Mark Twain

So, my 16 year old brother told me today that he didn't know who Mark Twain was. I thought this was pretty bad, so I wanted to share it with everyone. But, there wasn't a thread about Mark Twain from what I could see, so I decided to make this one.

So, how about the autobiography that he arranged to be published this November? That's quite a stunt.

He what? Really? That's amazing.

What? How?

Shit, man.

I'm surprised he didn't go with 2061.

Yeah, I don't know how that happened.

Hopefully he just didn't recognize the name or... well, I guess that's still bad...

Lol, even my 13 year old brother made a face when he heard the other didn't know about him.

edited 7th Aug '10 6:34:04 PM by Gelzo

Oh, you guys were talking about the autobiography? Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool, too.

I first heard about it after Andrew Hussie linked the news on his site.

I vaguely recall reading that as a bit of trivia once.

Anybody who thinks of Twain has a genteel Victorian gentleman has not read Letters from the Earth. 'course, since it was only published in '62, that's understandable...

I respect the man's wit and early liberal views greatly, but I never thought of him a gentleman.

Frankly, it seems to me that he might even take offense to being called one.

I would hope that he'd be more likely to crack a joke than to take offense.

One thing, did your brother know of any of his works? Admittedly he should have just known who Twain was right off the bat, but I know in my youth (elementary school days) I knew of stuff like the works of Victor Hugo but had no freaking clue who he was when my dad talked about him.

I'm not sure. I don't feel like embarrassing him again by asking.

But I didn't know that he wrote The Prince and the Pauper until my other brother mentioned it. I had just thought it was one of those older fables.

Apparently, the autobiography mentions an affair he had after his wife died.

It also apparently insults a lot of people. I can see why he was a tad bit worried about it being published.

But shit man.

Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there."

THAT is fucking badass.

edited 8th Aug '10 4:42:56 PM by A_H_R

Sorry to double post but the onion published this

(remove the %20 from the URL)

Awesome.

Strange, the link I posted had no %20, so I can't alter it to get rid of that

Yeah, it's a fault of the forum software, not you.

"%20"? I just got a space.

Editors noted that several passages did display guarded optimism for the innovations of new media, warm affirmation for the "generous and great-hearted nature" of health care reform, and enthusiastic praise for High Violet, the latest album by indie-rock favorites the National.

%20 is HTML coding for a space. So either one.

edited 10th Aug '10 10:42:32 AM by Tzetze

There was an excerpt of the autobiography in Newsweek, about censorship of Huck Finn. Hilarious.

That brings back memories.

We were reading Huck Finn. In the middle of one of the tests, my teacher read this story, and we had to write our reaction to it.

'A kid goes up to another kid, pulls out a knife, and demands that lunch money is given. A teacher spots this, and the bully flees. The teacher, feeling her responsibility is to the victim, stops to make sure the kid is ok, and the bully makes it away. When the teacher writes up the report, she relays the story accurately- except she changes the knife to a straw'

A couple days later, she brings up the test, and the question, mentioning how no one really understood what result one was supposed to take from the test. So, she made a discussion about it. We were all floundering around when she said

'How does changing a the knife to a straw, change the story?'

Suddenly, a connection was made, and out loud, I cried out

'OH!!! NOW I GET IT!'

My teacher looked at me, and I continued

'THAT's what they are doing with censoring the N word on Huck Finn! Changing the meaning!'

And then there was a round of 'OHHHHH!' from my class.

Good times. Good times.

When I was a teen, Mark Twain was just someone we had to learn about. But in one high school English class, we saw a documentary about the man that I just found fascinating. For the first time, not only did Mark Twain become "real" to me, but I really respected him and thought he was a great guy.

From everything I read about him, I can't help but think he really was an amazing individual. He was WAY ahead of his time, especially with his views. I mean, I could very easily see Mark Twain transplanted into our time period and fitting in perfectly. He'd have to learn about the changes in our way of life, of course, but if someone from 2010 got a time machine and went back to 1905, and took him to our time, his views would actually be considered relatively mainstream even now. (He might be "libertarian" by our standards, or "progressive". Some mixture of the two, perhaps)

If there was one famous historical figure I'd really like to just sit down and talk with, it would be him.

Bonsai: You are so right about that. He was a smart man. I do think that if he saw today's society he probably would not be so easy to adapt as you think he would, if only because there are probably some ingrained ideas that he was NOT progressive about.

He did express some rather sexist ideas in his Adam and Eve short stories.

So, anyone figure out the release date of this? I keep seeing November. November 1st, maybe?

If so, that's tomorrow!