Weaving On A Twain
I finished a book last yesterday - The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain, one of my favourite authors since I started reading books.
Ernest Hemingway called Huckleberry Finn the first American novel. Papa said a lot about Huck Finn - he said that all American literature came from that one book, and that “There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”
This reminds me of John Lennon’s declaration that “before Elvis, there was nothing”. Both slightly bold statements from talented pompous gits, but they had a point.
Mark Twain, though. He’s funny, tender, rugged, warm, insightful, vivid and take a phrase and turn it over in such a way that you can’t help but wonder if certain words hadn’t been invented on some inspired afternoon in the hope that one day someone might use them that way.
I love his writing so much that it almost makes me regret the impermanence of language because it will detract from the enjoyment future readers will have. But again, there’s something for you in that.
Truth told, if Mark Twain wrote the phone book, I would probably be among the first to read it.
I had never heard of The Mysterious Stranger, and as I read it, I realised that one of my favourite books, Illusions by Richard Bach, was so similar that I am pretty sure that he copied it. And then the end, the final point was exactly the same.
Illusions gets a little pizzicato on the heartstrings. It’s like The Mysterious Stranger with cheese. It’s a story McTwain. I did a google search and no one else makes this comparison, which makes me either misguided or unique. The only time they both come up is in inspirational quote sites, which is understandable because they are both great books about coming of age and bittersweet tales of discovery.
Illusions has the slight edge because it is set in the American Midwest and is about hayride pilots instead and TMS is set in Austria in the middle ages with schoolkids.
But then The Mysterious Stranger was written by Mark Twain.
January 9th, 2007 at 10:39 am
The coolest thing about Twain is that he wrote the epitah for Bummer, beloved pooch of Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. We are told Bummer died “full of years, and honor, and disease, and fleas.”
I think Twain extremely fortunate to have been of service to his most Imperial Majesty in his hour of grief. After all, Twain was merely a scribbler of tales, whereas Norton I was a visionary madman.
January 9th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
So where are you going?
;)