| ||||||||||
 
Dr. Ronald P. Rogers CHIROPRACTOR Support for your body's natural healing capabilities 270-384-5554 Click here for details 
  
Columbia Gas Dept. GAS LEAK or GAS SMELL Contact Numbers 24 hrs/ 365 days 270-384-2006 or 9-1-1 Call before you dig 
Visit ColumbiaMagazine's Directory of Churches Addresses, times, phone numbers and more for churches in Adair County Find Great Stuff in ColumbiaMagazine's Classified Ads Antiques, Help Wanted, Autos, Real Estate, Legal Notices, More... 
|
Tom Chaney. No. R769: Summer adventure with Mark Twain Of Writers and Their Books No. R769: Summer adventure with Mark Twain First appeared 1 July 2007 The next earlier Tom Chaney column :Tom Chaney: Oral History - behind the scene - Ed Prichard By Tom Chaney Summer Adventure with Mark Twain Summer is well underway. We have had much heat and some rain. The young literary ignabits are scouring the bookstores and libraries for to fill the summer reading lists. Here at The Bookstore in Horse Cave youngsters have been asking for To Kill a Mockingbird, various titles by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway and, of course, for Mark Twain. Two or three of these folks have come in lately led by their mothers with a firm grip on an ear. Mostly the little scholars are mute. Often asked what my favorite books are and who are my favorite writers, I hesitate. The question is a difficult one, and my answer may change from time to time. But Mark Twain always makes the list. In trying to decide just which is the Great American Novel, I have swung from Melville's Moby Dick to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn to Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again to Huckleberry Finn to Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men to Huckleberry Finn to William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and back to Huckleberry Finn. When Mark Twain published Tom Sawyer in 1876, the story of the civilized boy did not sell as well as his earlier Innocents Abroad. Nine years later Huckleberry Finn sold more than 50,000 copies. Huck's escape from "sivilazation" has been on the best seller list ever since. While Mark Twain is mostly classified as a nineteenth century humorist, he is far more. His skepticism, his cynical puncturing of America's hypocrisies, his lambasting of reigning political, religious and literary illusions still ring true today. Huck Finn's affection for the slave, Jim, as they boom down the Mississippi River to head for freedom is a great contrast with the hatred they find ashore. You may recall that one dark night a gang of slave catchers approach Huck and Jim's raft. Unable to see who was aboard, they call out, "Is your man white or black?" Huck replies, "He's white!" And his guilt at his own lie is in sharp contrast to the good sense of the humanity that caused him to lie. Huck decides that if liars go to hell, he would prefer that place to the company of the slave catchers and Aunt Polly, who threatens perdition if he doesn't quit smoking and attend Sunday school. Once Mark Twain told the story of the man who worked all his life to achieve heaven. When he died and entered the pearly gates, the first man he met was a man he despised and whom he thought for sure would be in a warmer climate. He picked up his satchel, inquired the way to hell and left. "There you have it," Mark Twain said, "heaven for climate, hell for society." We were fortunate in summer 2007. Not only did we have Mark Twain for reading in cool maple shade -- lemonade close at hand -- we also had a chance to confront Mark Twain on stage at Kentucky Repertory Theatre. Robert Brock performed Mark Twain beginning July 5, 2007. Brock selected a number of pieces from the massive works of Mark Twain. We had a chance to see many sides of Mark Twain. The humorist, of course, but humor used in biting social criticism, the pathos of a rather tragic life, and the rollicking adventures of a humble cup bearer in the salon of Queen Elizabeth I in "1601" offended by the crude language and behavior of the queen and her courtesans. Those of us who have appreciated Brock's earlier one-man shows -- The Gospel of Mark, Revelation, and The Gospel of John -- and his skill at adapting Charles Dickens were eager to see his take on one of the saints of American literature. Mark Twain earned a living on the lecture circuit as well as by his writing. One of my favorite stories about his lecturing involves Ulysses S. Grant. Mark Twain was engaged to speak at a banquet honoring Grant a few years before the former President's death from cancer. The humorist took out after Grant with his usual barbed tongue but worried about Grant's reaction to such irreverence. But President Grant was delighted. After the speech he and Mark Twain got together as friends. Mark Twain was also a publisher. Grant told him about the difficulty he was having getting his memoirs published. Prospective publishers had offered no more than forty thousand dollars for his manuscript. Money was important to Grant. As he approached certain death, he was nearly impoverished. His memoirs were his last hope for leaving his family free of debt. Sensing the potential popularity of the memoirs, Mark Twain offered an advance of half a million dollars. Grant finished his book only days before his death. His family was secure and we have one of the finest autobiographies in American letters. Audiences in these parts had an unusual chance to get to know this complex American writer. THE BOOKSTORE Box 73/111 Water Street Horse Cave, Kentucky 42749 270-786-3084 Email: Tom Chaney http://www.alibris.com/stores/horscaveEditorial Note: References to the then forthcoming show at KRT have been edited or deleted. RHS This story was posted on 2012-07-01 08:20:46
Printable: this page is now automatically formatted for printing.
Have comments or corrections for this story? Use our contact form and let us know. More articles from topic Tom Chaney: Of Writers and Their Books:
Tom Chaney: Oral History - behind the scene - Ed Prichard Tom Chaney, No. R767: Dr. Thomas D. Clark (1903-2005) Tom Chaney. R766 review: The Coming of Rain Tom Chaney. R765 review: Mississippi storytelling Tom Chaney. R764 review: The Piper on the Mountain Tom Chaney. R763 review: An honest politician is . . . Tom Chaney. R762 review: The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis Tom Chaney. R761 review: The Gospel of Judas Tom Chaney. R760 review: Plain Truth Tom Chaney. R759 review: Earth Day column redux View even more articles in topic Tom Chaney: Of Writers and Their Books |
 
115 Jamestown St. Columbia, KY. 270-384-2496 
  
   
 Provided by the Adair Co Fiscal Court and the Adair Co. Emergency Mgt. Agency 
|
||||||||
|
| ||||||||||
|
Quick Links to Popular Features
Looking for a story or picture? Try our Photo Archive or our Stories Archive for all the information that's appeared on ColumbiaMagazine.com. | ||||||||||
|
Contact us: Columbia Magazine and columbiamagazine.com are published by Linda Waggener and Pen Waggener, PO Box 906, Columbia, KY 42728. Please use our contact page, or send questions about technical issues with this site to webmaster@columbiamagazine.com. All logos and trademarks used on this site are property of their respective owners. All comments remain the property and responsibility of their posters, all articles and photos remain the property of their creators, and all the rest is copyright 1995-Present by Columbia Magazine. Privacy policy: use of this site requires no sharing of information. Voluntarily shared information may be published and made available to the public on this site and/or stored electronically. Anonymous submissions will be subject to additional verification. Cookies are not required to use our site. However, if you have cookies enabled in your web browser, some of our advertisers may use cookies for interest-based advertising across multiple domains. For more information about third-party advertising, visit the NAI web privacy site.
| ||||||||||
