Top Twain

An excellent article in today's The Age on Mark Twain by wordsmith Don Watson.

A couple of quotes.

Talking about his unusual approach to autobiography;

But more to his point was the language, and that depended on the manner in which the work was to be written. When we write about something that has just happened, he said, we write "naturally", as if we were simply talking about it. In this form, our accounts are "absolutely indestructible" and time "has no deteriorating effect" on the episodes they describe. By contrast, when we write from a distance in the historian's language, we rarely manage more than "a pale and tranquil reflection" of our subject.

And on writing:

Anyone needing a lesson in writing will profit from his letter to the "unteachable ass" who had the gall to edit his work. The letter is priceless not only for the lethal eloquence of his retort, but also for the insight into the writer's insecurity: the greater the writer, perhaps the greater the insecurity.

The full article here (for the moment), while the subject is the publication of his papers cum autobiography a century after his death.

James