When I was young and started to read books, real books, not the comics my friends read, and I had no interest in, I discovered Mark Twain. I thank my late aunt Norma, my father’s older sister, for that. She gently guided me into a world of imagination through a masterful author. She taught me to read and write at the age of five. She was an avid reader of great literature: Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer were her favorites, as was any trashy romance novel available. Armed with a book-smart, salty vocabulary, I was king of the neighborhood, and it didn’t take long for the mothers to come knocking on our door. My mother threw a world-class hissy fit and demanded Aunt Norma change my reading material. That’s how I discovered Mark Twain.
After reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was going to be Mark Twain. It didn’t matter to me that almost a hundred years earlier, he had already been Mark Twain; I was set on becoming him, me, a six-year-old with limited writing ability. However, I did have a colorful imagination, so that was a good start.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t write; by the age of eight, I wrote exceptionally well for my age, but I didn’t possess the mind of Mr. Twain. I hadn’t known Tom Sawyer, or Jim, or Huckleberry, or lived on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River. I was a landlocked kid stuck in Fort Worth, Texas, with a dozen Big Chief Tablets and a handful of No. 2 pencils.
I read other authors as well, but they weren’t Mr. Twain. Jack London was a bit scary, and there were too many wild animals that I imagined living under my bed. John Steinbeck was a masterful storyteller, and I did make it through most of The Grapes of Wrath, which mirrored what my grandparents and father had lived through. I continued to write on my tablet. I didn’t knowingly plagiarize any author, but they did give me good ideas and taught me to group words into a story.
I busied myself writing childish exploits of myself and my neighborhood gang of friends. I was certain that the Fort Worth Press would give me a column and perhaps a few bucks for my stories. I churned them out at a fevered pace, sending one a week to the publisher. A year passed, and I gave up. I still wrote, and my editor, my mother, filed them away in a drawer.
The day my class let out for Christmas vacation, my teacher asked the class to share what we wanted to be when we grew up. It wasn’t a serious exercise, only one to kill the last 30 minutes of the school day.
The usual vocations for our age group were doctors, firemen, policemen, and some girls who wanted to be teachers or nurses. When my turn came, I stood up and announced, with all seriousness, that I was Mark Twain. Mrs. Badger, my teacher, promptly informed me that there was already a Mark Twain, and that he had been dead for a while now.
I answered, “Yes, I know, but his spirit requires that I continue on with his writings and wit. So I am the reincarnation of Mark Twain.” I was in the principal’s office within a few minutes. The principal, a kindly old fellow, understood my affliction, and because I was earnest about it, he backed off a bit when administering the paddle. My teacher, bless her old-maid heart, never cared for me after that and treated me like a leper. To make myself feel better, I blew up her mailbox with a cherry bomb.
My aunt Norma was overjoyed when I told her of my plans and my new affliction. She went so far as to make me a tailored white linen suit and gave me one of my uncle’s large cigars to complete the ensemble. My parents weren’t thrilled; my mother blamed my father since his extended family was street rat crazy from drinking homemade hooch, and she was certain I inherited this malady from him. She seemed to have forgotten that her two brothers had turned me into a habitual liar and teller of tall tales. There were some whispered discussions about doctors and bad family genetics, but I paid no attention to that adult chatter.
After a few months, I discovered Earnest Hemingway. I never became Mark Twain, except in my daydreams or nightmares, but I did learn to appreciate good writing and stories.
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Notes From The Cactus Patch 
Based on your past tales of youthful antics, you certainly acted a lot like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I understand why you were obsessed with Mark Twain. Fun read! 🙂
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Nancy, I think they did rub off on me a bit.
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You would make Mark Twain proud as long as you stick to humor, not politics, where never the Twain should meet, unless your name is Mark.
Keep the humor post coming!
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Mark Twain wrote extensively on political issues, especially later in his life.
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Yes, he did, and even early on in his career, barbing local politicians. I’ve read much of his political humor and he went after all. I’ll write about it if the time is right, and if the politician makes a big enough fool of themselves. I’m reading the most recent biography on him now.
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I’ve been likened to Mark Twain. Maybe I should take up cigars?
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Why not! You do resemble him, and your writing is much like his. I think he smoked Cuban’s so you may have to do with a knockoff.
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Mark Twain is one of my all time fave authors. I have Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn always at the ready for a re-read. Sam C also had many memorable and fine quotes. The question is often asked, “If you could spend an hour sitting on a bench and visiting with someone, who would it be?” My reply is often “Mark Twain”.
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I would say he is my favorite author, and then it would be Steinbeck, Hemingway, Wolfe, Capote, Towels and Southern. I read so much as a kid that I didn’t need to sit 12 inches from our black-and-white TV to ruin my vision; the books took care of that quite well. I’m reading a biography of Mark Twain now, and finding out more about his life and the characters he wrote about.
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Love it. Many of your tales are in the spirit of Mark Twain. As to politics, Huckleberry Finn was actually a pretty deep social commentary although as a kid or even a teenager you don’t really see it. I think my favorite by him was The Prince and the Pauper.
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When I became an adult, I re-read many of his books and came away with a different perspective on how he wrote. Huckleberry Finn was a pretty deep book dressed up as a kids tale. Twain’s characters were people he knew growing up, some strangers, friends, and family. Jim was an old black man he knew in Hannibal, and the rest of the group were friends and family. He began writing and speaking at a young age, publishing letters lampooning politics and uppity citizens. I have his entire collection and many of his short stories and letters, which are as good as his books. Children these days don’t read or write; it’s all printing and keyboards. Our grandchildren have no idea who Mark Twain was, and darn sure won’t ever read his books, but they do know who Taylor Swifter is. He rubbed off on me, that’s for sure.
