Mark Twain

Man, I don’t want to make too much out of it. I know I’m prone to emotional outbursts. Sappy soliloquy. Excessive, and I do mean excessive hyperbole. I even lie and bullshit here and there. Some would emphasize, “A LOT.”

But I’ve been dreaming about visiting Mark Twain’s boyhood home since I first read about Tom Sawyer. That must have been somewhere around 1969 or1970, and since then I’ve always looked at a potential trip to where Samuel Clemens grew up as a necessary pilgrimage—something that I had to do someday.

As soon as I got my first driver’s license, I started looking at road atlas maps, plotting routes south that follow the Mississippi River. The highways I was searching for are the ones that skirt the blue-colored interstates and the red state roads—I wanted and still want none of that. I looked for the dark black county byways that zig zag around through the towns and villages that they once served, before the four lane monsters devoured them. I even hoped to favor the grey ones that the map keys advise against riding. Also, within a few years of my dreaming, I decided that if I did go, it would be on a motorcycle.

Finally, finally, after decades of daydreaming I pulled the trigger on it this very week and rolled out of Minneapolis on a sunny but nonetheless chilly first day of May. After a couple of days tracking the Mississippi through forgotten and mostly abandoned river towns, I pulled into Hannibal Missouri with wide eyes and an eager heart that was full of a lifetime of anticipation. Eastern Iowa and Missouri must be America’s best kept secret— they contain some of the most beautiful country that I’ve seen in the USA, and they served as a suitable lead up to the most thought-provoking day of my life.

—

I just pulled out of Hannibal about an hour ago, and as I rode along The River looking for Huck and Jim’s Jackson’s Island, I kept tearing up at my blessed good fortune and the pure joy of it. Too amped to ride till I got it out of my head and onto “paper,” I just pulled over when I saw a vacant picnic table on the roadside and now, as the brown water flows by not twenty feet away, I’m typing my thoughts out with a huge smile on my face.

—

Hannibal Missouri is a strange sort of town, although probably not unique. We as a country have shifted our places of importance, corporatized, gentrified, Richie Rich-ified all the iconic landmarks, and mechanized the operations of agriculture. Landless rural people and their value are pretty much an endangered species as far as I can tell, and probably none more so than the folks that inhabit(ed) the once thriving towns that served our great rivers. A few of the larger cities that I rode through have at least some sustaining industries to provide jobs, but anything smaller has been left to wither away and die. It’s a shame, because the towns that I rode through were beautiful even in their decay.

Hannibal is much like them, except that it is a town of two tales—and if it weren’t for the tourists that Mark Twain so generously generates, it would be lost as well. As it is, the little part of town that a young Samuel Clemens grew up in, along the way growing among the greatest imaginations ever, is three blocks square. The rest of Hannibal is like all the other towns. It is falling apart as it becomes ever more abandoned.

That’s okay. Those three blocks are more than enough.

I was amazed at how small Mark Twain’s seminal world of inspiration was. I’m sure there must have been more to it, and the time of it all was, after all, two hundred years ago, so I’m sure lots of Huck’s and Tom ‘s, and Becky’s and Jim’s world was much bigger. Maybe it was expediency and expense that caused the town fathers and mothers to shrink what they could afford to preserve. Or, maybe during the lean years that accompanied the demise of commercial river traffic left most of the old wooden buildings to rot away. Whatever, I reveled in the block that comprised all the seeds of at least two of the greatest books ever written.

The rest of the “Mark Twain Experience” buildings run for a couple of blocks perpendicular, and each has a sign out front designating their relationship and importance to the youthful Sam Clemen’s upbringing. They’re all really cool and pretty much period accurate, although I can’t see how an Irish bar fits into it, despite its wonderful Irish stew. Anyway, what I would call “THE BLOCK,” was perfect.

Tom’s picket fence that he tricked his gullible friends into whitewashing stood right next Sam’s house, and Huck’s house is right out back. Becky’s house is across the street, a short, brick-surfaced alley really, and where Sam’s dad worked was right next to Becky’s house. I was there yesterday! I had one of the most amazing days of my adult life: I sat out front of Becky’s house, facing Samuel Clemens’s boyhood home and read from my latest copy of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and I had to stop and wipe the tears away a couple of times— Mark Twain has meant that much to me and my scattershot, fucked up life. And now, here I was, immersed in his source.

