The Real Mark Twain

In popular culture today, Twain is “Colonel Sanders without the chicken, the avuncular man who told stories,” Ron Powers, the author of “Mark Twain: A Life,” said in a phone interview. “He’s been scrubbed and sanitized, and his passion has been kind of forgotten in all these long decades. But here he is talking to us, without any filtering at all, and what comes through that we have lost is precisely this fierce, unceasing passion.”

The reviewer in this New York Times piece writes that the real Mark Twain has finally been exposed upon publication of the old curmudgeon's unexpurgated autobiography.

Twain dictated the book over the the last four years of his life and left orders to suppress publication for a century. Ninety-five percent of what is published here has never been seen by the public at large. It ought to create quite a backlash among contemporary jingoists and flag wavers.

This could become a great scandal. I can't wait to hear the Texas School Board's reaction. Sounds like a great read.


TS