Twain and Eastern Philosophy

A rare book belonging to Mark Twain is currently part of an exhibit running through March 31 at the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Tracing the ongoing influence of Eastern thought on Western culture, the exhibit features a myriad of books in the personal collection of Kent Bicknell, a scholar who has long been fascinated by the subject.

The exhibit, entitled "Imprint: From Walden to Graceland, 200 Years of Asian Spiritual Traditions in Western Thought", contains Asian volumes from the likes of Henry David Thoreau, Elvis Presley and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Twain's contribution is the 1889 book Aryan Sun-Myths: The Origins of Religions.

Best of all, the book actually contains some of Twain's own hand-written notes in the margins, such as this gem on the nature of "saviors" throughout history: "I feel an honest reverence [for saviors] … I was only meaning to slur those liars their followers."

Unpublished Essay Collection to Hit in April

Author and blogger Russ Kick of the literary blog Books Are People, Too was kind enough to drop me a line yesterday about the much-anticipated collection of unpublished Twain essays to be released in April, Who Is Mark Twain? Apparently, the publisher has made an entire uncorrected galley of the book available on its website.

If you proceed to his blog, you can check out the table of contents of the book, as well as Kick's own eloquent review. Of particular interest to me was ol' Sam's skewering of one of the canon's most overrated writers, Ms. Jane Austen.

Reports of the Twain House's Death Greatly Exaggerated

Thanks to a rousing show of support, it looks like the historic Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut will not be closing its doors anytime soon.

After reports surfaced last year that the former home of the Clemens family was woefully in debt due to an overambitious renovation project, word got out in the news and several high-profile fund-raising efforts got underway.

And now, because of those efforts, the House actually made a profit when the book was finally closed on the fiscal year last weekend. Its operating deficit of $400,000 has been paid off, and that's without even tapping into a $500,000 Annenberg Foundation grant. That grant will be used to kickstart a new $1.5 million Stabilization and Planning Fund, intended to support operations and future fund-raising initiatives.

So it looks like the Mark Twain House has sidestepped financial calamity. If only Twain himself could've done so when he lived there!

Fascinating Look at Sam Clemens' Formative Years

The Sierra Mountain Times has a very interesting piece up today on the early years Twain spent in California, particularly in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties, writing in relative anonymity before his career took off with the publication of The Innocents Abroad.

Apparently, the piece ties into an event being put on by the Tuolumne County Historical Society at the Sonora Library this Friday night. Actor Pat Kaunert will portray Twain, and the book Mark Twain's Sojourn in Tuolumne County will be available for purchase. I encourage all to check out the article here.

Washington Teacher Calls for Ban on Huck Finn

"The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms," Ridgefield, Washington high school teacher John Foley wrote in a guest column this month for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States, and novels that use the 'N-word' repeatedly need to go."

It's very sad that the so-called controversy still rages on after so many years, but apparently, it still does. Foley claims that he is tired of having to rationalize the book to offended students and parents, yet still claims to be "passionate" about it. Oh yeah, and he also wants To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men dropped from the curriculum as well, because of their repeated use of the word "nigger", and their supposed demeaning depiction of African Americans as "ignorant".

How unfortunate that these sentiments would be coming from an educator, and that that educator would be using the historic election of Barack Obama--which Twain himself would more than likely have welcomed joyously--as a justification for the abandonment of Twain's greatest work. That a man who claims to be "passionate" about the novel is unable to comprehend its true message and the means to bestow that message upon his students. All he sees is that word, regardless of context and meaning. Now that's ignorant.

Want to find a demeaning use of the word "nigger"? Try listening to some of the music that those very high school students he's trying to "protect" are listening to on their iPods.

Foley's editorial was met with a largely negative response by readers of the Post-Intelligencer, as well as fellow educators. That, at least, I can take solace in. For the entire report, go here.

Hal Holbrook's Amazing Legacy

A profile of acclaimed actor and Twain impersonator Hal Holbrook today in the Knoxville News makes the very amusing observation that Holbrook has actually portrayed Mark Twain for a longer period of time than Samuel Clemens himself used the pen name of Mark Twain.

Specifically, Holbrook has played Twain for 55 years, since his first 1954 performance at Pennsylvania's Lock Haven State Teachers College. Clemens only used the Twain pen name for the last 47 years of his life.

University Library Dedicates Room to Twain

The University of South Alabama's campus newspaper, The Vanguard, reports that Mobile, Alabama entrepreneur Ross Sloan has donated $50,000 to the school's library to set up a special study room in honor of Mark Twain.

