Book excerpt: "Mark Twain" by Ron Chernow

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“Mark Twain” by Ron Cherno

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Preface

Pilot house

When he was a small boy in Hannable, Missouri, the Mississippi River indicated freedom for Samuel Langahorn Clamens (later known as Mark Twain), a place where he could toss the worldly, toss in high souls, and find sanctuaries from the restraints of society. For a shelter, small, for the youth of the city, riding on steamboats in a terrible life, which is plying the river, herd with refish characters, offered an entrance to a broad world. The pilots stood as a royalty of this floating kingdom undeniably, and it was the pride of the early years of Twain, which, just before the Civil War, he obtained a license in just two years. However, it was with its shifting snags, sholes and banks to remember the infinite details of a mutated river for a cube navigator, Twains had procured the period of this demand of his life. He later admitted that “I loved the profession better, which I have done in any way,” the reason is quite simple: “A pilot, in those days, the only unfit and completely independent human who lived in the earth.” In contrast, even kings and diplomats, editors and pastors, felt public opinion. “Really, every man and woman and child have a master, and is free in anxiety and service; but the day I write, Mississippi Pilot had nobody,

For a person who had immortalized the Hanbal and the royal river, Twain surprisingly returned for some time for these young scenes, such as frightening new raids can infiltrate the new memories. In 1875, as he was forty years old, he published Atlantic monthly A seven are part series titled “Old Times on the Mississippi”, who chronic his days as a curious young pilot. Now, in April 1882, he, his publisher, James R. Osgood, and a young heartford stenographer, Roswell H. Phelps scored, and set for Mississippi tour, which would allow them to expand the earlier articles in a full -length volume, Life on mississippiThis will fuse the travel report with earlier memoirs. He had imagined for a long time, but postponed for a long time, it was a return to the river. “But when I come to write a Mississippi book,” he promised his wife, Livi, “Then Look out! I will spend 2 months on the river and take notes, and I am sure you will do a standard work. ,

Twain mapped an ambitious six ‘week’s Odyssey, which was going down the river under the river from St. Louis to New Orleans, then stopped his steps as St. Paul, Minnesota, retreating his footsteps as a north, and stopped the N route in the honeybal. The three people looked at the west by the Pennsylvania railroad in a “Juggling train”, a very way of transport that had already threatened the death of the freewing steamboat culture, by Tuen. By traveling from east to west, he reversed the major trajectory of his life, making him able to evaluate his midwestern roots with fresh eyes. “All RR stations in the west of Pittsburgh Carrie Both Hands in his pockets, “He saw.” Further, one hand is sometimes out of the doors. “Now Hartford became accustomed to gentle prosperity of Connecticut, where he had lived for a decade, he became painful aware of his boys hunting fascinating.”

To secure the clear glimpse of his old Mississippi world, Twain traveled under the secret of “Mr. Samuel”, but he underestimated his own rain. He informed Livi from St. Louis that he “met many people who knew me. We administered the oath of secrecy, and left the first boat.” After riding on the steamer of three passengers Gold sand– “Ek Vile, Rusty Old Steamboat” – was seen by an old shipmate, his surname was re -blown. After this, his celebrity, which clung to it everywhere, will change the atmosphere that he tried to regain. For all his bliss, he climbed on the squall of the ship, “Dirt not particularly clean” and not clean “not clean”. He sent the vessel with a satire: “Built by this boat [Robert] Falton; Repair has not been done since then. “In several pierce he said that while the steamer was put together in his bouncy days” like a sardine in a box, “a shortage of boats had now lax with an empty dock.

Twains were saddened by backward towns that they passed, often standing in a collection of “tumble ‘down frame houses, unexpected, dilapidated looking” or “standing in a unhappy cabin or two. [a] Short opening on the river gray and grasless banks. “No less noticeable it was to be noted how the river had again shaped a landscape, which it had committed once for memory. Hamlets that came in front of the river had now landlock, and when the boat stopped at a” God Foursen Chattani point, “didn’t miss passengers for Entrand Town.” Could not give it a place; Can not call its name. , , Can’t imagine what the cursed place can be. “He guessed, correctly, that it was a lifetime Missouri river city, which was” located on high ground in a day, “, but was now transferred by the river to” a city in the country “.

Once the identity of Twain was known – his voice and face, his nervous habit of running his hand through his hair, removed the game – the pilots embraced this unique son as a respected member of his guild. In the final praise, he gave him the freedom to guide the ship alone – a dream assessment. “Livi Darling, I am in the secluded possession of the steamer gold dust pilot house, with the familiar wheel and compass and vine ropes. I am alone, now (the pilot whose watch is, asked me to make me completely at home, and I am doing it).” He seemed to expand in the solitary splendor of the wheelhouse and drank in the beauty of the river. “It is a great day, and there are green masses of glowing hills and levels, here and there is a white ing blooming tree. I love you, sweetheart.”

Always a hypercritical personality, prone to despair, Mark Twain often felt exaggerated in everyday life. On the contrary, the return to the pilot house made him a miraculous magic, retrieved the precious moments of his past when he was still young and unaffected by troubles. The river changed many things beyond recognition. “Yet it is as unfamiliar as all aspects have been done for the day,” he recorded in his abundant notes, “I have felt as much at home and at my proper place in the pilot house as much as I was never out of the pilot house.” It was a pilot called Lem Gray that allowed Twain to run the ship himself. Lem “will be late and sleep, and would leave me to dream that the years did not slip; that no war had happened, no mining day, no literary adventure; there was no literary adventure; that I was still a pilot, happy and care – free because I was twenty years ago.” One morning he woke up at 4 in the morning, “The stealing the day on this huge silent world steals the day. The contradiction of Twain’s life was that the older and more famous became he and seriously, the more he was ready for his early years missing heaven. His youth will remain the magical touchstone of his life, his memories were preserved in Amber.

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