Mark Twain To Reveal All After 100 Year Wait 298
Hugh Pickens writes "The Independent reports that one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published one hundred years after his death. Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century, but in November, the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's three-volume autobiography. Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted his autobiography kept under wraps for so long, with some believing it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Michael Shelden, who this year published Man in White, an account of Twain's final years, says that some of his privately held views could have hurt his public image. 'He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines,' says Shelden. 'He's also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there.' Interestingly enough, Twain had a cunning plan to beat the early 20th century copyright law with its short copyright terms. Twain planned to republish every one of his works the moment it went out of copyright with one-third more content, hoping that availability of such 'premium' version will make prints based on the out-of-copyright version less desirable on the market."
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Mark Twain had to have been one of the coolest guys who ever lived.
Republishing and copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
Twain planned to republish every one of his works the moment it went out of copyright with one-third more content, hoping that availability of such 'premium' version will make prints based on the out-of-copyright version less desirable on the market."
Exactly why the limits SHOULD be less then they are now. Back then, the length of the copyright period was actually promoting the publishing of new material.
That is a pretty good quote (Score:5, Insightful)
patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel
Especially when discussing the Patriot Act. Just saying.
Wow! Just... wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Twain planned to republish every one of his works the moment it went out of copyright with one-third more content, hoping that availability of such 'premium' version will make prints based on the out-of-copyright version less desirable on the market."
If he was actually writing that additional content afterwards, he invented Release Early, Release Often.
If the content actually existed and it was a cynical ploy to sell more products, he invented the model Microsoft uses.
In either case, this puts his business acumen over half a century ahead of anyone else. That's genius.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever the substantive motives for the delay in publication are - that's probably also a nice publicity stunt; viral marketing is...old again?
Re:Republishing and copyright (Score:2, Insightful)
It's damn lucky some bright entrepreneurs were able to pass these new laws so the industry doesn't have to deal with that whole "contribute new content or you won't get any money" racket that society had going.
Olden days... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the olden days, authors games the law; they may not like the law, but still obeys the letters of the law. Today publishers BUY the law; they write them and their politicians force them upon the populace.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of good husbands and good fathers in this world. There are very few writers of his calibre however. Saying that he was only a great man on the surface because he wasn't a great family man is like saying Alan Turing wasn't all that great because he was rubbish at water polo*.
For all I know Alan Turing was great at water polo, my point is that it is irrelevant.
Re:alternatively... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing wrong with episodic content. I know at the very least a good deal of great Sci-Fi novels were first published one chapter at a time in SF magazines. If you don't make the first "episode" worth it, then nobody will bother with the rest.
Of course I get what you are driving at, having people fawn over Dan Brown every other year would get pretty tiring. ;)
Re:alternatively... (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine if that were the case, massive numbers of readers would boycott Davinci Code. Although, is that really any different from how series like Babylon 5, Lost, and Stargate SG1 operate? You don't get the whole story at once... it's stretched out over 5-8 years.
Also: I think you misinterpreted Twain's point. He didn't "hold back" anything in his stories. He was simply planning to add more material, as a bonus. Since he died, that never happened.
Re:For the record, his stance on copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
"I like that extension of copyright life to the author's life and fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy any reasonable author, because it would take care of his children."
Sorry Mr. Twain but I don't think your daughters should be able to live in luxury, without working, while they collect money off your books for another 50 years. If you want to pass your existing money to them, that's fine, but the copyright should end the moment you die. Let your daughters go-out and work for themselves if they want to continue collecting money.
Copyright is intended to benefit the original laborer, not to set up an eternal money-making machine for people who did not do the original labor.
Re:Of course... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, what part of "news for nerds, stuff that matters" don't you understand? While Twain is certainly worthy of an article in his own right, slashdot in general is a community that is very interested in copyright law. This makes sense since OSS/FOSS and copyright law are very much related. If you want articles that focus purely on literature, then I suggest you look elsewhere.
Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:For the record, his stance on copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
A reason that copyright extends past death is to discourage murder to get access to copyrighted material.
Re:alternatively... (Score:5, Insightful)
That would actually work well, since it would not protect the version as released, only the additions to the work. People can still freely use the old version as-is, or even as a basis for their own derivative works.
If you want to continue profiting from your intellectual property, release a new version every few years that's better than the one you released before. People can then choose between the older version (which is free of copyright encumbrance) or the newer version (which you've put work into to make it more desirable than the old version). Just make sure you do it better than anyone else, because the instant copyright runs out anyone can use it as the basis for new art.
This is the way it should be. If you want to keep getting paid for something you wrote 50 years ago, then you should keep working on it and improving it. Your older versions (for what is not currently, and should be, a reasonable definition of "older") should be available for everyone after you've had a reasonable amount of time to profit from it. "Years" is reasonable. "Generations" is not.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of good husbands and good fathers in this world. There are very few writers of his calibre however. Saying that he was only a great man on the surface because he wasn't a great family man is like saying Alan Turing wasn't all that great because he was rubbish at water polo*.