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I’ve always loved Mark Twain. Was there a subject he didn’t touch?
Have you read his posthumous writings?
You already have a pretty good dash of his type of humor, but distinctively your own, and you write about everything. I suppose if Samuel L. Clemens, as a kid, had announced in his little town classroom that he was going to be a writer, he might have suffered much the same reaction you did. Can you just imagine?
He left town as a young man for the riverboats, and never came back. That should tell us something. Wonder if he wrote as a kid?
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From reading the newest biography on him, he didn’t start writing until was 13, and by then he was working as a printing press assistant for his older brother Orion. He was likely the youngest river boat pilot on the river. I have read some of his personal letters which were not published until after his death. According to Clarence Oddbody, the angel in It’s A Wonderful Life, Twain was writing a new book while in Heaven.
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Phil is a wonderful author, much more sophisticated than some of his stuff suggests. He nailed a couple of stories, which I admit got my lasting attention and appreciation. With this one, he does something different, something quite intentional, and the first metaphor I’m going to use is a high wire walker on a wire strung high up at the top of the canvas.
Let me be clear, he doesn’t suggest what he is doing in his post. He takes a long walk around it, never once getting to the point of the blog entry. He is completely successful in what he attempts to do, although I don’t know how many people will see it.
He is writing about “Upon Becoming Mark Twain: My Time As a Dead Author.”
The warning is clear. There is much one can say about Twain, who stands tall above as America’s greatest writer. And while Samuel Clemens may have passed beyond this mortal coil, Mark Twain is timeless, eternal and shall never die.
And Phil knows it.
By the way, Phil is not writing about Twain. He references Twain, and does so with a familiarity that praises both Twain and Phil. But Twain is not the subject of this blog. And that’s what makes it great.
He begins by praising his Aunt Norma, lovingly calling her an avid reader of great literature. He then drops the other shoe and names two of her favorite writers, Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer.
Phil shows his true colors in the very next sentence, where he describes himself as armed with a book-smart, salty vocabulary he was king of the neighborhood. He doesn’t specify his age, but Aunt Norma taught him to read and write at five and the next step is at six.
Picture a five year old armed, as he calls it, with a book smart, salty vocabulary culled from Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer.
Take a step back, now. What do you recall of Spillane and Hammer? Both reputation and, perhaps, actual reading. They had a reputation for a specific type of writing, quite distanced from the comics his friends were reading at the time. There is much to be said, good and bad, as to Spillane and Hammer. But there is one thing that cannot be argued. Their writing transformed words into images. Strong images.
From here, Norma changed his reading material and he discovered Mark Twain.
Phil doesn’t say Norma introduced him to Twain. I don’t care how precocious a six year Phil might have been, having the vocabulary of any published author is a strong brick in the idea that this blog is full of tall tales and ripping yarns from the Great State of Texas. Indeed, the authors mentioned so far are not considered Texas by any means. They are all American, to be sure, but Texan is something in and of itself.
Phil continues, with perhaps the one piece of truth in the whole blog entry. He knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wanted to be Mark Twain.
Of course, that is impossible. Phil says he didn’t possess the mind of Mr. Twain.
But look how he cloaks it. He says he hadn’t known Tom Sawyer or Jim, or Huckleberry, or lived on the banks of the mighty Mississippi.
Uhm, Tom before Huck? JIM before Huck? I suggest there is much literary analysis in that one sentence.
Just how interesting is Jim as a character? That requires more analysis than I have room for here, or the interest in right now. Twain filled his characters with a lot, and one of the reasons Twain is so great is because we, readers, are forever going back to this well and refilling our buckets.
This blog, however, is about Phil. Twain already exists. How does a landlocked kid stuck in Ft. Worth, Texas, with a dozen Big Chief Tablets and a handful of No. 2 pencils deal with it?
The reader is given the awareness that a dozen Big Chief Tablets and a handful of No. 2 pencils is much more powerful than what the king of the neighborhood had with a book-smart, salty vocabulary. Of course, the reader knows that Phil grows, evolves. It isn’t one or the other. It is one person, one living creative person being given weapons to work with.
WOWZA.
He read more. His single hand loving slaps at Jack London and John Steinbeck are worth their weight in gold.
And he wrote. He didn’t plagiarize but he does acknowledge some good ideas he was gifted from them.
But he doesn’t get to the heart of the matter.
Phil writes wonderful tall tales that are often as much about what isn’t written as what is in the writing. Here he is writing around what he got from Twain, from Steinbeck and London and Hemingway. An attitude.
I am here to praise that attitude.
It is an amazing gift that he shares with us.
Thanks, Phil.
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Thank you, for the most in depth acknowledgement of my writing skills. I am speechless to reply, and armed with vigor to write more. I appreciate the kind words of praise.
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I like to think that all good people read Mark Twain growing up. Also if the reader is able to pass on the love of writers like Mark Twain to someone else, it is a blessing to us all. Mark Twain had just the right blend of drama, social commentary, history and humor. It is a wonderful way to write and a great example for others to follow.
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Twain was a great influence when I was younger. I read all of his books that could be found in my school library, and a few my aunt came up with. When I began to write, around the age of 9, I found humor in almost everything I chose to write about.
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