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mallorys_camera
Back in December, while Ben and RTT were paying their respects to Nancy’s grave, I hunted down Mark Twain’s. Left a red rose. Jury’s still out on life after death, but if there is such, I have no doubt that Sam Clemens, a moody, vindictive and – yes, Virginia – strangely humorless man in his daily life, is keeping a close watch on his own remains.
Ron Powers’ Mark Twain biography, by the way, is a magnificent book – less a biography than a sagital slice through the 19th century America. Enormous wealth of detail – this is what it felt like then, you find yourself thinking at least once on every page. Finishing it, I’m inclined to take the view that history is a coral reef, the dull accretion of small lives upon small lives with a twist and a burst of color every once in a while when one extraordinary life leaves its mark. The Great Man View of History, I suppose.
Powers does a rather subtle thing of separating out Sam Clemens from his literary creation without hitting the reader over the head with the duality (twainship?) He also answers one question I’ve always had: how did Clemens who lived through the epoch of the Civil War manage to be so little affected by it?
Clemens, of course, didn’t make history so much as observe it. Without Mark Twain, the course of American history would have meandered pretty much as it did meander. Mark Twain was less a catalyst, than a personification – though it’s impossible to imagine the unique circumstances of Clemens’ life befalling anyone else. It’s amazing enough that they befell him.
I had terrible insomnia last night. Western New York state is in the grip of a monster heat wave so I kept the windows open – moths and lightening bugs kept flying into the house. I read a hundred pages or so of the Twain bio, kept Dirty, Pretty Things on the media machine. Read about Clemens’ oldest brother Orion, so broken by the events of his own life and his younger brother’s ridicule that one night after dinner he went upstairs and drank half a pint of ammonia. Sadly, he survived. I read about Clemens’ publisher, a nephew by marriage, whose health and sanity were broken by Clemens’ relentless egoism and vindictive nature. Late in his life Clemens became obsessed with Joan of Arc, eventually producing a minor work entitled Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte. When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of a parallel universe where Joan of Arc had never existed, and the disembodied voices of her sacred triumvirate, Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret, went roaming from ploughboy to ploughboy on their holy recruitment campaign. I was one such ploughboy. Why should I care if Burgundy is French or English? I told the voices grumpily. It’s all the same to me.
I’m trying to figure out how to get out of the trap my life has become that doesn’t involve drinking ammonia. Haven’t quite made my peace with my position in the coral reef, I suppose.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-05 02:39 pm (UTC)Have you ever read Bernard DeVoto's Mark Twain's America? If you have, how does it compare with the Powers book? (I have intended to read the DeVoto book for some time... maybe this is the year to get 'round to it!)
The century-long prohibition on the publication of Clemens' something - his autobiography, private papers, or something along those lines - has apparently expired and said material is being prepared for publication, in three volumes, if memory serves. Should be interesting when it comes out.
Hang in there.
Cheers...
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Date: 2010-07-05 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-05 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-05 08:31 pm (UTC)I think the challenge for me is that I have sucha dissociative personality that the present tense becomes past and future as well. And this present tense is pretty fucking grim...
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Date: 2010-07-05 08:34 pm (UTC)I meant to say, also, having paged back a little in your public LJ entries, that it would be a terrible shame if such an interesting voice as yours were to go silent.
Believe that the future will be better. I have to believe the same myself (and I also have to remind myself that my present is not so terribly grim).
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Date: 2010-07-05 08:35 pm (UTC)Twain's 1601 is certainly a masterwork in the literature of flatulence.
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Date: 2010-07-05 08:35 pm (UTC)I know you do. But at least you're getting laid now and then.
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Date: 2010-07-05 08:38 pm (UTC)Well, then let's be LJ pals! I'm adding you...
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Date: 2010-07-07 01:16 am (UTC)and while overall your entries on lj are more difficult to read than others; reading your entries is more rewarding. it's something about the experience of making such meanings of taking the time to smell roses. i guess writers let us smell roses, or they let us glimpse the larger galaxy hoovering in the sky.
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Date: 2010-07-07 02:28 pm (UTC)Oh and also, my LJ is mostly a kinky sex blog and/or me whining about man trouble. I hope that won't offend you. Sometimes I do post about other stuff. :)
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Date: 2010-07-07 05:35 pm (UTC)Whiny man troubles/kinky sex R us!!!!
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Date: 2010-07-07 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-07 07:11 pm (UTC)