Irreverance.

Whilst lamenting the lack of time to read, I neglected to realize that I can use the time driving back and forth to work and school to listen to a book on cd. So, when I went to the library to vote this past weekend, I also browsed their books on cd and chose a biography of Mark Twain...rather than a Frank Rich book about the Bush administration. It was a tough decision - I love Frank Rich - but, I decided that my peace of mind is too valuable a commodity right now. Besides, I don't intend to waste much time lamenting the Bush administration once they're gone. Fuck those guys.

I've only just gotten through the Prologue of the book and, while I'm not enamored of the writing, I've already learned a few things about Mark Twain that I didn't know before.

Such as...
He was born two months premature.
He was close to my height - only 5'8".

One thing I was already familiar with - and that which has made me love Mark Twain - is his bluntly irreverant sense of humor and the way he uses it to comment more broadly on that which he finds hypocritical in 'civilization' in general, and 'western society' in particular.

For instance, this was what he said upon meeting the man who reviewed his first book, The Innocents Abroad, for The Atlantic Monthly (which at the time [1869] was the preeminent journal of American literary review):

When I read that review of yours, I felt like the woman who was so glad her baby had come white.

This may seem to be a pretty tame comment by today's standards, but coming from a disheveled, 34-year-old, unknown newspaperman while standing in the genteel offices of one of the lynchpins of east coast culture and propriety, must have been quite alarming. And as I have been pondering it off and on today, it has revealed more and more levels of commentary - on race, of course, but mostly on women and the hypocrisy of the day's expectations and taboos.
In one sentence he admits that women of the late 19th century, perhaps even married women (gasp), pursued sex with black men and that they were willing to pursue it even though the consequences could be devastating to their lives and reputations. Of course, people knew this...but they didn't talk about it. And his use of it as a metaphor for his acceptance into what he viewed as the exclusionary and hypocritical American literary establishment is so appropriate. I wonder if he rehearsed it...probably.


I do love this man.

And, as an aside, the man he made the comment to, William Dean Howells, became his lifelong friend and advocate.