I must have had a thicker skin when I was twelve, because rereading Huck’s adventure now was disturbing. Child abuse, the severest level of alcoholism, child abandonment, evil parental greed, racism— fuck me, as I raced through the pages for the first time in 57 years it freaked me out. I felt like I was looking into a crystal ball of approximation to my own lifelong attempt to escape my own darknesses—and I was pretty much shocked to read Twain as he blasts away at all the shit with both barrels. It was perfect. He was perfect. The goddamn book was perfect, as it was in 1969. As much as I found myself again blissfully lost in the wonder of Twain’s prose, as a wannabe writer I was yet again intimidated nearly into silence by its perfection.

—

As a writer, and as I person who is easily influenced, certain writers, and certain books have had an oversized impact on my life and writing. There are many, but a few come to mind without too much effort.

For instance, I would never have lived on Maui for most of my adult life if I hadn’t read James Michener’s Hawaii. I would have never taken drugs, and I for sure wouldn’t have jumped into psychedelics with both feet if I hadn’t read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. Most important, if I’d never read John Barth’s Sot Weed Factor, I would have never developed my overly suspicious mistrust of all humans, and especially Americans. I read that book three times and after each reading, I became more cynical than I was from the previous journey.

Even worse, if I read something from an author that I particularly like, for the next stretch of time I find myself vaguely mimicking that author’s style — a terrible habit that is only broken by my becoming aware of my subconscious stupidity while editing. Or I read something from someone else.

On the other hand, there’s Mark Twain. Every book was mind-altering. As a kid all the Tom Sawyer/Huckelberry Finn stuff became my well-worn go to. Some time passed before I graduated to Twain’s myriad collection of slightly more adult fare. Then, as a young adult I found myself sleeping on the floor of my friend Robert Crenshaw’s apartment in Pelham New York—the first morning I woke up after a late-night Manhattan-prowl I became painfully conscious and opened my bleary eyes, and there staring at me on the bottom shelf of Robert’s bookshelf was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Over the ensuing three weeks before I got my own place I read and reread A Connecticut Yankee repeatedly. It was like an addictive drug. I couldn’t stop.

Since then, I’ve never gone a year without rereading at least one of Twain’s many works. However, unlike other books and their authors, no matter how much I read from him, I don’t dare to try emulating or interpret his stylings into my own work. I’m beyond idolizing him—if you haven’t recognized it by now, I’ll just say it: to me he is deity. And as much as I am a self-centered pirate, even I know that I can’t try to sneak stuff by the gods.

Meanwhile, as Twain’s books have given me years of pleasure and layers of introspective thought, at the same time as a writer they are my bane. For much of my life I’ve been encouraged by others to write in a serious, committed way, but then as I gave the idea some air, I always flashed upon the extraordinary otherworld-ness of my favorite author—and insecure me concluded that it would be a futile waste of time. Everything that mattered and was profound—Mark Twain already wrote it far better than I or anyone else could, so what’s the point? That stifled me for decades and it has only been during the last year that I’ve overcome the Curse of Mark Twain and taken to bashing along in writing, however amateurish and grammatically incorrect my ramblings might be.

[For the record, I’m not letting my editor, Dr. Paul Weisser, even see any of my blog writing. So, I’m sure this stuff is a literary disaster. There will be irritating split-infinitives galore, lots of correct sentence structure fucking, maddeningly pronounced run-on sentences, and even my spelling will fail me. My dear friend Mike Ward pointed out two spelling errors in my blog title the day after it went live….]

[And Dr. Weisser totally hates it when I do the dot, dot, dot, dot thing at the end of a sentence. Also, he doesn’t even say anything if he sees my brackets thing, like the ones I’m utilizing right now. He just edits them out without comment, but I can feel his disgust anyway. If you spot any of these or any other author transgressions, please feel free to share your thoughts with me!]

