After keeping us waiting for a century, Mark Twain will finally reveal all

[Matty Van]

came across this just now on digg.com, figured I would pass it along... pretty cool.

I did not know that Mark Twain even wrote a biography.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent...

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[Hope]

Oh, Wow! That I would like to read!

[Sean]

I'm puzzled by this line in the article:

"Most people think Mark Twain was a sort of genteel Victorian. Well, in this document he calls her a slut and says she tried to seduce him. It's completely at odds with the impression most people have of him," says the historian Laura Trombley,

Twain's the man who once expressed a desire to dig up Jane Austen's corpse and beat her over the head with her own shinbone. "Genteel" is the last word I'd use to describe him.

[terpkristin]

I just came across this article, too. Sounds really neat, I'm definitely interested in reading it.

[terpkristin]

Sean wrote: "Twain's the man who once expressed a desire to dig up Jane Austen's corpse and beat her over the head with her own shinbone. "Genteel" is the last word I'd use to describe him. "

I suspect that many people (myself included) do not know gems of this sort... :)

[Veronica, Supreme Sword]

So awesome, I've heard it's pretty intense stuff!

[Sean]

terpkristin wrote: "I suspect that many people (myself included) do not know gems of this sort... :) "

Oh, my yes, Twain's loathing of Austen is legendary, possibly eclipsing his dislike of Fennimore Cooper. Among his comments on her:

"Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."

"Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death."

And the one that sums up my feelings on Austen as well:

"Whenever I take up "Pride and Prejudice" or "Sense and Sensibility," I feel like a barkeeper entering the Kingdom of Heaven. I mean, I feel as he would probably feel, would almost certainly feel. I am quite sure I know what his sensations would be -- and his private comments. He would be certain to curl his lip, as those ultra-good Presbyterians went filing self-complacently along."

If you're unfamiliar with Twain's vitriolic side, I highly recommend, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings and Who Is Mark Twain?, which contain a number of writings that Twain's daughter suppressed because they made her father look like a nihilist.

[Matty Van]

as far as I know Jane Austin did nothing on purpose to piss of Mr. Twain, he was probably just an asshole.

[J.R.D.]

Re: Waiting a century - there's a George R.R. Martin joke in there somewhere.

[[deleted user]]

I hadn't heard these lovely quotations regarding Twain's feelings about Jane Austen. Allow me to echo his sentiments entirely-- I wish I could somehow get the time I spent on Sense & Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice back, but I never well. Hours lost to the nether.