MARK TWAIN TIME Mark Twain is one of those writers we should read again when we get older.
We have a memory of having read his “funny stuff” but when we recap our reading we actually find we have read very little of his writings, Tom Sawyer, perhaps, Huck Finn , those tales about the rafts and river steamboats, a some have a memory of the Yankee character he created who suffered a bump on his head and found himself waking up under a tree in the time of King Arthur and the Court at Camelot. Far too often, our memory is a bit warped..
I received a 3-thousand book CD library for Christmas and among the first books I decided to “re-read” was that of the Yankee living in a restored King Arthur's armor-suited domain.
To my be surprise, I found that I had never read the book at all.
What I was remembering was Will Rogers playing the role said Yankee many years ago -so long ago, I now realize, that it was a film without sound. That film and dealt with the impressive opening episode of the book, and, unless I am again mistaken, I think that is as far as it went. You know that part of the story in which the Yankee is due to lose his head to the royal executioner's blade, unless he comes up with the sort of thing MacIver did so well on TV just a year or two ago - and continues to do on re-runs - to show his impressive power which would make his on lookers think he was a magician of special abilities.
You will know that story because it has been done to multi-death by every facet of the media. Doomed, he remembers that the year in which he finds himself was one which witnessed a complete eclipse of the sun... so he lets it be know that, if he is harmed in any way, he will blot out the sun.
Right on schedule, after a last-minute cliff hanger, he starts the process. Twain, almanac in hand, no doubt, lets him do just that and the populace is very much impressed as was the king and the knights who were at the Round Table. Listening to their pleas, he awaits the king's offer making him assistant king, then slowly brings the heavenly light back and restores it's warm light!
That's just the first incident of thirty-plus chapters of other magical acts undertaken by the Yankee. He makes the king's official Merlin look, like an upstart.
The Yankee worked hard to keep his new place as Assistant or Vice-King of the realm of Camelot. He ran the place on behalf of his buddy King Arthur and his changes and modifications in government make up the rest of the book.
Twain got to work off a great many of his somewhat strange social and political ideas possibly to try to influence the future.
While much of it may seem old-fashioned and seen historically now they were new in King's domain. He “invents” all sorts of things such as the telegraph and modernizes the land in many fantastic ways. I get the feeling reading some of the ideas that Mark Twain was being as serious as he could possibly be in setting down some of the the social ideas he favored, but it still comes off on the silly side since we have such a pre-conceived notions of who and what he was as a writer.
I found I had not read the story “A Yankee in King Arthur's Court” at all and I dare say it applies to much of Mark Twin's writings with many of you ,as well. He is read at certain times in our lives.
I have now read the Yankee thing and realize, for the first time, that I have probably been guilty of doing the same sort of injustice to other authors and their books. We do not realize how much we have been dominated by the media versions, early films, newer ones with color and computerized embellishments, radio,TV the comic book genre and now revised versions for the old ones, often discounting earlier accounts. The youthful generations today are in even more dire straits. Their entire memory of classic literature is based on their detailed knowledge and firm acceptance of the Disney versions of history. And, you and I both know how far from fact those tellings can go.
A.L.M. June 10, 2005 [c-763wds]