Anyway, placing my fragile ego and lack of confidence aside, I read on in Huckelberry Finn, and I totally empathized with Jim and Huck’s overwhelming desire to escape. As I said, I’ve been running from whatevermy whole life, and when I first read about Huck as I hid under my bedroom covers as a young boy, I must have really related. I never felt at home then because I had often violent, deranged, narcissistic parents, and other than a few years living on Maui I’ve never felt like I belonged anywhere else either. As I sat glancing up at the Clemens House from time to time in between the pages, I nodded in agreement thinking about Jim and Huck as they hid out and made plans on Jackson’s Island. Although my life’s experience is a Happy Wonderland of Fun Time Rollercoasting compared to their piled-on nightmare of a story, I’ve nonetheless shared an approximation of their hard luck need to move along and leave the past behind.

—

These were my thoughts as I sat in front of Becky’s house in Hannibal Missouri, across the street from Samuel Clemens’s boyhood home—and even though it started to rain, I kept on reading. I was happy. Content. I was at my mecca, and I was respectfully bowing down in the form of reading a masterpiece that sprung from the very spot where I was now sitting.

His masterpiece.

But then, something started to pick at me. It was almost nothing at first and I was able to ignore it. Then, whatever it was started to grow. I could still block it out—Jim the escaped slave was making moral sense out of life for Huck, after all, which is some really heavy shit—but a mental nudging and feeling of unaccountable uneasiness metastasized into my conscious thoughts. I was distracted from Jim’s proselytizing.

I looked around to make sure there were no stalkers or muggers of old fat men, and there weren’t any. I went back to reading but within a few words I realized that whatever was bugging me, I now had to know what it was before Jim could continue to school Huck. I thought about it. I reflected.

I was puzzled by whatever it was that was producing within me such an ominous foreboding. At the same time, I could no longer ignore the fact that what was originally a drizzle— had become a steady rain. I refocused for a second and tried to decide what I should do next. Should I just leave, get out of the rain and let my mind-nemesis go on anonymously? Or should I stick it out and confront what was bothering me to the point that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had become an afterthought.

I looked around, gauging the rain, and then I looked up into the sky trying to see if the clouds were gathering, or moving on. The clouds looked plenty dark and comfortable just as they were, not in any hurry. Thus, I figured it was time to seek the shelter of the nearby Irish bar. Almost accidentally my mind’s eye stopped for a second to investigate the windows of The Clemens House. Maybe the windows were original, I hoped. That would be cool.

What happened next—I don’t know how to write this, other than the way that Mark Twain would: simple and direct.

There, standing in the middle of the upstairs window was Samuel Clemens. The actual, real Samuel Clemens. 3D. Resplendent in his white linen suit.

He, or it, was looking down into the street—directly at me. He had a look of judgmental disdain on his face. My lower jaw dropped into my lap. That was the extraordinary experience of my lifetime, standing out starkly within a span of living that has been chock-full of surprises and excitement. I still get goosebumps at the thought of it.

I watched him for a few minutes, hoping that maybe he would wave away the negativity with a wry smile, or take a toke from his cigar and walk back into the house. Anything other than the bottomless glare that my literary chimera was so mercilessly transfixing me with.

But none of that was to be. As he, or maybe the ghost of Samuel Clemens—stared into my skull from above, he let my pathetically beholden brain know, telekinetically, that my first book, Life with Death, was a disjointed, colossally jumbled mess of poorly chosen words. I needed to do better next time. Much better.

Along with all of that, he just kept looking down at me, while never once changing his expression. The metaphorical stripping, layer by mind-fucking layer, that I was caught up in became, finally, too much—so I walked away without looking back over my shoulder. I was downtrodden and yet, I was at the same time encouraged. At least The Master allowed that a next time was still a possibility….

So here we are.

All the above might sound like I found the whole revelation to be terrible, or disappointing, or discouraging. It wasn’t! I LOVED every single second of it. My half-hour of ghostly wonder is the kind of element in life that I cherish the most. As I dreamt of that moment all those years previous I hoped for no less. I have an imagination that is unquenchable, and I was gifted by Samuel Clemens a level of food for thought the size of an 18^th Century King’s coronation bounty!                           

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OK then. I got it all out of my head. Now I can get back on my motorcycle and ride on.  I am Memphis bound.