My Letter to Mark Twain: A Commentary

Dear Mr. Twain:

Or can I refer to you by your real name, Samuel Clemens.  I always wondered which name you preferred.  When you created the pseudonym did it help you to get into a character? Give you much needed distance between the your creations and the person who you are? I can relate to that actually. Always towing the line between the different versions of myself. Or perhaps you were never afraid to show the world your true self, the good, the bad, the controversial.

I did see you speak recently, or rather it was Richard Thomas who did the speaking, but for my own imaginings I pretended that it was you.  It was the one man show entitled MARK TWAIN TONIGHT! It was developed and performed originally by another actor, Hal Holbrook Jr. in 1954. It even won him a Tony award for his efforts.  Sadly, Holbrook died in 2021, but performed the same show I saw tonight for more than 60 years.  Thomas is the only actor who has been granted permission by the Holbrook estate to revive the play and I’m really glad that he did for I saw it and loved it (sorry I’m being so redundant here; obviously you can tell that I saw and loved the play, why else would I be writing about it now).

I hope you don't think my writing drivel or worse yet not worthy of your time, especially if you are reading it from another world, and if I’m being honest I don’t really blame you, but I couldn’t resist writing to you today. One of the reasons being that the world you lived in, the world I live in are not altogether that different. Unfortunately, humans have not grown all that much. We have more technology in the form of communication devices. I’m sure you would have boycotted such contraptions; called them idiotic machines that were designed to dumb an entire population of followers down; turning people into robotic versions of themselves, incapable of thinking and doing much of anything without their help.  Gone are the days of relying on common sense, you would scoff, when the answer to any question is a push of a button away.  But that’s really not even the crust of the matter.

People are still hating others based on familiar, past prejudices.  If someone doesn’t look like you, sound like you, behave like you do, then there must be something wrong with said person.  And the people who are in power look pretty much the same as in your day; balding white men who think that they are quite the opposite of who and what they really are.  Men who are afraid to admit to the many blaringly obvious things; afraid that it will somehow put a hole through their already faulty armor.  It’s the same issues that Huckleberry Finn experienced although you wrote him to be an empathetic sort of person.  He had that childlike innocence to ask the hard questions; breathe into them; seek out his moral compass and realize for himself what was actually wrong and what was right.

I’m rereading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I want you to know. I tried to find a copy of the book on one of those late night early mornings when I couldn’t sleep.  My mind racing about the world and the things the human race is doing to it and to one another.  I tiptoed out of bed thinking that surely I had a copy of your best praised work in one of my many book cases.  You can only imagine my shock when I discovered that I did not.  I had about six companies of Tom Sawyer, but not one of Huckleberry Finn.  I’m embarrassed to even call myself a fan at this point.  I promptly ordered a copy and received it the very next day (technology does have its perks after all).

I had forgotten your introductory warning, but was reminded when I opened the first page. “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative,” you write, “will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”   I don’t altogether agree with such a warning if I’m being honest.  Or maybe you were being facetious, knowing that if you said one thing, your readers would probably do the opposite. This text does need to be taught in schools, analized, even thoroughly examined, not that it has done us any good.

Do you know that many schools have wanted to ban your book?  One publishing company even reprinted your words so that the N word would be replaced with slave.  I disagree with this of course because at this time in history Huckleberry Finn grew up believing that using such a word was acceptable.  Heck, he even thought that he was going to hell for helping a slave, but he had this thing called morals (I know so shocking to hear), something that  the world has not seen enough of these days.  When Finn is given the opportunity to return the slave Jim to his owner, he finds that he “knew deep down inside of me that I would never be able to do this to Jim, and I knew that God knew I wouldn’t be able to do this. A person can’t pray a lie—I learned that” (119-120).  Finn even goes so far as to actually prefer going to hell than doing something the world has told him was the right thing because he knew it to not be so.  And this is what I am dealing with today. The government telling us one thing: fear your neighbors who look different from you because of where they are from and how they came to be instead of reveling in the facts of the why of it all.

People are refusing to see that differences in cultures, differences in appearance, does not make one bad or evil, drug dealers or rapists, it makes them beautiful for the colors that they add to the world.  I don’t know why more people can’t realize this Mr. Twain?  How did you come to such a conclusion yourself all those years ago and were you prosecuted for thinking such things?  You certainly would be today, I will tell you that much.

Do you think our world will ever live harmoniously or is that a pipe dream that would only make you chuckle at the rose color in my glasses, force you to take another swig of your whisky, a puff of your cigar, and proceed to go back to your writing where you can control the narrative; you can control the characters who you have made to be decent amidst the camaflauged frauds.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I am an aspiring writer and if you were alive today I would send you some of my work in hopes that you would read my haphazard sentences, my stunted words and give me advice on how to  authentically allow myself into my created worlds and then how to formulate my thoughts into a more seamless fashion.

If you’ve read this far don’t worry my rambilings has almost concluded.  The last thing I want to express to you is my thanks. Thank you for leaving behind such brilliantly written gifts; gifts that I will continue to encourage young people to read for it does such a brilliant job of showcasing a past that should never be forgotten even if it makes us shudder with embarrassment for what has been done. It is the only way for new generations to never forget what has happened so as to not repeat such atrocities, maybe that’s why today's America has gone so far off course.  We are just too afraid to admit that what our ancestors thought would Make America Great only proved a short sightedness that didn't help the country then and certainly doesn't help anyone today.