Friday, May 15, 2009

Mark's Twain's Autobiography

Mark Twain had a love hate relationship with his autobiography. He started work on the project in 1877, at the age of forty-two. He spent the next 23 years quitting, starting again, reorganizing his notes, and changing his mind as to the relative merits of the whole enterprise. He was an ornery fellow. He continually struggled against the narrative constraints of his own writer's instincts and generally had a hell of a time squeezing himself onto paper.

When he died in 1910, he left us with several hundred thousand words in no particular order.

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