Marking the Twain, Indeed

I used to think that Mark Twain was an old fogey – some dead white male whose writing survived the decades only because those of us living in the 21st century needed some punishing texts now and then. I avoided reading him, even as a Creative Writing major in college, mostly because I was arrogant – I thought reading any literature older than 50 years (with the exception of Shakespeare’s plays) was a waste of time.
I knew of Twain mostly through a series called Children’s Illustrated Classics, a set of very cheap palm-sized books printed on newsprint, which retold books such as The Mutiny in the Bounty and The Count of Monte Cristo through illustrations and simplified, though quite emotional, texts. I thought them thoroughly enjoyably: reading Monte Cristo, I could taste Edmund’s need for vengeance in my mouth (tasted like a mix of rust and blood). Academics would probably condemn the series for murdering the original text, but I felt these kid-friendly books were better because 1) they were readable, and 2) they were pared down to the essentials of action and base emotion.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was part of this series, and it was one of my favorites in the collection. Non-stop action and intrigue, murder being hinted at…thrills galore! And so when I picked up the original Huck Finn years later (dying again to read about Huck dragging around a pig with its throat cut), ayayay! I went dizzy with the dialect. Gave up by the third page because I didn’t feel like anything was happening.
In graduate school, I was forced to become seriously acquainted with Mr. Clemens – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was one of our required readings. I dreaded opening the book, imagining it to be a colorless, impenetrable account of life by the Mississippi River. But then the first page started with:
“Tom!”
No answer.
“TOM!”
No answer.
“What’s gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!”
No answer.
I was immediately hooked. I was plopped in the middle of a war (fuck, I know how awful that sounds…) of children vs. adults, and clearly, the book was on the side of children. Twain suddenly became my hero.
In high school, I learned that Twain was one of the outspoken critics of America’s colonization of the Philippines. I never really took any of my history classes seriously, so that information hardly made a dent on my skull. But last year, reading a book called Sitting in Darkness, I was reintroduced to Twain’s intense criticism of late 1800-America and its burgeoning imperialist tendencies. Reading “To the Person Sitting In Darkness” post 9/11, and on the eve of the Iraq elections, I am appalled by how little America has changed:
“There is something curious about this – curious and unaccountable. There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land.”
Twain may not have necessarily argued for the colonized (children and Persons-Sitting-in-Darkness), but definitely argued against the colonizers (adults and the rapacious American government)
He once lived in an apartment on West 10th St., two blocks up from where I currently lived, roaming these very streets in his trademark white suit. I should honor the man, maybe by leaving a bunch of flowers on the steps of his old apartment.
Or maybe a more proper way would be for me to start reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Last Word:
If you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you – you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.

CS Lewis
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe