Wiring, Mark Twain, Sam Stosur

[poliphilo]

Peter was here yesterday measuring up windows and consulting with us about plug sockets. This morning the electrician he'd engaged finally put in an appearance and gave the house a thorough testing. He says our wiring is fine- which is good news- and that the faulty sockets in the front room are probably down to a loose connection under the laminate flooring- which isn't. The day when the builders arrive and start tearing the place apart draws nearer; I try not to think about it.

Judy and I have been talking about Mark Twain- and to remind myself what all the fuss is about I've been reading Pudd'nhead Wilson. It's an unholy mess- carelessly thrown together,  with odd things in it that just about justify it being reprinted as a "classic". Twain was a sour individual. If he'd been born in a later generation he'd have been doing stand-up- and giving Richard Pryor and Bill Hicks a run for their money. I don't think I like him.

Sam Stosur is the stand-out figure of this year's French Open. She was off the circuit for a year with lyme disease- and it's as if they've rebuilt her and she's come back stronger than ever. She used to be a doubles specialist, now she's knocking seven bells out of the best singles players. I'd be talking about it as a changing of the guard if she wasn't herself a veteran.

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I don't think I like him.

Wow!

Traditionally, Twain is judged on the strength of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Like him or not, he's probably the US's first literary giant, most of the previous giants having been found, upon closer examination, to be lesser men of only relative literary value---Poe and Melville, excepted.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't dispute his status. I've read Huck Finn- albeit a long time ago- and thought I'd try something different. I'd argue that Finn and Wilson have the same strengths and faults- though Finn is obviously a much greater achievement.

As for liking him, that's just personal. There are writers one likes and writers one doesn't like- and it's got nothing to do with literary merit.

For example I'm very fond of Poe.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I too am very fond of Poe and would be even if he hadn't attended my alma mater. His little room on the West Range is still kept as a shrine.

I'm tempted to say that Poe just isn't the quintessentially American author, though, not in the way that Mark Twain was, and wonder with all due respect whether your opinion might be colored somewhat by cultural differences. I wondered the same thing when I learned how you felt about Tim Burton. Granted, there is simply no accounting for personal taste, but your dislike of these two came as a surprise, given all I thought I'd learned about your sense and sensibilities.

For instance, I think Twain's essay, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses", is one of the funniest things in the English language, but without an appreciation of Cooper's place in the American literary pantheon, the dominance of New England thought in American literature and literary criticism, and so on, I don't think one can appreciate just how heretically funny it is. To my mind, cultural differences can be more subtle, more difficult to perceive whether observerd from inside or out.

That Twain was a sour man is hardly surprising, either. So am I. I thought most American intellectuals tended towards the sour side and as a feeble and sorely oppressed minority, who could blame them?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I came across an article once which argued that Poe was the quintessential American writer. I forget the author, or how the argument ran, but it made me sit up and think- because- like you- I'd always thought of him as almost an honorary European.

My problem- my basic problem- with both Twain and Burton is that they disappoint me. They're original and hugely talented, but they never quite deliver the masterpieces of which they seem capable. Twain- I'll grant you- is a very funny writer- but he seems to have it in him to be a great novelist as well- an American Dickens or Balzac- and he falls short.

It's possible I'm missing something- and it has to do with cultural differences. I don't know. I have to admit there are no American writers I absolutely and uncritically love- with the exception of Poe and T.S. Eliot (if he counts).

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

In which case, I cannot argue with you. I have not read Twain's novels since my youth. What stand-out for me today are his shorter works and more often his non-fiction. In such cases there is less at stake and they are less likely "to get tired", as Twain once phrased it, before they are done.

I have his posthumously published, Letters From Earth. Mined for pithy quotes it is delightful but nothing about it has inspired me to read the whole thing, beginning to end. It too fails to deliver in all sorts of ways, such as in failing to decide just what it wants to be.

Burton I think a much lesser artist, though I like his work a great deal. Not that many of his movies stand out in my mind, but Beetlejuice I think amazing. There is something dark and twisted there that, sadly, resonates with my soul. And I think the movie, beginning to end, is as peculiarly American as Huck Finn.

You wrote:

I have to admit there are no American writers I absolutely and uncritically love---with the exception of Poe and T.S. Eliot (if he counts).

As H L Mencken infamously observed, America is a second-rate nation of third-rate men. If an author of Mark Twain's stature falls short of his potential, it's because there are no forces, literary or evolutionary, to compel such an end.

Poe is another story...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Only an American could have written what Mencken wrote there- and gotten away with it.

I think Twain's greatness is that he was the first writer of stature to write in an American voice. Oh, there's one other contender for that honour- whom I'd forgotten until just now- Walt Whitman. I find him almost unreadable, but he brings something quite new- and quintessentially American into World literature.

I think America found its voice in the 20th century. I'm not sure there's ever been a "great American novel", but maybe there doesn't need to be when there's Citizen Kane and The Searchers and The Godfather Trilogy.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Yes, Whitman. As you can see, he figures in my Poe reply. I have neve read much of him, either.

Twain was indeed just as you describe and I think you've substantially nailed it.

Mencken did not get away with his acerbic criticisms either, at least not indefinitely. When the Great Depression came, America had had enough of him. I find the old sinner to be a welcome antidote to the horror of American politics. He encourages the reader to point and laugh at the fools and I think that's wholesome. I recently finished his, Prejudices, First Series, and enjoyed it.

As for cinema representing the best of our artistic oeuvra, yes, bad as I hate to admit it. You may be right there as well.

Still, I can think of some damned fine American authors, but how shall we define the "great American novel"?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Whitman can be very good in small doses, but he does go on so. There's no discipline, no curbing, no editing. The great lines are buried in thickets of waffle.

I guess the great American novel would be the one that so completely encompassed the American experience that all the other writers would put down their pens and go, "OK, it's been done now. No need for us to carry on." Of course it's a fabulous monster- like Melville's white whate- and no-one is ever going too nail it.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

As for Poe, I was reading him as soon as I could read at that level. Here is his room at the University of Virginia:

Edgar Allen Poe's Range Room

I'm thinking I first peered through that glass in '76 or so and have paused and paid my respects scores of times since.

I have difficulty seeing Poe as the quintessential American writer. He was like a shooting star in the American literary firmament, but where a civilized man might see a dazzling brilliance the primitive mind of a New England Puritan saw only a dread omen of God's displeasure. Whatever essence he carried came and went with poor Edgar.

The man lay in an unmarked grave for twenty-six years after his death, in Baltimore, Maryland, and when a headstone was at last set up it was organized and funded by a committee of school teachers. Not one literary light contributed to the fund and when the unveiling arrived only Walt Whitman bothered to show up.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That looks just like my university room- barring the period furniture, of course.

It was the French who elevated Poe, starting with Baudelaire- who translated him. I've read that Baudelaire's versions are better than the originals.

...but you say he painted over the gas tap and you couldn't turn it on?

[jorrocks-j.livejournal.com]

It all makes work for the working man to do.