The Newest Great Page Turner by Mark Twain
Read Time:2 Minute, 13 Second
In my early twenties I discovered for the first time, in earnest, Mark Twain in the form of a thick green book containing his collected works. Now scuffed, stained, yellowed and the pages falling out of it if you don’t hold it just right, I have journeyed through its pages many times, and consider it an excellent friend.
The day I read the last sentence at page 1289, I was completely bummed. That was it. Mr. Twain was dead, and I needn’t hold my breath waiting for more from the Bard of Hannibal unless I wanted to turn blue and pass out. Some how, these years since I have managed without anything new to read by the man William Faulkner called, “the father of American literature.”
As a Christmas present, I was the cheered recipient of Autobiography of Mark Twain, The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1, hot off the presses. Though pieces of it have been in circulation for a while, notwithstanding the wishes of Mark Twain that it not be released until a hundred years after his death, this volume is faithful to his vision of how it should be set out and delivered to the bookstore shelf.
Only a couple of dozen pages into it, Mark Twain had this to say concerning the art of autobiography:
What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, and every day, the mill of his brains is grinding, and his thoughts, (which are but the mute articulation of his feelings,) not those other things, are his history. His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world, with its scattered snow summits and its vacant wastes of waters–and they are so trifling a part of his bulk! a mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden–it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written. Every day would make a whole book of eighty thousand words–three hundred and sixty-five books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man–the biography of the man himself cannot be written.
Every paragraph is like a richly vivid and compelling story unto itself.
Mark Twain fans owe it to themselves to purchase this great gem of a book. You will not be disappointed. I can vouch for it with confidence, even though I have only read thirty pages.
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I would just like to say of Mark Twain, that it is about time that slacker published something else. I was starting to think maybe he was dead. The only hope I had was that I kind of remember him saying that the reports of his death have been exaggerated.
It came! I have it in my grubby hands! My wife did in fact order it for Christmas and it arrived later than she wanted, but earlier than she expected. I am a happy Twain fan now.
Congratulations. Skip straight to page 200, unless you want to spend a whole lot of time reading literary masturbation about what it is that you are really wanting to read.
I read Tom Sawyer when I was about 12-years-old, I had a Becky Thatcher in my life so quick connection there, but I missed the heart of the story until I read it as an adult. Twain was a magician with words and a great, but tortured, philosopher.
This is what I really mean.
I wanted this! I wanted it the most men want Angelina Jolie. And I did not get it and Barnes and Noble was sold out and I think my wife back ordered at a surprise.
Mark Twain is my favorite thinker/author.
I got this for myself for Christmas and will read it when we go on our trip, beginning of the year to the beach. I can’t wait to read it, but right now zombies and Jane Austen, vampires and Abraham Lincoln, are my reading material.
“Zombies and Jane Austen, vampires and Abraham Lincoln…” Jesus, Jess. You’d like my wife.
I probably would, given that us oddballs tend to group together 🙂
From a reader to another reader, glad it’s out and glad you’re enjoying it!