Not really. I know very few people that measure a man's greatness based on his water polo skills. But if you're not a good husband and father to the people you promised to be a good husband and father to, then you have lost a significant amount of respect from me.
If we said he was a "great writer," that's fine. But calling him a great man because of his writing is not merited, unless as a society, we actually want to ignore "humanity" faults in a person because of his literary work. Personally, I'd much rather have a great guy (great "man") as my neighbor than a great writer.
With all that said, I don't know much about him as a person, so I don't know if the original claim is true or not :)
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Plenty of kids and neighborhoods are all the worse because of negligent/never_there fathers. No one grew up harmed because someone wasn't a good water polo player.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:2, Insightful)
The politicians sold you a line of BS there (Score:5, Insightful)
A reason that copyright extends past death is to discourage murder to get access to copyrighted material.
I'm sure that's the spin policymakers put on it when they deformed copyright law. A better approach to discouraging murder would be to have set copyright terms...which coincidentally, was what we used to have. It used to be you could tell if a work was in copyright or not by looking at the copyright notice, subtracting it from the current year, and seeing if the result was greater than the copyright term. If you want the equivalent of "life plus fifty years" to benefit the kids, make copyright equal to the median life span + 50 years, and make that the set term. If you want more innovation, reduce that back to something reasonable, like 20 years.
Making copyright life+50 to avoid a mass of murdered authors is bullshit...that problem goes away as soon as you decouple copyright from an author's demise, as was its original implementation (in the US at least...in the UK, the earliest forms of proto-copyright went on forever, and some works still fall in the category).
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
How many lives has he touched with his brilliant writing? His writings have had an unmeasurable positive impact on the world and to ignore that seems almost criminal to me. "Just a great writer" does not really do justice to how good he was. His works aren't just nice stories, they are full of powerful and relevant social commentary as well, which was not lost on his readers at the time.
I'm not attempting to downplay the harm caused by being a negligent father but everyone has flaws. If we ignore the achievements of men because of their supposed shortfallings in other areas, then nobody is a great man, and what exactly does that say about society? And for what it is worth, he publicly stated on at least one occation that he supported extended copyright terms because it would allow his work to financially support his family after his death. Perhaps he wasn't a great father/husband, but it certainly doesn't sound like he created enough harm to outway his literary and intellectual accomplishments.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course... (Score:1, Insightful)
Slashdot has only been interested in all this boring copyright junk in the last few years. Before that, it was a proper technical site where people discussed interesting things (and I don't mean Ubuntu).
It really just illustrates the shift to a more casual readership. Copyright bullshit is easy to debate, as anyone can sound like an authority with only a minimal bit of reading. Plus it appeals to the culture of entitlement that seems to have infected university-aged people nowadays.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:3, Insightful)
Oftentimes, it seems like people who've significantly changed society or our culture for the better turn out to be difficult (at the very least) interpersonally. I'm not saying it's impossible for people to be great in every way, but it does seem uncommon.
Personally, I tend to judge people in a simple way: balancing their private and public lives, has the person made the world significantly better overall? In Twain's place, I would judge yes. Maybe he was a jerk in to his family or kids, but it seems like he wasn't SO MUCH of a jerk that it wipes out his other contributions. For a ridiculous contrast, look at that Rieser guy who murdered his wife and thought he could get away with it: sure, he came up with a file system people seemed to like, but his psychopathic behavior aside from that totally wipes out any good feelings I could ever have had about the guy.
I mean, can't you think of anyone who you totally respect, even though they have serious personal flaws that probably made people living around them miserable?
Re:For the record, his stance on copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
A reason that copyright extends past death is to discourage murder to get access to copyrighted material.
Here's the choice:
1) Expiration at death -> Murder to put something into the public domain where EVERYBODY has access to it.
2) Expiration after death -> Murder by a family member to get control of the income from the copyright today
Seems to me that copyright extending past death is much more of an incentive for murder than it is against it.
Why should copyright take care of one's kids? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. He likely wanted anyone he was talking ABOUT to be dead as well, to not be able to deny or discount his story. Basically, it would seem as if he is simply letting history speak for himself, and before you read this, a several generations have already been exposed to his more public side (his work) before they can judge his opinions and perspectives as a private individual. Most people have opinions that they don't necessarily share to everyone in public, be they about race, religion, politics, etc., particularly if they are not in the majority in these views.
he wouldn't have gamed anything (Score:3, Insightful)
The OLD original book would still have been free of copyright. Copyright would NOT have been extended on the ORIGINAL book. He just hoped that the NEW edition with its own new copyright would be worth buying from him for the new content.
But the OLD content would have been free of copyright. So basically, Mark Twain wanted people to pay him for freshly written new content.
That is not gaming the system, that is called selling stuff. nobody complains that the baker wants paid for his bread today even if you bought bread of him yesterday. New stuff, new payment.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
If we ignore the achievements of men because of their supposed shortfallings in other areas, then nobody is a great man, and what exactly does that say about society?
The truth?
