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."
Adding to the Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
He had doubts about God ...
Indeed. See his later books like Letters from the Earth [google.com] and The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts [google.com] (claymation here [youtube.com]).
Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa.
Oh I think that's putting it rather lightly. After reading about Twain's efforts to in King Leopold's Ghost [wikipedia.org], I read Twain's King Leopold's Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule [montclair.edu] in which Twain rips the Belgian King Leopold II apart (in my opinion the farce Twain made of Leopold is better than the more direct Crime of the Congo by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). We seem to think that human rights and anthropology are modern day efforts when historically artists like Twain were very politically active and quite in tune with the truths of corrupt governments (the United States notwithstanding).
... and not until those involved, lampooned and criticized are long gone would the world be ready for this. This will most likely prove to be a delicious read indeed.
I assure you that in Twain's mind at the time of his death, he had many issues that he held from his writings -- most likely because he felt we weren't ready for that level of truth yet. Really the only question for me is whether or not he still felt the need to drench these memoirs in satire and wit when a hundred years from then he can just out and out straight to your face tell you what he feels as he recounts his life. I'd imagine he knew that saying some of this stuff one hundred years ago would be career ending or life threatening
alternatively... (Score:0, Interesting)
...holding back "premium" material for the purposes of beating copyright. Imagine if DaVinci Code was released as a series every other year (if copyright ended 2 years) just to "renew" it.
Not all that exciting or new really. (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I've been reading, all this material has been available for a long time to anyone who wanted to visit the library that holds it, and multiple biographies and even "autobiographies" have been published using information from it.
So there are unlikely to be any shocking new revelations here.
People will just get a chance to read things in his own words rather than the paraphrasing of a biographer.
G.
It Wasn't withheld for the Political Views (Score:4, Interesting)
Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens didn't make any secrets about his political views. If there were personally damaging revelations in there (criminal or moral confession) I could see insisting it only be published after his death. But 100 years later? The only reason I see for that is the autobiagraphies contain socially damaging information about people who were close to him, so that it might not only hurt them but their descendants.
Copyrights (Score:2, Interesting)
ok, he wrote this thing over 100 years ago. So, who owns the copyrights to it?
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:4, Interesting)
...drench these memoirs in satire and wit...
I certainly hope so.
Re:Copyrights (Score:3, Interesting)
Nobody. It's before the existence of Steamboat Willie, and all the retroactive copyright extensions start right about there for some reason [opensecrets.org].
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
There are plenty of good husbands and good fathers in this world. There are very few writers of his calibre however.
And these sets seem to have less overlap than simply statistics would suggest. Genius, and devotion to the pursuit of where that genius leads them, often result in someone who has many problems in other areas of life. Hell, just artists and writers in general whether genius or not tend to have these kinds of problems.
In other news, while Vincent Van Gogh may appear to have been a brilliant artist, did you know that in reality he was basically a raving lunatic not to mention quite an asshole? Yep, it's true. All those emotions you felt looking at Starry Night were actually invalid. Who knew? Science did, that's who.
Re:Mark, meet George (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:For the record, his stance on copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
"I made an estimate some years ago, when I appeared before a committee of the House of Lords, that we had published in this country since the Declaration of Independence 220,000 books. They have all gone. They had all perished before they were ten years old. It is only one book in 1000 that can outlive the forty-two-year limit.
Therefore why put a limit at all? You might as well limit the family to twenty-two children. "
Which is interesting, since, our problem now is the many many many works that have not disappeared, that cannot be used by new authors.
That and concept of corporate ownership which he didn't seem to really be concerned about (Disney).
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/ [randomfoo.net]
http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/zoomcomic.html [duke.edu]
As a competitor to Bill Gates, Mark Twain failed (Score:5, Interesting)
Having worked as a newspaper "printer's devil", he saw his path to the riches required for the life style to which he had become accustomed in the Paige Compositor -- essentially a Victorian Era version of MS-Word implemented largely in hardware, making "leveraged" investments in this invention.
The Paige compositor failed in the marketplace, more sophisticated than its competitor the Linotype -- kind of like the tale of a "death march" failed software or computer hardware project some 100 years later. Twain lost all of his money and then money he didn't have. To make good on his debts, he went on a worldwide lecture tool, essentially doing impressions of Hal Holbrooke pretending to be Mark Twain.
Not only did the speaking fees from this grueling tour pay back his debts in full and then some, it made him immortal. Were it not for the fame of the speaking tour and connecting with audiences around the world with his personal appearances in a day before TV and cable and talk shows, he may as well been forgetten as many a 19'th century humorist.
So remember, what made Mark Twain a household word even into the 21'st Century was one, the man's greed, and two, an antecedant to the personal computer.
Re:That is a pretty good quote (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet plenty of people have grown up to be great contributors to society and/or greatly successful, even though they had terrible parents or no parents. Dave Thomas [wikipedia.org] is one of my favorite examples, whose mother gave him up at birth, his adoptive mother died when he was 5, forcing his father to move around for work, to begin working at 12 and to drop out of school. Not only did he found Wendy's (one of the most successful fast food chains still) but did tremendous work promoting education, adoption and more.
The inverse is also true, as plenty of violent criminals and less than worthwhile persons came from what would be considered solid, caring families. While the quality of the parents is certainly influential in the outcome of individuals, it is by no means the single factor, nor the most important factor, in whether someone grows up to be a blessing or a curse to society. In the end, it is the individual that decides his own fate.
Re:As a competitor to Bill Gates, Mark Twain faile (Score:5, Interesting)
He also invented that little tie on the back of a men's dress vest that brings it in around the waist and was awarded a patent for it, but to no monetary gain. It originally had uses on other garments as patented and was sometimes detachable, but it's still there on many suit vests.
He also patented a self-pasting scrapbook which did sell really well and a trivia game.
Re:That is a pretty good quote (Score:4, Interesting)
However, as Ambrose Bierce pointed out, that, far from being the last refuge of a scoundrel, patriotism is often the first.
Re:Why should copyright take care of one's kids? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Adding to the Speculation (Score:3, Interesting)