Mark Twain: What Else Can Be Written In His Praises?

Samuel Clemens has been dead for 102 years and baring unexpected alterations to nature and history he can look forward to a good many more years in that peaceable state. He was born in Tennessee, but he died in bed.

I have examined the second volume of his autobiography and find it to be highly informative and entertaining. Twain's insights into the nature of man and his special wit and humor are scattered deliciously through the work.

I can find only one mistake or example where I could take Mr. Twain's opinion and argue as a contrarian.

Mark Twain muses God must have created man because of His great disappointment in the monkey. But I contend that Twain has confused the issues. After watching man and the shenanigans he had perpetrated over the last century since Twain's death, there can be no doubt which is more disappointing to our Lord. I would not even be surprised if the next Pope was a monkey, given the mess we find ourselves in today.

Mark Twain was a kind and moral man. He gave money when he had it to others in need without hesitation. He is one of America's greatest thinkers and his daughter thought he was more interested in philosophy than humor, but he made his fame and fortune with the latter.

Twain speaks of writer's block and the art of writing in this volume. His contention is a story must write itself. It must flow from the mind to the hand to the paper effortlessly. It can not be consciously willed or forced from the dark recesses of the writer's subconscious. It comes out voluntarily.

Many times he put manuscripts aside for a couple of years, completely ignoring these contemptuous works whose stoppage was no fault of his own, pull them out of the corner, read the last chapter, and sit down with pen in hand and see if the story was ready to finish itself. He describes what ever leaves with writer's block comes back and fills the wells of literature in the writer's psyche.

I have found his description of writing spot on. I have written a good number of these useless essays and find the best of them all seem to surprise me and I have no clue where the really good ones came from.

He was a strong proponent of copyrights since it affected him personally and he spoke eloquently on their behalf in the well of congress.

Twain is quick to point out his ideas are not original and he just points them out in his works to the new crowd of the living who marvel at his wit and wisdom to his great profit.

I can sum up Mark Twain's second edition to his autobiography in one word: but I will not.

In praising Mr. Twain, the man, I would be afraid he might take it the wrong way.

His first teacher said of him when he was barely 5 years old, he was destined to walk among kings and presidents, and he still does.

It has been over a century since Mr. Twain's death and he still has no equal and there is very little competition from what I can tell.

Minds like Twain's are truly gifts from God.

Perhaps God has given up on man and is only putting these caliber of minds into the monkey.

Time will tell.

Jackson Delano Maybolt, President Urban Poverty Law Center