Tom and Huck Should Do Some Fishing on the Wabash River

While working hard at being pirates, Tom Sawyer and his friends eat what they brought from home. They also seem to find the fishing good.  Was it this good?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfG4vsJ5_xI

Mark Twain's Autobiography

Mark Twain tells all in “new” autobiography

A recent PBS NewsHour segment on the preparations at the University of California Press for the publication this November of Volume One of the uncensored autobiography of Mark Twain—not to be published until 100 years after his death—takes us behind the “unmarked door in the Bancroft Library” at Berkeley and into the Mark Twain Archive. The Twain scholars at work offer some teasing glimpses of what’s to come.

SPENCER MICHELS: Editor Ben Griffin, who joined the Twain Project five years ago, relates another jolting passage, where Twain took out his anger on an entrepreneur named James Paige, who lost him money.

BENJAMIN GRIFFIN, editor, Autobiography of Mark Twain: This is the end of the piece he wrote about Paige.

 "Paige and I always meet on effusively affectionate terms, and yet he knows perfectly well that, if I had his nuts in a steel trap, I would shut out all human succor and watch that trap until he died."

GO HERE for PBS NewsHour segment on the uncensored autobiography.

Twain did not allow this story of his life to be made public for 100 years.  Today "tell all" memoirs appear before the ink is dry on court rulings and YouTube films reveal indiscretions as they are in progress.  Any thoughts on when and why this all changed so radically?  

New Year's Resolutions --Listen to Mark Twain

How are those New Year’s resolutions coming along?  No surprise that Mark Twain was skeptical about your achieving those well intentioned, solemnly entered into, pledges.

“Yesterday,” Mark Twain wrote, “everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.”

Among his doubts, Twain leaves out diets and the ever popular "getting in shape."  I’m certain he would have had plenty to say about those current obsessions with bodily perfection.

If, however, your New Year’s resolution was along the lines of “Will read more classic works of fiction in 2013.” I’m ready to believe Twain would say something like

“Go ahead.  Surprise me. Pick up and read more good books in 2013.  And why not start with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, this year's Big Read book?  I've been told no one has ever gained weight while reading a fine book. Just keep the Super Size Me drinks and the bon bons out of reach.”

After reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, what's on your To Read List 2013?

 

Mark Twain and American Childhood

For the National Endowment for the Arts introduction to the Big Read book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, GO HERE

This introduction includes a Reader's Guide, Teacher's Guide,  Audio Guide (and is available En español).

After you've (re-) read the book, here’s a nice question from the guide to chew on:

How do you think American childhood has and hasn't changed since the 1840s?