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By Peter Stoneley

The last couple of years have been an up-and-down period for the reputation of Mark Twain (1835-1910). It started well with a special issue of Time Magazine in 2008 which reminded readers of Twain’s goodness, and of the fact that the “buddy story of Huck and Jim was not only a model of American adventure and literature but also of deep friendship and loyalty.” This was followed in 2010 by many celebrations to mark the centenary of his death, including a volume in the prestigious Library of America series. Headlining Twain as the most “beloved” and “cherished” author from “around the world,” the Library of America volume was an anthology of “Great Writers on His Life and Work.”

But there has been another Twain waiting for his turn in the public eye. Laura Skandera-Trombley brought this Twain into view with her book of 2010 on “the hidden story of his final years”, revealing just how vain, bad-tempered and vengeful he could be. Far from the world of children and their buddies, a key fact about the revealed Twain was that his secretary had presented him with a sex toy. Then earlier this month the University of California Press published the first volume of their three-volume edition of Twain’s autobiography. This made headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. The autobiography had supposedly gone unpublished because it was so full of harsh truths about Twain’s contemporaries, his nation, and life generally that he himself had ordered that it not be published until 100 years after his death. Here Twain is in full spate, calling his secretary a “salacious slut,” settling many scores with business-partners who he thought had fleeced him, and referring to United States soldiers involved in imperial wars as “uniformed assassins.”

How can we go on seeing Twain as “the quintessential American” once we know that he had echoed Johnson’s comment that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”? How can we see him as about “deep friendship and loyalty” when he conceived intense enmities for so many of his closest associates? It turns out that the Twain we had known was, as the New York Times put it, a “scrubbed and sanitized version,” and here in the autobiography was the truth. Similarly the Daily Telegraph assured its readers that the autobiography was “likely to shatter the myth that America’s great writer and humorist was a cheerful old man.”

We might seek to temper the coverage of the publication of the autobiography, as the outstanding editors responsible for the California volume have themselves done. Although it is a great event in Twain scholarship to have a full and reliable edition, substantial parts of the autobiography had been published before, including most of the truly interesting parts. The parts dealing with the “salacious” secretary were not part of the autobiography, but are to be published as an appendix to the California edition, and the material had been discussed in some detail in earlier scholarship. And the sex toy? As an editor at the Mark Twain Project, Benjamin Griffin, has pointed out on the University of California Press website, this was a “massager” that was marketed to men and women as treatment for “rheumatism, headaches, neuralgia, and other ailments,” and Twain recommended the device to friends with seemingly no awareness that it might also serve as “a masturbation aid for women.”

Now, with the 175th anniversary of Twain’s birth on 30th November 2010, I have no further revelations to add. Nor do I wish to try to adjudicate between the “good Twain” and the “bad Twain.” What strikes me is how these fluctuations and polarizations in the image of Twain in the past year or so are but one mo

Diary Comics #1 by Dustin Harbin

Are you reading Dustin Harbin’s comics yet? The first volume of his Diary Comics from Koyama Press is one of my favourite books of the year.

As with other diary comics — and I’m thinking of James Kochalka’s American Elf here — their strength is in numbers. It can be difficult to make every day seem interesting, and minutae can only take one so far. But when you read all of them together as a whole, suddenly you’ve got something far greater — like puzzle pieces coming together to form a larger picture. And in the case of Dustin, you can also see how his rhythms and even the art improve over time as he settles into the practice.

Art directors, take note. Judging by the quality of the sketches he includes in each book, he has far too much time on his hands, and not enough illustration gigs. Get on that.

Operation Pied PiperThe story of the rescue of 2,000 civilian refugees from Poland and 50 orphaned Jewish children Joice Loch’s account of events of her incredible rescue of Polish refugees and orphaned Jewish children in A Fringe of Blue are greatly understated. In fact, she makes no specific mention of Operation Pied Piper at all. I am left to wonder whether she didn’t recognise the enormity

I was not originally going to write a review of this book (and whether this post proves to be a critique or a rambling observation still remains to be seen,) but, having just put it down, I wanted to say something about it. I could have quickly tweeted--"Just read 'Stitches' by David Small. Wow!"--and anyone interested who saw the tweet would have no doubt commented. But that didn't seem fair

......like, 3 or 4 or more times--all three books, as well as the on-line comic--and you're looking for something in the same vein. Then let me suggest Knucklehead, Jon Scieszka's autobiography. In this rather slim volume (and one guesses that there was so much more he could have included,) divided into bite-sized chapters just right for reluctant readers, Jon writes of his experience growing up

by Cassie, Publicity Assistant

Yesterday wasn’t just Lincoln’s birthday. It was also Charles Darwin’s birthday; the 200th anniversary of his birth. Rather than having Darwin get lost among all the Lincoln chatter of the day, the OUPblog decided to declare today an unofficial Darwin Day!

