So they knew they were doing something that no one alive had seen.

The Declaration of Independence, we all tend to focus on, um, of course, what, uh, Jefferson wrote in the preamble.

You know, all men are created equal.

That received very little attention at the time For them, the significant thing Jefferson listed, I think, was 27 different grievances against George III.

Uh, this was really an, an indictment.

This was their legal brief against, uh, George III.

And I think it tells you, um, a lot about these rebels, that they felt the need to make the case.

The fact that we exist

So what did you think you could bring to it that others hadn't brought to the life of Mark Twain?

I was hoping that I could, um, write a fuller and richer biography if that was, uh, possible.

Uh, this is the largest literary personality that America has produced, and yet there's a way in which he's hidden behind the, uh, the stereotype.

Uh, everyone knows, uh, Tom and Huck and Life on the Mississippi, but he published two dozen books.

They don't know that he did a novel on Joan of Arc, that he did a polemical screed against Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science.

Uh, they don't know that he [laughs] wrote a book, rather cockeyed book, claiming that it was actually Francis Bacon and not William Shakespeare who wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare.

Mark Twain even wrote, dare I say it, um, a pornographic satire called 1601 that was set in the court of Queen Elizabeth I.

[laughs]

When you were writing the book, did you think there would be a musical about it and a play about it?

That's an excellent question.

I hate to say it, Ryan.

He should be doing the interviews.

It's an excellent question.

Okay.

When the book appeared in 2004...

I forgot that one's-

How- h- how- d- say more about y- how capturing him in all of his complexity made him a hero for a divided age.

Well, I should say, you know, when I started the book in, uh, in 1998, um, Alexander Hamilton was fading into obscurity.

I mean, it seems strange now but most people had never heard of him before.

If they had heard of Hamilton, they knew, uh, one of two things, that he was on the $10 bill, uh, and that he had died in a duel.

Maybe they knew that the person who shot him was Aaron Burr, but the knowledge of him was that, uh, limited, and I started reading about his life and number one, it was clear that just from a personal point of view that this was far and away the most dramatic life of any of the founders.

A completely, you know, self-invented, uh, figure, it's just the most astonishing story of this kid who was an autodidact who comes out of nowhere, he comes to North America just with a handful of introductions, is effectively orphaned, although in the play he's described as an orphan, he- actually he had a brother who was a carpenter in St. Thomas, and he had a kind of ne'er-do-well father who'd drifted down to the Grenadines to an island called Bequia, uh, but for all intents and purposes, he was an orphan, in fact, when he married Eliza, neither his brother nor his father came, so, uh, it was like this person...... was really all alone in the world, and just by dint of the most extraordinary intelligence, you know, created this dazzling intellect, this massive intellect.

But, um, you know, part of the fascination of the- of-of the story, which accounts for this tragic, um, uh, quality, is that this, um, dazzling intellect is on top of a very kind of fragile, uh, and unstable ego, psyche, if I can put it th- that way.

(laughs)

... did that, did that make him more popular that it was almost this decade-long sabbatical from being available in America?

Yes, it- it did.

And I think that this surprised him.

You know, it's funny 'cause I was saying before, Ryan, that in many ways, he's the quintessential American.

So people are always surprised to learn that there were these kind of nine years in exile.

Uh, and, uh, in total, uh, he spent, um, 11 years outside the United States.

So this man that we think of as the quintessential American was actually the most, you know, worldly, well-traveled, and cosmopolitan person.

It's like, "I actually have way more thoughts and it doesn't have anything to do with two fictional characters on a raft."

... you know, even after pouring out seven hundred pages about a person, you still feel the contradictions.

Yeah, and also what happens is you-- as a biographer, you're peeling away layer after layer after, af-after layer.

I would always say to people, you know, "I knew more about George Washington than Martha did," you know.

"I, I knew more about Hamilton than Eliza did," et cetera.

But after you've peeled away all of the letters, you never get to the bottom of it.

Even someone as chatty [chuckles] and verbal as Alexander Hamilton or Mark Twain for, for, for that matter, there's always a secret corner to the life and of course, the silences.

It's not what they're, you know, they wanna tell you.

What do you think he would make of our current vices and virtues? Like, what would, what would his commentary be on, on our time?

Uh, that's a relief in some ways, to know that, you know, even after pouring out 700 pages about a person, you still feel the contradictions.

Yeah, and also what happens just, as a biographer, you're peeling away layer after layer after af- after layer.

I would always say to people, you know, "I knew more about George Washington than Martha did." You know? I, I knew more about Hamilton than Eliza did, et cetera.

But after you've peeled away all the layers, you never get to the bottom of it.

Even someone as chatty (laughs) and verbal as Alexander Hamilton or Mark Twain for, for, for that matter.

There's always a secret corner to the life, and of course, the silences.

It's not what they're, you know, they wanna tell you.

What do you think he would make of our current vices and virtues? Like, what would, what would his commentary be on, on our time?

... his upbringing.

When his family is poor, they moved to Hannibal which then is now, is a tiny town tucked away, all the way in the northeast corner of Missouri.

Um, Missouri was a, um, slave-owning state at the, at, at, at the time.

Uh, most importantly, Hannibal sat on the, um, Mississippi River and so if you go to Hannibal, um, uh, today, they have preserved Mark Twain's boyhood home.

And for me, one of the most valuable things when I was researching the book is to, uh, when you, um, exit from the house, uh, and you turn left, there just a block or two away is this broad, shining, magnificent, uh, river.

So here's a sleepy town, you know, then and now, in the middle of a very beautiful, isolated, uh, rural area.

But once or twice a day, a little puff of smoke would appear on the horizon, then they would hear the steamboat whistle.

... right outside his door, and knowing that there was this free state, uh, in Illinois just across that river, uh, that those are transformative things for him in terms of th- the kinds of changes he goes through as he gets older.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was helping Twain out, and, uh, Twain, you know, in New York, writes very proudly to Livy who was then in Paris, uh, describing, uh, the way that, um, Rogers is handling creditors and, um, Livy writes back.

She said, "I'm upset by the way we're handling the creditors." You know? She really felt that, um, they owed the creditors and they would sh- should be treating the creditors with much more dignity and, uh, and, and respect.

But it's an amazing story 'cause it did take several years to pay off the debts.

But you know what amazed me, Conan? Okay, so he goes through this terrible, grueling, it was a 12 or 13-month round-the-world, um, uh, tour, and then they're living in, um, Vienna and he discovers that there is this, uh, patent for a new process for printing on carpets and textiles and tapestries.

Yeah.

Very, very, you know, um, odd and disquieting.