Mark Twain Weighs In On Mark Twain.

So if you’re a lover of books or words or the people who write books filled with words, then you should go and pick yourself up a copy of the current NEWSWEEK with a picture of Mark Twain on the cover.

Why?

Well most specifically, there is a love letter of an article to Twain, it is ostensibly about his new autobiography (which he declared was to be released until 100 years after his death). But really it is an article about Twain as the best kind of paradoxical American malcontent.

Here is a link to the article: MYSTEIOUS STRANGER

But please don’t just read the article here, go to the corner store and buy a copy of NEWSWEEK. They could really use the money. They just got bought by a gazillionaire who was told by everybody in the industry that the magazine is a dead horse.

The article, by one Mister Malcolm Jones, includes a line that I love. He is talking about Twain’s use of humor and he writes, “But it’s his humor, more than anything, that makes him seem like a friend, a contemporary, maybe not anyone you know, but someone you wish you knew. Humor is famous as a leveling device, but it doesn’t just cut its subjects down to size. It makes democrats and equals of us all. You can’t be funny and talk down to people.”

Anyway, it is a wonderful little article about Twain.

Additionally there is an article about the growth of self-publishing in the digital age, as well as a breakdown of all the interesting and important books that you might have missed out on over the last year.

So go get it and then come back here and leave a comment thanking me.


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A is for Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.

So one of my classes this semester is 19th Century American Novelists. I took the class because I had heard that you’re required to read Moby Dick and while the pragmatist in me is all like “Holy Jesus H. Christ don’t do that!” but everybody here stopped listening to that guy about the same time we decided to go back to college and get a degree in Creative Writing.

Anyway, it’s not just Moby Dick, oh no, it begins with The Scarlett Letter. Yes. That one. The one from High School with Demi Moore in it. And okay, fine, I’m a fancy panys English major so okay. But I have to read the first half of it by next week. And I know that’s actually not that bad either, it’s like 122 pages in a week. Fine. I guess that’s not even worth complaining about, but – you know – shouldn’t the Professor check with me first? Because I have a killer week coming up and also, I don’t wanna.

I guess that’s the actual point here. Maybe the ‘A’ actually stands for, “Stop complaining like a whiny little girl.”
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