To start the celebration, we have an excerpt from Darwin’s Recollections of the Development of My Mind and Character, a delightfully informal autobiography originally intended for his family. This selection is taken from a new collection of Darwin’s best and most famous works, Evolutionary Writings, edited by James A. Secord.

I am not conscious of any change in my mind during the last 30 years, excepting in one point presently to be mentioned; nor indeed could any change have been expected unless one of general deterioration… I think that I have become a little more skilful in guessing right explanations & in devising experimental tests; but this may probably be the result of mere practice & of a larger store of knowledge. I have as much difficulty as ever in expressing myself clearly & concisely; & this difficulty has caused me a very great loss of time; but it has had the compensating advantage of forcing me to think long & intently about every sentence, & thus I have been often led to see errors in reasoning & in my own observations or those of others. There seems to be a sort of fatality in my mind leading me to put at first my statement & proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; & then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could have written deliberately.

Having said this much about my manner of writing, I will add that with my larger books I spend a good deal of time over the general arrangement of the matter. I first make the rudest outline in two or three pages, & then a larger one in several pages… Each one of these headings is again enlarged & often transposed before I begin to write in extenso. As in several of my books facts observed by others have been very extensively used, & as I have always had several quite distinct subjects in hand at the same time…I keep from 30 to 40 large portfolios, in cabinets with labelled shelves, into which I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum. I have bought many books & at their ends I make an index of all the facts which concern my work; or if the book is not my own write out a separate abstract, & of such abstracts I have a large drawer full. Before beginning on any subject I look to all the short indexes & make a general & classified index, & by taking the one or more proper portfolios I have all the information collected during my life ready for use.

I have said that in one respect my mind has changed… Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth Coleridge & Shelley, gave me great pleasure, & even as a school-boy I took intense delight in Shakspeare… I have also said that formerly Pictures gave me considerable, & music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare & found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost any taste for pictures or music.— Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure… On the other hand, novels which are works of the imagination, though not of a very high order, have been for years a wonderful relief & pleasure to me, & I often bless all novelists. A surprising number have been read aloud to me, & I like all if moderately good, & if they do not end unhappily,—against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class, unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, & if it be a pretty woman all the better.

This curious & lamentable loss of the higher æsthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies & travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain) & essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organized or better constituted than mine, would not I suppose have thus suffered; & if I had to live my life again I would have made a rule to read some poetry & to listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied could thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, & may possibly be injurious to the intellect & more probably to the moral character by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

…

My habits are methodical, & this has been of not a little use for my particular line of work. Lastly I have had ample leisure from not having to earn my own bread. Even ill-health, though it has annihilated several years of my life, has saved me from the distractions of society & amusement.

Therefore my success as a man of science, whatever this may have amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can judge, by complex & diversified mental qualities & conditions. Of these the most important have been—the love of science—unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject—industry in observing & collecting facts—& a fair share of invention as well as of common sense. With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that thus I shd have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of scientific men on some important points.

I'm personally excited about an upcoming plot consultation with a well-respected veteran writer and photographer of some 50 years for most of the top news agencies and magazines in the country and the world.

Author Kevin J. Hayes has been very busy writing American Literature: A Very Short Introduction, but he needs your help. Find out what you can do below. Check out his past posts here.

My previous blog took for its topic the genre of autobiography, which will be the subject of Chapter 3 in my forthcoming book, American Literature: A Very Short Introduction. This topic generated less comment than my earlier blogs, which surprised me somewhat. To me, autobiography is an exciting genre for critical exploration. I still welcome comments on autobiography, but for this new blog I am moving on to the subject of my fourth chapter: the short story. And I have come up with a question certain to generate some lively discussion: what are the five greatest short stories in the history of American literature?

Before anyone answers that question, perhaps I should establish one or two ground rules. Were I to answer it myself, the top five short stories in American literature might all be stories by Edgar Allan Poe. No doubt others feel the same way, too. But if all of you submit lists consisting solely of Poe stories, your responses will not really help me very much. Let’s make the following rule: only one story per author allowed in the list.

Top five and top ten lists have been around for a long time. In 1928, as I noted in The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville, Edward O’Brien made a list of the top fifteen short stories of all time, putting Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” at the top of the list and claiming that it was “the noblest short story in American literature.” Does O’Brien’s claim hold up eighty years later? The short story is a product of the nineteenth century, and many of the best writers of short fiction in American literature emerged then. But what impact did the twentieth century have on the development of short fiction? Have there been any good short stories in the twenty-first century? I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

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Author Kevin J. Hayes has been very busy writing American Literature: A Very Short Introduction, but he needs your help. Find out what you can do below. Check out his past posts here.

