald <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: Shakespeare Authorship Center of San Francisco
Subject: Re: Twain- Francis Bacon & Shake-speare
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Anyone out there read Twain's . "Is Shakespeare Dead?" and if so do you
agree with Twain's high regard for Francis Bacon as the Author of
Shakespeare and his very doubtful exposition on the Stratford man's lack
of fame in his own home town.
A book that goes into showing Shakespeare's influence on Twain is by
Anthony Berret,"M.Twain & Shakespeare", has anyone read this ? All
responses appreciated.
Thank you ,
Lawrence Gerald
[log in to unmask]
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 08:38:46 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Carolyn Farkas <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Twain Modernized? Plagiarized?
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Apparently Mr. Clemens has been updated for the EEC and the Internet; the
item
below showed up on ECOMP-L ([log in to unmask]
for teachers of English composition). I've already posted a reply, which
I reprinted after the original post.
Carolyn
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I received the following from a friend on the internet, and thought it
pertinent to some of the discussions which have been occurring on this
listserv.
Read and enjoy!
> >***IMPROVING ENGLISH***
> >
> > Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC, the
> > European Parliament has commissioned a feasibility study in ways of
> > improving efficiency in communications between Government departments.
> >
> > European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is
> > unnecessarily difficult - for example, cough, plough, rough, through
> > and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of changes
> > to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be
> > administered by a committee staff at top level by participating
> > nations.
> >
> > In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's'
> > instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities
> > would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced
> > by 'k' sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this
> > klear up konfusion in the minds of klerikal workers, but typewriters
> > kould be made with one less letter.
> >
> > There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it kould
> > be announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'.
> > This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty per sent shorter in
> > print.
> >
> > In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
> > expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are
> > possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double letters
> > which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.
> >
> > We would al agre that the horible mes of silent 'e's in the languag
> > is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ
> > as though nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins
> > the skem began and peopl would be reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing
> > 'th' by 'z'.
> >
> > Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by 'v', vitsh is,
> > after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o kould be dropd
> > from words kontaining 'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to
> > ozer kombinations of leters.
> >
> > Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli
> > sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no mor trubls,
> > difikultis and evrivun vud fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer.
> >
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That's a great item--but those Europeans are following a fine
American tradition:
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 09:37:10 -0700
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Greg Camfield <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Opposition to suffrage?
Comments: To: Jim Zwick <[log in to unmask]>
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Sun, 27 Apr 1997, Jim Zwick wrote:
> In his review of Hoffman's _Inventing Mark Twain_ (NY Times, April
> 27, 1997), David Reynolds writes:
>
> "The dual nature of his experience with race relations extended into
> adulthood. He sometimes seemed highly conservative, as when he
> opposed suffrage for blacks, and elsewhere progressive, as when he
> publicly praised Frederick Douglass.... "
>
> I have never read that Twain opposed suffrage for blacks, and have
> been going through Hoffman's biography looking for that without
> success -- in fact, every discussion of his adult views on race
> I've found in the book seems to indicate the opposite.
>
> Does anyone have any idea what Reynolds is referring to there? Did
> Twain ever oppose suffrage for blacks?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Jim Zwick
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.rochester.ican.net/~fjzwick/
>
Twain did in the early 1870s at least occasionally advocate a change in
suffrage to benefit the educated and property
owners. While he seems to have meant to reduce the influence of the
Irish, the practical consequences of any such reforms would have been to
diminish the influence of other groups who had little property and little
access to education. See "The Curious Republic of Gondour."
Gregg Camfield
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 03:22:36 +0000
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
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From: Jim Zwick <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Mark Twain Papers & Project Home Page
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The Mark Twain Papers and the Mark Twain Project at The Bancroft
Library now have a home page with thorough descriptions of
holdings, finding aids, copying procedures, permissions
requirements, and a complete list of publications. It is at:
http://library.berkeley.edu/BANC/MTP/
A year or two ago, Paul Machlis asked us if we would use the Union
Catalogs of Clemens letters if they were put online. According to
this new description, "An on-line version of both catalogs, regularly
updated by editors in the Project, will be available shortly."
Jim Zwick
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http://www.rochester.ican.net/~fjzwick/
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Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 13:46:37 EDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Scott Loren <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adam Family Papers
Comments: To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 13:46:34 +0200 (IST)
From: LOREN SCOTT <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re:Adam Family Papers
To: Jim Zwick <[log in to unmask]>
cc: [log in to unmask]
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Has anyone read DeVoto's small introductions to "Extract From Eve's
Autobiography" and "Passage From Eve's Autobiography?"
Is DeVoto trying to be humorous? Does the first sentence from the intro
to "Extract" even make sense?
He mentions that Twain translated the Autobiography or Diary and I
believe he mentions something about Twain having dificulties determining
whether the Diaries (Adam's and Eve's) were apocryphal or not? If this is
humor, why does his tone not alter from when he is serious?
Am I completely missing the point?
