Mark Twain's Time Capsule

[Telarus]

This is fucking cool, check this out:

http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/05/24/150246/Mark-Twain-To-Reveal-All-After-100-Year-Wait

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."


Oh, by the by, here's a handy HTML->BBCode converter (highlight something on a page, right click, select 'view source', copy source code, run through converter):

http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/html2bbcode/

[Kai]

Yeah it is!

[Cramulus]

wow, I can't wait to get a peek at that!

[Telarus]

I predict that there's going to be a lot of stuff that a lot of people (I'm looking at you Sarah Palin) won't like in a lot of what he had to say.


I think we should make a GASM out of getting choice quotes/sections out to as many people as possible.

Guerrilla Sam Clemens postering!

[Elder Iptuous]

neat! can't wait till this hits the torrent networks bookstores...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Ohhhh my god, I didn't know about this! SO EXCITING!

[Dimocritus]

This is exciting.

[Requia ☣]

 

This is awesome

[Iason Ouabache]

This is going to be either very awesome or very disappointing. I'm not sure whether to believe the "controversial views on religion and politics" excuse. Anyone who has read he wrote after 1900 (The War Prayer, Eve's Diary, Christian Science, Letters from Earth, The United States of Lyncherdom,  The Mysterious Stranger) knows where he stood on those issues. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It sounds more like he just went off on some motherfuckers.

[the last yatto]

The first of three volumes of Mark Twain's Autobiography 'or kill me' will appear in trade print editions in fall of 2010, and will also be available on Mark Twain Project Online documented with full scholarly apparatus.

http://www.ucpress.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img.jpg
He writes: "To the Unborn Reader, In your day, a hundred years hence, this manuscript will have a distinct value; & not a small value but a large one. If it can be preserved ten centuries it will have a still larger value— a value augmented tenfold, in fact. For it will furnish an intimate inside view of our domestic life of to-day not to be found in naked & comprehensive detail outside of its pages."

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

My favorite author ever (Sorry, Bob).... I never thought I'd been anticipating something new from Twain!!!! WHOOOOOO!!!!

[Kai]

I think it's sad that the only thing I've read by Clemmens is Huck Fin.

[Telarus]

I grew up climbing in the monkey-pod tree that he planted in a park in Southpoint, Big Island, Hawaii (how's that for a synchronicity?).

I've read a bit more than Tom & Huck Fin's books, but not much.

[Adios]

What is to prevent them from editing it before release?