October 18, 2010

• Mark Twain’s latest book…100 Years after his death.

  
  It’s been 100 years since Mark Twain died, after declaring, “If I cannot swear in heaven I shall not stay there.”

  Wherever he is, a century later, the words and stories he left behind live on . . .

  “Oh, I used to tell lies,” declaimed Twain, “but I’ve given it up – the field is overrun with amateurs,” and of course, in books, the most famous of which, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” still captivates readers around the world.

  Now, all these years later, there’s a NEW book by Mark Twain: His autobiography, about to be published as he specifically instructed, 100 years after his death.

  Robert Hirst curator of the Mark Twain Papers at UC Berkeley and a small army of editors has been laboring for six years to reconstruct the autobiography just as Twain wished it to be.

  And why now, 100 years on?

  Mark Twain had a very tender heart. He liked to say nasty things – he’s really good at it – but he didn’t like the idea of being there when the person heard them, and was hurt by them!

  That’s one aspect of the 100-year embargo. The other is just freeing him up to say exactly what he [thought], and so in a way he doesn’t have anyone looking over his shoulder.

  Anyone who was looking over his shoulder may have thought the old man had lost it.

  The autobiography is highly unconventional, in many ways ultra-modern – not telling one straight story from birth until death, but skipping around.
  
  “Mark Twain wants this autobiography to be random,” Hirst said. “You know, he’s going to talk about what he wants to talk about on this day, change his mind and move onto the next thing.”

  You heard that right . . . talk. One of the greatest writers in American history decided the best way to tell his own story was NOT to write it, but SPEAK it.

  Daily dictations over four years, about whatever he found interesting that day.

  So was Mark Twain the first BLOGGER?

  The book is partly a journal, partly a diary, and partly recollection so yes it is a blog without a web.

  In Twain’s words (and there are roughly 650,000 of them) in what will be three volumes, President Theodore Roosevelt is “one of the most impulsive men in existence” . . . the American soldiers Roosevelt sent to the Philippines Twain called “uniformed assassins” . . . and then there’s his Italian landlady, who’s “excitable, malicious, malignant, vengeful, unforgiving, selfish, stingy, avaricious, coarse, vulgar, profane, and obscene” . . . and that’s just for starters.

  There are funny, fond stories of his family, and his raw, stunned heart-break at his daughter Suzie’s sudden death.

  But if you’re expecting a tabloid tell-all, Twain admits he failed at that.

  In the third month of the dictation he says, ‘You know, I can think of a thousand shameful things I’ve done in my life, and I’ve not got one of them to go on paper yet.”

  When Twain began dictating, the man famous worldwide for his white suit, his best-selling novels, and his rip-roaring lectures was, in his own words, “the most conspicuous person on the planet.”

  The 100-year embargo, says Hirst, was also an extraordinary publicity ploy.

  “All you have to do is look at the last three months of the web and the newspapers to see that he was right,” said Hirst. “He knew how to market it. Just say it can’t be read for 100 years. That’ll do it!”

  • 12:58 am
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