Help-
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Date: Sat, 29 Mar 1997 11:44:58 -0000
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Cliff Walker <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adam Family Papers
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> [DeVoto] mentions that Twain translated the Autobiography or Diary
> and I believe he mentions something about Twain having dificulties
> determining whether the Diaries (Adam's and Eve's) were apocryphal
> or not? If this is humor, why does his tone not alter from when he is
> serious?
>
> Am I completely missing the point?
Paul Krassner, editor of "The Realist," uses a similar ploy, allowing the
reader to decide whether a given piece is reportage or satire. This was
sometimes a tough decision, indeed. The most notorious example was called
"The Parts They Left Out Of The Kennedy Book" which is reprinted in
Krassner's "Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut" (New York:1993, Simon
and Schuster).
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Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 17:39:20 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: "Marcus W. Koechig" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Adam Family Papers
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At 01:46 PM 4/29/97 EDT, you wrote:
>Is DeVoto trying to be humorous? Does the first sentence from the intro
>to "Extract" even make sense?
> If this is
>humor, why does his tone not alter from when he is serious?
>Am I completely missing the point?
If you failed to miss the point, then I really made a fool of myself when
reading DeVoto's "Mark Twain's America," an answer to Van Wyck Brooks' "The
Ordeal of Mark Twain." Having read the latter-mentioned title, I read the
former and pretty near brayed like a jackass through the entire text. I have
no idea whether DeVoto was intentionally attempting to be humorous, but to
my mind he has a written deadpan style that can't be beat, not even with a
schtick.
I read the introduction you mention some time ago but do not have a copy
right now; however, I do remember being at least slightly amused.
Regards
Marc "Easily Amused and Unrepentantly Sophomoric About It" Koechig
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Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 15:41:31 -1000
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: James Caron <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Twain- Francis Bacon & Shake-speare
Comments: To: Lawrence Gerald <[log in to unmask]>
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Here's my two cents for Lawrence Gerald's question:
"Is Shakespeare Dead?" was one of the texts that I read when I bought my
set of the Oxford Mark Twain--I decided to read first some of Mark Twain's
works that I had not in the past.
What struck me was how much of MT's effort was directed not at the plays
of Shakespeare themselves but rather the extravagant claims that
commentators on Shakespeare had made, e.g. Shakespeare had to be,
virtually, a lawyer and a sailor (a tinker and a tailor and everything
else) to write his plays. Mark Twain takes dead aim at those claims and
suggests how wild they are. Then he concludes that Bacon had to write the
plays--apparently not considering the other conclusion--that the claims of
the commentators are not sound and that a man of modest formal education
like William Shakespeare could be a superb dramatist.
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Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 19:52:04 PDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mike Pearson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Twain- Francis Bacon & Shake-speare
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"Is Shakespeare Dead?" is online at
http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/shakdead.htm
You have seen this site, a few of Twain's thoughts?
It makes perhaps a better case for its choice of authors
than even Shakespeare's own advocates...
http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/guide.htm
The issue is theft, or the alternate explanation... and there is, in that
case.
Do literary thieves work in the major leagues today? Do they have
as good an excuse and permission from the real author?
Not mine.;-)
Mike
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Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 06:58:30 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Twain- Francis Bacon & Shake-speare
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.95q.970429145715.24235F-100000@uhunix4> from
"James
Caron" at Apr 29, 97 03:41:31 pm
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We discussed the Shakespeare authorship question in May '96. Check the
Forum Archives for addresses to links to other relevant web sites.
Though the question is better suited to a Shakespeare discussion list,
the evidence that Shakespeare wrote his own plays seems more than
sufficient.
The book, _M.T. and Shakespeare_, has been reviewed on the Forum, but we
haven't discussed it further.
Sorry if my Shakespeare post from a couple of days ago finally arrives.
larry marshburne larry marshburne
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Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 09:10:05 PDT
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: Mike Pearson <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Twain- Francis Bacon & Shake-speare
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Gingerly, "the evidence seems more than sufficient"
that Mark Twain himself would not be happy on this list sometimes....
The matter is resolved against him and the matter is closed and
the debate is over...on how many questions besides this?
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Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 15:17:48 -0700
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From: "Chris S. King" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Twain- Francis Bacon & Shake-speare
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I think MT makes a convincing case against Shakespeare. While certainly not
providing definitive evidence, MT's devastating commentary on Shakespeare's
tombstone inscription is, to me, telling.
There was an interesting debate at UC Berkeley last week, in which it was
claimed (I'm sorry, I forget his name) that the Earl of Oxford (DeVore, I
think, was his name) wrote the plays and used a penname to avoid criticism.
In the debate, it was pointed out that the Earl of Oxford was intimately
experienced with the various higher social circles in England, particularly
the nobility, addressed in Shakespeare's plays. It was also suggested that
Hamlet could be autobiographical and has many parallels to the Earl's own
life.
Of course, I'm no Shakespeare scholar, and I find MT to vacillate between
satire (as in, MT really thinks Shakespeare didn't write the plays) and
humor (as in, wouldn't it be good clean fun to gin up an essay about how
Shakespeare didn't write his own plays, making fun of old Will in the
process?).
My $0.02...