The Autobiography of Mark Twain

I tried to read this "book" earlier this year, and gave up, not due to frustration, but rather because it was not a pleasant experience. The book is as large as a small mailbox and as heavy as a small bowling ball. A little difficult to rest on your tummy while reading in bed.

I wanted to read it because I so much enjoyed "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." But, rather than being an entertaining and enlightening work about one of the best loved and widest read American humorists and writer, it turned out to be a chest beating, self-celebrating amalgamation devoted to the brilliance of the UC Berkeley editors who, after 20 some years of research determined that Samuel Clemens intended that his autobiography be published in the order in which he dictated it. Duh?

The first 200 plus pages are devoted to describing in painful detail how the diligent editors gathered, assessed and sorted various works and their significance to this splendid volume. Only after wading through all this do you get to the actual autobiography, by which time I had lost interest. It is very much like coming upon a steaming pile of horseshit, you know there are some golden grains of oats in there, but who wants to go pawing (with your readers eyes) through all the crap to find them?

Perhaps someday an enlightened editor will have a flash of inspiration and just publish Clemens' tapes as he had intended and provide something the common man (who Clemens so obviously loved) can enjoy. This present work is more like a doctoral thesis written by a committee intended for use only by like-minded souls.

Justice?

Have you been following the San Jose Rape case? It just concluded yesterday and the outcome was foreordained. Once again the victim was found guilty. The jury reasoned that Jane Doe asked for it and even if she didn't, she deserved it. There was no way, they determined, that eight "fine young athletes" would force themselves on a semi-comatose 17 year-old girl, unless they were so overcome by her wiles as to be helpless themselves. What a crock!

These young men have grown up feeling entitled to anything their little hearts desired because they have a modicum of athletic skill or talent. But in the core of their humanity they lack the essential quality of compassion for human dignity and care for the helpless. Their moral compasses are non-functional.

It would be fitting for these warriors to someday become fathers of girls, and then have to explain their behavior in this disgusting affair to their daughters. Good luck with that.

Here for posterity are their names:

Christopher Knopf
Kenneth Chadwick
Spencer Maltbie
Ryan Kanzaki
Cesar Gutierrez
Luis Cardenas
Stephen Rebagliati
Scott Righetti

I note that they were accused but were not found guilty. That should not be construed, however, as having been found innocent.

What am I reading? Recently finished "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen. Excellent novel about personality, consequences of behavior, family dynamics and getting through it all.



"The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey" by Walter Mosley. What a powerful story in such a short volume. What it means to be totally committed to doing good with your life, even in the last days, whenever or however they might come.



Now reading "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand. Saga of Louie Zamperini, juvenile delinquent, record holding collegian, Olympian and survivor of loss at sea and incarceration by Japanese during WWII.