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)
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”?
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Hal Holbrook is the guest for the hour today on NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook...
ReplyDeleteCelebrated 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.