Sloan's endowment will allow the University library to purchase literature by and about Twain. The businessman, who previously created a room in the library in honor of Albert Schweitzer, said that Twain, "is a prime example of literary genius in American history." Make that the prime example, Mr. Sloan!

A Fond Remembrance of a Visit to Hannibal

Joseph Wettengal of the Lawrence, Kansas newspaper the Journal-World has published a very enjoyable reminiscence of a childhood visit to Twain's hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. I encourage all to check it out here.

Here's to 2009...

"New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them, as usual. "

"Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever."

"New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody, save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions."

When Twain Met Churchill

An astute reader of the New York Times pointed out in yesterday's Sunday Book Review that Carlo D'Este's new book about Winston Churchill, which was recently reviewed in the Times, contains a misrepresentation of Churchill's encounter with Mark Twain.

According to the new book, Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, Twain introduced Churchill to a New York audience in 1900 with the words, "a hero of five wars, author of six books and future prime minister of England." In actuality, it was the manager of Churchill's North American lecture tour who came up with that only partly accurate description, not Twain.

Twain, more in keeping with his personality and general attitude toward colonial warfare, actually described Churchill as "[knowing] all about war and nothing about peace."

This inaccurate attribution has been often repeated, so thanks go out to Times reader Peter Crane for pointing that out.

Twain and Churchill, incidentally, shared the same birthday: November 30.

Twain Maxim Inspires Story Behind 2008 Oscar Favorite

Any way you slice it, Mark Twain has had a profound and ongoing influence on American popular culture. The latest example of the stamina of Twain's wisdom can be found in one of the most acclaimed motion pictures of the year, one that has been making waves lately as a major Oscar contender.

When famous editor Maxwell Perkins related to his even more famous client F. Scott Fitzgerald that well-known remark of Twain's which asserts, "It's a pity that the best parts of life come at the beginning, the worst parts at the end," it inspired Fitzgerald in 1922 to pen the short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"--about a man who comes into the world as an old man and literally ages in reverse, passing away as an infant.

It was that story which was eventually adapted into David Fincher's newest film from Paramount Pictures, starring Brad Pitt in the titular role. Actually, the story had been considered for film adaptation going back to Fitzgerald's lifetime, during his years as a Hollywood screenwriter. However, even a 1943 screenplay by fellow author-turned-screenwriter William Faulkner wasn't enough to get the unusual project off the ground. It popped up again in the early 1980s, but was stuck in development hell for the past 25 years.

And now, finally, after such a rocky road, the film based on the short story inspired by the words of Twain has made it to the silver screen, and is one of the biggest projects of the year. Ol' Sam would sure be amazed.

Twain Speaks from Beyond the Grave

The New Yorker has published the rare Mark Twain essay "The Privilege of the Grave" in this week's issue. Written by Twain in 1905 (five years before his death), it has not seen the light of day until now. The essay is part of UC-Berkeley's Mark Twain archive.

Here's a snippet:

"We have charity for what the dead say. We may disapprove of what they say, but we do not insult them, we do not revile them, as knowing they cannot now defend themselves. If they should speak, what revelations there would be!"

New Book Examines Clemens' Years as a "Journalist"

It was during his time writing for the Virginia City newspaper the Territorial Enterprise during the 1860s that Samuel Clemens transformed on the printed page into Mark Twain. The young upstart cut his teeth writing satirical and often outrageous parodies of real-life news in the mining town, and its that writing which University of Hawaii English professor James E. Caron looks at in his new study, Mark Twain: Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter.

Brian Burnes of the McClatchy Newspapers has written up an interesting review of the book, explaining that although it is clearly a scholarly work and not as populist as Ron Powers acclaimed 2005 biography, it admirably does the job of painting the picture of Sam Clemens finding his literary voice.

Twain wrote for the Nevada Territory paper beginning in 1862, and didn't achieve major success as a published author until The Innocents Abroad ion 1869--providing Caron with a long stretch of fertile ground to cover.

Own a Rare Twain House Sketch

Yesterday, Following the Equator reader John Farrell gave me the heads-up on a beautiful pencil sketch of the Hartford Mark Twain House, which he currently has up for auction on eBay. The sketch is by artist Charles H. Overly, an illustrator who produced many such pencil sketches of historical buildings during the 1950s and 1960s. Anyone interested in owning this piece of Twain-related art/memorabilia should head over here.