My copy of Volume 1. Kirk and Spock are there for scale. These books will last you a while.

Since I’m in the business of making books, I figured you wouldn’t mind if I talked about them from time to time…

Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) is one of my favorite authors. I hope I don’t have to explain why. He had one stipulation regarding his official autobiography: that it not be released until 100 years after his death. That way, he could speak his mind with impunity, and anyone who might take offense would be long dead.

The first volume came out in 2010, followed by the second in 2013. I believe there’s one more yet to follow. They’re sold as giant books and ebooks, but you can also read them online, for free, at http://www.marktwainproject.org.

Twain made several attempts at an autobiography during his lifetime, only to shelve most of them. The one approach that worked for him was to dictate to his secretary, and not try to obey any sort of timeline. Reading it, you get that sense of someone meandering from this subject to that- oh, that reminds me- but it’s still Mark Twain, and to my delight, his speech wasn’t much different from his prose.

The volumes are loaded with pictures and stories. Twain also refers to current events from the early 1900s, supplying opinions and stories these events bring to mind. The whole thing is heavily annotated because although Twain speaks with an air of authority, his recollections often run contrary to fact. You have to read with two voices in your head: Twain’s, and that of a historian lovingly correcting him.

Reading the online version, I find myself cutting/pasting quotes to keep around for later amusement. Here’s one any writer will appreciate:

“It was one of those exasperating times when the brain is clogged and muddy and the words refuse to come: a body may know quite well what he wants to say; the idea in his mind may have shape and form, but by no ingenuity can the right words be found for the phrasing. Sometimes dogged persistency and determined effort will eventually improve the conditions and turn on the words and make them flow, but this does not often happen. The thing that does happen is that you may lose your temper, break some furniture, and quit for the day.”

Here’s one proving nothing ever changes:

“This idea was very simple in construction—even a Congressman could have understood it.”

Twain also assumes a philosophical bent at times:

“’Civilization is a condition wherein every man is of necessity both a master and a slave.’ It means forced labor, compulsory labor—every man working for somebody else while imagining that he is working for himself, and at the same time living upon the work of other men who think they are working for themselves and not for him. I do not know of any one, from the emperor down to the rag-picker, who under the hard conditions of civilization is not both master and slave, and who is not obliged to do work which he does not want to do, but does the work because he is a slave, and his master requires it of him and is able to compel him to do it.”

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“It is human life. We are blown upon the world, we float buoyantly upon the summer air a little while, complacently showing off our grace of form and our dainty iridescent colors; then we vanish with a little puff, leaving nothing behind but a memory—and sometimes not even that. I suppose that at those [solemn] times when we wake in the [deeps] of the night and reflect, there is not one of us who is not willing to confess that he is really only a soap-bubble, and [as] little worth the making.”

Twain and I share a mutual disdain of “prophets”:

“Has the trade of interpreting the Lord’s matters gone out, discouraged by the time-worn fact that nobody succeeds at it? No, it still flourishes; there was never a century nor a country that was short of experts who knew the Deity’s mind and were willing to reveal it. Whenever there has been an opportunity to attribute to Him reasonings and conduct which would make a half-witted human being ridiculous, there has always been an expert ready and glad to take advantage of it.”

The novel I’m working on draws some influence from one of my favorite Mark Twain books, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from that book, because I can’t help myself:

“Somehow, every time the magic of folderol tried conclusions with the magic of science, the magic of folderol got left.”

That’s not to say Twain didn’t experiment with things like phrenology or self-healing- the latter being similar to what has survived as Christian Science today. However, he was quick to discard anything that looked more like trickery than science.

Anyway, there’s plenty in these volumes for fans of Twain, people with a functioning sense of humor, and anyone curious about the early 20th century. They’ll keep you occupied a while, too!

Have another favorite Twain book to recommend? Let me know in the comments!