Mark Twain

I'm listening to Mark Chernow's book about Twain. Clemens is idealistic and doesn't like racism until he goes to New York, and then he becomes an out of town rube from Hannibal Missouri, and racist. He rejects a religious life because they support slavery. He's a prankster, joker, comedian, story teller. He works as a printer, but he's fairly internerant. His brother found a slave on an island, and that is the basis for Jim in Huck Finn, the point of listening to this book is to give some background to understand a rereading that book. 

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in 1835. Samuel refused to go to school. His mother was the story teller and held the family's emotion. The family's fortunes would go up and down and at one point his mother had to cook for a family so the family could have housing. The father was a humorless judge, among other things. Clemens remembers one joke in his life with his father. His father got sick and died young.

Should we see the N word as putting a perspective into a character, or was Twain racist himself? He wasn't as consistently for the end of slavery like his brother. He joined the national guard that formed in a pro-slavery state, and deserted, probably more out of boredom than principles. I'd say that a fellow who often rose above the times, did not rise above the times in this, and doesn't get a free pass to put the N word into his novel. It mars the modern ear to read that word so much in his novel. I'm going to reread it anyway, and report back in here. 

The meaning on the N word may have changed since Twain wrote the book, but I can't even say it. And it might not be the only mark of a racist. 

Cable had to tell him the N word on a program might offend people when they went on a reading tour together. And the fact that he went on tour with such an abolitionist and reparation thinking man, like his brother, counts in his favor.

None of that really matters if the narrator's voice is realistic, and the son of the town drunk is quite likely have used the N word before the end of slavery in the USA, and therefore in a way, while it's a difficult word to read, the narrative would have be plausible. 

Amazing story in Twain’s biography. His housekeeper at his summer cottage was so calm and serene, he wondered if she’d ever had a hard day in her life. Mary Ann Cord was a black woman, so she told the story of how her owner lost money, a widow, and how she had to watch as all 6 of her children were sold off, and her husband was sold off. She only ever saw one of her children again. He got away on the Underground Railroad. So she suffered in life. The essay is called A True Story. People were expecting humor, and they got a pretty horrible thing to read about. 

His house in Hartford was beautiful, and he wrote on the second floor in the billiard room. It had a nice porch. 

Reading a biography gives the scope of a man, and launches new projects. I want to watch Ken Burn's Mark Twain biography, which was from 2001 and has two episodes (PBS). I hope to reread Huck Fin, but I also think I'd like to read Innocents Abroad. I watched Innocents Abroad, a 1983 PBS confection. There hasn't been an updated version. 

I wasn't aware how influential Twain was in having Grant's memoirs published!

Chapter 30 out of 69 felt like enough for me. Really feel like I got an expanded sense of much of his life.

Links:

New York Times review by Dwight Garner. There's a beautiful picture of his wife and 3 daughters.