In a contribution to Esquire in 1972, Tom Wolfe called autobiography “the one form of nonfiction that has always had most of the powers of the novel.” The study of autobiography has since emerged as an important field in American literary history. Of course, some of the major works in the discipline — Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography comes to mind — have received serious critical treatment for decades. More recently, many other autobiographical writings have been recognized for their literary artistry.

With his comparison, Wolfe was not necessarily saying that autobiographers fictionalized their life stories. Some undoubtedly do, but for most autobiographers, the writing process is a matter of selection, not creation. They start with the various events that shaped their lives and choose the ones they want to shape the story of their lives. Franklin, for example, omitted or downplayed some famous events in his life to emphasize ones displaying himself as a humble and hardworking printer. He made himself into an example to be imitated. The scheme worked. His autobiography is the prototypical story of the self-made man. To a certain extent, all autobiography offers examples for emulation.

Franklin’s may be the most important autobiography in American literature, but the genre seems significant enough to deserve its own chapter in my forthcoming American Literature: A Very Short Introduction. I have received such good responses from my earlier blogs that I am anxious to hear what you have to say about autobiography. I intend to start with Franklin and then flashback to the seventeenth century to discuss Puritan spiritual autobiography, captivity narratives, and slave narratives. After that, I need help with structure and content. I would like to subdivide the chapter into different types of autobiography. What other categories are significant enough to deserve separate subsections? Should I include a section on presidential memoirs? (Does that mean I’ll have to read Bill Clinton’s My Life? What am I getting myself into?) Who else’s autobiographies should I include? What do I do about ghost-written or co-written autobiographies?

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Whoever decided it would be a great idea to have well known children's writers tell their own stories in words and photographs is a genius. The concept behind the Meet the Authors series is sound: Children's writers know how to tell a story, and an autobiography--if told well--can be just as interesting as fiction.

I received three Meet the Authors titles--George Ancona: Self Portrait, Jim Arnosky: Whole Days Outdoors, and Janet S. Wong: Before it Wriggles Away. (The entire list is available here.) In just 32 pages, each author tells his or her life story for the K-5 reader.

George Ancona's life has been an international one--born in Mexico, he moved to New York as a child, then returned to Mexico City for art school. Now he works and lives in New Mexico. Ancona stresses his biculturalism and bilingualism when telling his story and how these aspects of life inform his work. Arnosky's autobiography focuses on his desire to live frugally, in nature, and on the back of a motorcycle. Janet S. Wong describes a happy, but normal, childhood, a suburban adulthood, and a life filled with travel as she loves "talking about my books" and "sharing my favorite books written by other authors."

Spouses, children, houses, and personal interests feature prominently in each autobiography, making their authors seem just like "normal people" who just happen to write books. This approach guarantees that children will see themselves while reading the story of an adult life.

Most central to each autobiography, however, is the creative process. Ancona goes into great detail about how he creates each new book, beginning with, "I'm curious about people and what they do. Whereever I go, I talk with them. What I learn I write down in my journal." Arnosky shares his journals and sketches, which are often composed outdoors: "Often when I'm afield, I'll abandon the camera and sit and write or sketch my impressions of where I am and what I am seeing. I carry a small pad in my shirt pocket for these scribbles and notes." These descriptions show a child how the creative process takes place all the time for writers--that they're always, in a sense, working.

To me, Janet S. Wong provides the best (and funniest example) of the writing process in this paragraph:

• "If I get to the dentist's office early, I might write a first draft of a poem. While my mouth is wide open and I cannont write, I will let my mind wander. Those 'wandering thoughts' are part of the process."

A large photo of Wong in the chair, mouth wide open while her teeth are being cleaned accompanies this text. A true and honest moment, though I am thankful she left the drill out of the picture.

The Meet the Authors series is intended for the grade school reader. I'd like to keep these beauties to myself, but I know of a grade school library who needs them more than I do. These are books should be enjoyed by as many children as possible as they comprise an accessible and welcoming introduction to the world of writing.

The Making of Me is Robert Westall's posthumous autobiography. Westall was the author of 50 acclaimed children's books, including such 20th century classics as The Machine-Gunners (Review) , The Kingdom by the Sea, The Scarecrows and Blitzcat Review. He was awarded the Carnegie Medal twice and also received the Guardian Award and the Smarties Prize. Westall grew up on Tyneside, which is the setting of many of his books, and when the Second World War broke out he was 10. He enjoyed it, finding the war exciting, even though Tyneside was heavily bombed and the young Bob had to live through the terror of the air raids. His upbringing and family life during the 1930s and 1940s is vividly brought to life in his autobiographical writings: the influences of his surroundings, the character and expectations of his parents and grandparents, the brutality of school life and what it meant in his peer group to be both short-sighted and fat - are all influences that were to resurface later in his writings, some of them, like Futuretrack 5, are savage indictments of social class. The Making of Me is a fascinating account of the early life of an important and influential children's writer of the 20th century, and provides a unique insight into his writing.