Re:For the record, his stance on copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
A better reason to make them static lengths of time and not based on the arbitrary date someone croaks at. Does an author (or his family) deserve less money because they get hit by a car the day after releasing their book? Pick an arbitrary time period of reasonable length, like say 20 years. That means by the time people are old enough to produce creative content of their own, the work they grew up with an were inspired by is fair game. Imagine how awesome it would be if the Ninja Turtles, GI Joe, Star Wars and Transformers were all public domain? There's already plenty of fan work, but they have to constantly dodge lawyers. There's no doubt that for a certain generation these things are a huge part of their culture, with meaning beyond the original works themselves. A person or company should not be allowed to own the common culture, only keep contributing to it.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
"Just a great writer" does not really do justice to how good he was.
Yes it does. That is exactly what it means, he was a great writer. If he was a bad husband and father then that is what it is also.
And for what it is worth, he publicly stated on at least one occation that he supported extended copyright terms because it would allow his work to financially support his family after his death.
So he wants to try to play games with copyright law and you're ok with that too? Next you're going to tell me he created the modern text book scheme with new editions so often that students cannot reuse old text books...
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:2, Insightful)
If more men were good fathers we would not need great men like Twain to speak the truth, or men like Einstein to build the bomb, the average man would speak the truth and any dispute settled long before the bomb was necessary.
They may have been great family men if they were not distracted with these huge injustices.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:3, Insightful)
The man cut off part of his fucking ear and gave it to a prostitute. I think it's pretty well understood, particularly in glamorized and exaggerated popular culture, the man wasn't really all there in the head...
Well I can't say his work ever particularly appealed to me like some art does, but I will say that is a very bleak and depressing outlook on art you have. Why should anyone's feelings be considered "invalid"? If you felt something, then it was real to you and that's all that really matters. Who gives a shit about the artist's intent if it means you can't enjoy a piece.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at Steve Jobs- sure, the guy has consistently created some of the best products in tech history, but everything I understand about him is that he is a tyrant to work with- I can only imagine what his homelife is like.
Now, I would like to hear back from someone that is a top producer, like a Steve Jobs, and find out if those people consider themselves happy... in a sense, these people are sacrificing their lives, and possibly the lives of their families, to push us ahead technologically. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:4, Insightful)
If we ignore the achievements of men because of their supposed shortfallings in other areas, then nobody is a great man, and what exactly does that say about society?
As another poster said... the truth.
I'm not ignoring the achievements of anyone. I don't honestly know about MT's character as a father/husband, so I can't really comment on that specifically; I have read his writings, enjoyed them, and found them very observant, astute, and insightful. If he was not good to his family and friends, however, I'm not going to ignore that because he wrote well.
Someone I am more familiar with would be Richard Wagner. He was a "horrible person," it seems, and yet a great composer. I acknowledge his compositional genius, while maintaining that I would not want to set him up as a role model for anyone. I'm not going to fall into the trap of downplaying his music because of his character, but I'm not going to fall into the trap of downplaying his character shortcomings because he was a great composer. And frankly, if he had sacrificed some of his art for the sake of those he loved, I would have a lot of respect for him. I value human life and relationships more than art (or literature, etc), I guess.
Perhaps he wasn't a great father/husband, but it certainly doesn't sound like he created enough harm to outway his literary and intellectual accomplishments.
They are completely different measures. You can't outweigh good character with bad literature or bad character with good literature, and I refuse to call someone a great man because of his literature just as I would refuse to call someone a great writer because of his character.
How about this. Hans Reiser was a great programmer. He was not a great husband. I will not call him a great man because of his programming, and I will not call him a bad programmer because of his character flaws (... murder ...). He was - to my knowledge - a great programmer and a rather horrible husband.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:1, Insightful)
Unless you were his wife or kid.
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:3, Insightful)
It's better that Twain gave us something that will last us through the ages (his words) than to have been another generic family man.
Your comment sounds callous, but I completely agree with you.
Look at the 10,000 ft view. If you get too close, then everywhere, every day, is a tragedy. Yes, if he was a neglectful father and husband, that is a bad thing. However, look at the entirety of American Literature. In a completely objective sense, is it better with Mark Twain's writings than without? I think so.
The guy who was valedictorian of my High School went on to seminary and to become a baptist church youth pastor. Am I ok with that? Well, ...no, not really. The guy was brilliant - he could have cured cancer, or invented something that moves humanity forward in an unthinkable way. I honestly kind of think that if you're great at something, you owe it to the world to *be* great at it. The question shouldn't be "does this make Mark Twain a bad person", it really is "Why did he think that he had to have a wife and family, when he had all this other stuff going on?".
Terry Goodkind sort of touched on this in "Faith of the Fallen" (as much as that series gets preachy later, this was a good book). If you stop to look around, there are tragedies everywhere. It shouldn't stop you from achieving greatness.
Re:For the record, his stance on copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That is a pretty good quote (Score:3, Insightful)
And (Score:2, Insightful)
The best quote from Mark Twain is
"Religion was born when the first con man met the first fool." --Mark Twain