{"id":1079,"date":"2011-05-16T20:24:47","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T04:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1079"},"modified":"2011-05-16T20:24:47","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T04:24:47","slug":"review-autobiography-of-mark-twain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1079","title":{"rendered":"Review: Autobiography of Mark Twain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Twain’s Autobiography<\/em> was conceived as a bit of a publishing stunt, with its publication delayed until 100 years after his death.\u00a0 The manuscript (in a couple versions) has been available to scholars for some time, but it’s being released to the public now.\u00a0 The packaging is a three volume set with each heavily annotated with Twain scholarship.<\/p>\n

From what I can tell the scholarship is exemplary.\u00a0 Each detail and anecdote is researched and cross-referenced.\u00a0 Each of the several earlier edited versions that were published are noted, and material that was compiled during the creation of the Autobiography<\/em> attached and put in context.\u00a0 If you are a Mark Twain scholar, this is a great collection of information.\u00a0 I confess that it was too dry for me.<\/p>\n

The Autobiography<\/em> itself is very unorthodox and enjoyable.\u00a0 Mark Twain decided that the best way to build such a thing was to dictate it from his bed in daily bursts.\u00a0 Rather than a chronological remembrance of his life with reflections interspersed, he presents a rambling daily discussion on either his life history, or something his daughter wrote about him in her biography, or whatever else strikes his fancy.<\/p>\n

The whole thing is basically a collection of Mark Twain blog posts from the last few years of his life.\u00a0 It is completely charming.\u00a0 There are certainly dry parts. I find that Suzy’s biography wears thin, and he includes whole newspaper articles in there so he can go off on a rant.\u00a0 Still, the posts – er, entries – themselves are intelligent, insightful, and entertaining.\u00a0 It is a series of blasts from one of our most cantankerous and compassionate men of letters wandering where his fancy takes him, bounded very loosely by the cord of autobiography.<\/p>\n

It Twain were alive today, he’d be blogging and I would be following him.<\/p>\n

Strongly recommended; I’d skim the scholarly stuff unless you’re a scholar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Twain’s Autobiography was conceived as a bit of a publishing stunt, with its publication delayed until 100 years after his death.\u00a0 The manuscript (in a couple versions) has been available to scholars for some time, but it’s being released to the public now.\u00a0 The packaging is a three volume set with each heavily annotated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1079"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1083,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions\/1083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}