
I know ya'll have been waiting with baited breath for The Autobiography of Mark Twain to come out. And it finally has...100 years after his death. Twain-a fan of telling it like it is-wanted to write a no bars hold tell-all. But he needed for all his friends and enemies to die first to avoid all the teeth gnashing and counter suing he was likely to endure. So as a brilliant marketing ploy-he made us all wait 100 years to hear how he really felt about his contemporaries. He does postulate in his memoir that there are plenty of selfish and shameful acts that he committed in his lifetime... though none have yet to make it to paper at the time of his writing (...imagine!) So although he might not reveal his own shortcomings-he leaves no contemporary out. A true gentleman, huh? I hear he's absolutely brutal to Theodore Roosevelt and down right mean spirited towards his Italian housewife neighbor and heaven help the poor US congress who gets an absolute vitriolic tongue lashing-Twain style. I can't wait to get the juicy details...in three rambling, meandering volumes. So I hope you're as excited as I am to read America's favorite humorist in his own sprawling, prosaic words. I'm a major fan of an old school smart ass-even if he's been dead for 100 years.
In his own words:
Let us swear while we may, for in Heaven it will not be allowed.
- Notebook, 1898
...heaven for climate, and hell for society.
- Mark Twain's Speechs
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
- What Is Man?
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
I am excited about it - you know, he is one of my faves!
ReplyDelete