I'm going to recommend a film to you. It's on Youtube. It was on television once, in 1967, and it made a big impression on me back then. It made a big impression on me this time, too, when I found it on Youtube. The show is called Mark Twain Tonight. Hal Holbrook, the American actor, won a Tony for doing this show on Broadway. The television performance was nominated for an Emmy award. Mr Holbrook was relatively young when he recorded this show, but he kept doing Mark Twain performances until late last year. He said he had now been 'Mark Twain' for 13 years longer than Sam Clemens had. So the show is a big deal. That's not why I want you to watch it.

Holbrook wrote this show himself, and varied it from performance to performance. The material, of course, is taken from the writings (and, I suspect, performance notes) of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain. I wanted you to see this performance in particular so that you could admire the way the 42-year-old actor took on the mannerisms of a 70-year-old man – and then showed you that 70-year-old man acting out a scene as a 12-year-old boy, half a century into his past. It's a bravura performance, and thoroughly enjoyable.

There's another reason I think you should watch Holbrook's Twain. It's a time-travel experience. Holbrook was so observant of older people in his generation that he managed to capture the sight and sound of someone who died in 1910, fifteen years before he was born. Good job. If you listen to Twain's stories in this kind of context, you get a bonus. Twain travelled everywhere: out West to the frontier, around the globe, extensively in Europe…he was even on the first 'package tour' to the Holy Land in the 1860s. Twain met a lot of people. He told their stories and captured their quirks, foibles, and occasional insights. Twain is worth this attention. It doesn't hurt that he can make you laugh. Holbrook brings this out beautifully.

One thing that I hope you'll see in Holbrook's Twain: the lack of self-censorship in his work. Yes, sometimes, that can make you cringe. Holbrook recites from Huckleberry Finn, a book that has been banned more than a few times. The book makes people uncomfortable, not because its heart isn't in the right place, but because it describes the past very accurately, warts and all. That past was Sam Clemens' childhood, and he was watching the grownups.

In the 21st Century, we are afraid to be made uncomfortable. We hide in our affinity groups. We enforce 'political correctness', insisting that people keep up with today's hot-off-the-presses list of new terms to use to avoid offending anyone. (Have you tried just being kind?) Or we rail against 'political correctness', insult people not in our group, on purpose – and then impose another form of censorship in which nobody is allowed to touch our sacred cows. The sacred cows of the 'politically incorrect' group are things like flags, and militaries, and right-wing politicians, and television preachers. You see where I'm going? We can't talk to each other because everybody's got cotton wadding stuck in their ears.

Mark Twain's 19th Century was like that, too. 19th-century 'political correctness' forbade cursing in 'mixed company', meaning men and women in the same room. It encouraged home decorators to swathe their piano's 'limbs' (you couldn't say 'legs') in velvet skirts. I am not making this up. 19th-century 'political correctness' is responsible for chicken being divided into 'white meat' and 'dark meat'. Could you imagine a lady asking for a 'chicken breast'? She'd rather die. Twain observes these linguistic strictures. But he gets around them, too. However, there's another side to this form of 'political correctness' that Twain goes to war with – and, I would argue, wins.

While everybody was busy avoiding talking about arms and legs, they were also avoiding talking about serious problems that needed to be fixed. Here's what you'll hear Twain (and Holbrook) say about the 'silent lie':

For instance. It would not be possible for a humane and intelligent person to invent a rational excuse for slavery; yet you will remember that in the early days of the emancipation agitation in the North the agitators got but small help or countenance from any one. Argue and plead and pray as they might, they could not break the universal stillness that reigned, from pulpit and press all the way down to the bottom of society – the clammy stillness created and maintained by the lie of silent assertion – the silent assertion that there wasn't anything going on in which humane and intelligent people were interested.

Twain wasn't silent about these things. He was often thunderous – and not always right, either. He was once confronted by a lot of angry people because he accused some missionaries in China of doing a dishonourable thing which they did not do. Those missionaries had been in danger of their lives, and their friends went to bat for them, because the claims hurt them deeply. Twain was old, and didn't back down, but he was wrong that time. Twain wasn't a perfect individual, but he was clever, and brave, sometimes, and hard-working, always: we can learn from him.

One of things we need to learn is to ignore social trends when social trends lead us into unethical behaviour. Allowing people to substitute catchphrases and lists of 'acceptable speech' for serious thought about issues and real connections between people is unethical. It might be a good thing for us to go back and study Twain's work again. We might be able to divine a few strategies for doing our part as writers to combat the decline in our discourse.

And if you don't learn anything from him, at least you'll have a good laugh.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

26.03.18 Front Page

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