Life on the Mississippi

Whether he was really able to do this he never knew from Clemens himself, but probably twenty dollars a page did not surfeit the author of books that sold right along just like the Bible.

we had several short contributions from clemens first all of capital quality and then we had the series of papers which went mainly to the makings of his great book life on the mississippi upon the whole i have the notion that clemens thought this his greatest book and he was supported in his opinion by that of the portier in his hotel at vienna and that of the german emperor who as he told me with equal respect for the preference of each united in thinking at his best with such far-sundered social polls approaching in its favor he apparently found himself without standing for opposition at any rate the papers won instant appreciation from his editor and publisher and from the readers of their periodical which they expected to prosper beyond precedent in its circulation but those were days of simpler acceptance of the popular rights of newspapers than these are when magazines strictly guard their vested interests against them the new york times and the st louis democrat profited by the advance copies of the magazine sent them to reprint the papers month by month together they covered nearly the whole reading territory of the union and the terms of their daily publication enabled them to anticipate the magazine in its own restricted field.

Its subscription list was not enlarged in the slightest measure, and the Atlantic Monthly languished on the newsstands as undesired as ever.

section seven of twain and howells on each other my mark twain literary friends and acquaintances by william dean howells chapter six it was among my later visits to hartford that we began to talk up the notion of collaborating a play but we did not arrive at any clear intention and it was a telegram out of the clear sky that one day summoned me from boston to help with a continuation of colonel sellers i had been a witness of the high joy of clemens in the prodigious triumph of the first colonel sellers which had been dramatized from the novel of the gilded age this was the joint work of clemens and charles dudley warner and the story had been put upon the stage by some one in utah whom clemens first brought to book in the courts for violation of his copyright and then indemnified for such rights as his adaptation of the book had given him the structure of the play as john t raymond gave it was substantially the work of this unknown dramatist clemens never pretended to me at any rate that he had the least hand in it he frankly owned that he was incapable of dramatization yet the vital part was his for the characters in the play were his as the book embodied them and the success which it won with the public was justly his this he shared equally with the actor following the company with an agent who counted out the author's share of the gate money and sent him a note of the amount every day by postal card the postals used to come about dinner time and clemens would read them aloud to us in wild triumph one hundred and fifty dollars two hundred dollars three hundred dollars were the gay figures which they bore and which he flaunted in the air before he sat down at table or rose from it to brandish and then flinging his napkin into his chair walked up and down to exalt him by and by the popularity of the play waned and the time came when he sickened of the whole affair and withdrew his agent and took whatever gain from it the actor apportioned him he was apt to have these sudden surceases following upon the intensities of his earlier interest though he seemed always to have the notion of making something more of colonel sellers but when i arrived in hartford in answer to his summons i found him with no definite idea of what he wanted to do with him i represented that we must have some sort of plan and he agreed that we should both jot down a scenario over night and compare our respective schemes the next morning as the author of a large number of little plays which have been privately presented throughout the united states and in parts of the united kingdom without ever getting upon the public stage except for the noble ends of charity and then promptly getting off it i felt authorized to make him observe that his scheme was as nearly nothing as chaos could be he agreed hilariously with me and was willing to let it stand in proof of his entire dramatic inability

Samuel Clemens had the spring fever and was willing to take his time.

In Life on the Mississippi, we read that the author ran away, vowing never to return until he could come home a pilot, shedding glory.

But this is the fiction touch.

He had always loved the river, and his boyhood dream of piloting had time and again returned.

Everything else is blotted out and gone.

But mind you, it hasn't got the same shape in the night that it has in the daytime." "How on earth am I going to learn it, then?" "How do you follow a hall at home in the dark? Because you know the shape of it.

You can't see it." "Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well as I know the shape of the front hall at home?" "On my honor, you've got to know them better than any man ever did know the shapes of the halls in his own house." "I wish I was dead." But the reader must turn to chapter 8 of Life on the Mississippi and read or reread the pages which follow this extract.

Nothing can better convey the difficulties of piloting.

Whether he was really able to do this, he never knew from Clemens himself, but probably twenty dollars a page did not surfeit the author of books that sold right along just like the Bible.

We had several short contributions from Clemens first, all of capital quality, and then we had the series of papers which went mainly to the making of his great book, Life on the Mississippi.

Upon the whole, I have the notion that Clemens thought this his greatest book, and he was supported in his opinion by that of the portiere in his hotel at Vienna and that of the German emperor, who, as he told me with equal respect for the preference of each, united in thinking it his best.

With such far-sundered social poles approaching in its favor, he apparently found himself without standing for opposition.

It might be that the fullest relief is just the recognition that we're in this cave and that all thinking has to account for its enclosure within it.

To bridge this tension that we see about learned convention versus a kind of natural nobility or natural potential for nobility, in some of Twain's other novels, I'm specifically thinking of Life on the Mississippi and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, He likes to make a distinction between when it comes to technology, when it comes to institutions, the tacit knowledge, the implicit knowledge that someone has to know versus the technical knowledge and how we modern sort of assume that we can master something just because we have the technical knowledge.

Like if you're trying to navigate the Mississippi River and you're the pilot in a steamboat, how difficult, how hard it is to constantly deal with how it changes, that requires something.

It's not something that can be put in a textbook.