Wednesday, September 21, 2011

De Spite

.
Eschew Poetry

“Like Charles Dickens and Tennessee Williams, Twain was a compulsive writer. Throughout his long literary career, he tried his writing hand at almost every style and form possible: novels, travel books, essays, journalism, short stories, humor, criticism, speeches, poetry, plays. He mastered a staggering number of these forms, but not all of them….

“‘I shall not write any poetry,’ he wrote, ‘unless I conceive a spite against the subscribers.’”

—Mark Davidziak,
about Mark Twain (1835-1910), dead poet,
quoted from his Buffalo Express editorial, 1869
(in Mark My Words: Mark Twain on Writing.
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996)

• Editorial Comment: Hmmm. There once was a man named Clemens... But wait! What rhymes with “Twain”?

• COMICS: You choose, Wise Guy! Bunny Honey or Hemp Horseman Sweat?
Ted Pease gets bluffed on NPR’s Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me!Listen here.

Visit our award-winning student news site, The Hard News Café.
• Jake Garn: Senator-astronaut tells students: Space travel could eliminate war

• Head Case? School board honors Providence teacher, passes concussion policy
• Vege Out:
Paradise Market: A profusion of garden veggies, crafts and neighbors



CLASSIFIED:
PR FACULTY WANTED:
The JCOM Department at Utah State University has opened a national search for a tenure-track professor of public relations and corporate communication. Start date: August 2012. See USU HR link here for full posting and details. Email ted.pease@usu.edu for more information.

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1 comment:

  1. Hal Holbrook is the guest for the hour today on NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook...

    Celebrated actor Hal Holbrook on a lifetime of playing his iconic alter ego Mark Twain.

    Program blurb:

    Mark Twain caught something essential about America, and for more than half a century the great actor Hal Holbrook has caught something essential about Mark Twain. In his white suit, wild hair, and big mustache, he first performed his “Mark Twain Tonight” one man show in 1954. And he performed it again last week, in Opelika, Alabama, at age 83.

    He’s performed Mark Twain, at this point, longer than Sam Clemens did. He owns the part and, in some way, it owns him.

    This hour On Point: being Mark Twain. A conversation with acclaimed actor Hal Holbrook.

    ReplyDelete