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Sketches New and Old

Sketches New and Old

Mark Twain

5.0
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A real storyteller can make a great story out of anything, even the most trivial occurrence. The candid, ironic, playful, and petulant sketches are indispensable to our understanding of a harried genius during thirteen quite amazing years.

Chapter 1 No.1

[ Scene-The Studio.]

"Oh, John, friend of my boyhood, I am the unhappiest of men."

"You're a simpleton!"

"I have nothing left to love but my poor statue of America-and see, even she has no sympathy for me in her cold marble countenance-so beautiful and so heartless!"

"You're a dummy!"

"Oh, John!"

"Oh, fudge! Didn't you say you had six months to raise the money in?"

"Don't deride my agony, John. If I had six centuries what good would it do? How could it help a poor wretch without name, capital, or friends?"

"Idiot! Coward! Baby! Six months to raise the money in-and five will do!"

"Are you insane?"

"Six months-an abundance. Leave it to me. I'll raise it."

"What do you mean, John? How on earth can you raise such a monstrous sum for me?"

"Will you let that be my business, and not meddle? Will you leave the thing in my hands? Will you swear to submit to whatever I do? Will you pledge me to find no fault with my actions?"

"I am dizzy-bewildered-but I swear."

John took up a hammer and deliberately smashed the nose of America! He made another pass and two of her fingers fell to the floor-another, and part of an ear came away-another, and a row of toes was mangled and dismembered-another, and the left leg, from the knee down, lay a fragmentary ruin!

John put on his hat and departed.

George gazed speechless upon the battered and grotesque nightmare before him for the space of thirty seconds, and then wilted to the floor and went into convulsions.

John returned presently with a carriage, got the broken-hearted artist and the broken-legged statue aboard, and drove off, whistling low and tranquilly.

He left the artist at his lodgings, and drove off and disappeared down the Via Quirinalis with the statue.

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Other books by Mark Twain

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The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories

The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories

Literature

5.0

This volume spans the length of Mark Twains career, and contains some of his most famous shorter works, which all centre on the subject of Money. The Celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County is the most perfect tall tale in the English language, three flawless pages about Jim Smiley and the bizarre sidelines he would investigate to win a bet, any bet, written in a miraculous mid-19th century California vernacular. If that isnt enough, Twain tops it with the best closing paragraph of any work I have ever read ever. The $1,000,000 Bank note is almost surreal, or Marxist, the story of a derelict made an unwitting guinea pig by two elderly millionaires, curious to see what would happen to an honest but poor man in the possession of such an impractible note. The frightening fetishistic power of currency structures a somewhat creepily benevolent narrative, and the opening paragraphs audaciously cram a novels worth of misfortune. I have taught this book at the college level for a few years now; it definitely sheds Twains unfortunate Americana image, and it reveals the darker genius of this beloved author. Twains greatest work, The Mysterious Stranger will enrage fundamentalist Christians, several of whom have dropped my course because of this novella. Asking people to think about what is real, what is behind existence, though, is no crime and should be inoffensive. Young people who are harmed by systematic thinking will react to this book like people being deprogrammed from a cult: they will hate it. But Twain, who was in anguish when he wrote this, had the honesty to ask difficult questions. Read The Mysterious Stranger as a guide to Twains futuristic thinking, his tribute to the mind above all other things.

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