@Lola,
Quote:Agreed. Obviously, I have great admiration and affection for a man with this much talent.
After seeing you look me straight in the eyes, leaning forward intently with your delightful elbows on the table and wondering if you meant to cast a chink of light into the darker recesses of your psyche for my information--Lola dear--, a beguilement, I thought I would have a sniff around Mr Clemens to see what all the fuss has been about. I have never read other than short passages in his writings, which I found to be exceedingly banal, possibly because those whose task it was to nurture my literary talent said that it was
the signature tune of arrested development. Not that I took much notice of the silly sods mind you. It is probably a personal prejudice, incurable I'm afraid, against works of artistic merit which exclude cultured European ladies and their servants, intricately interwoven with some uncultured ones. And with a Jack of all trades getting himself intimately concerned with their doings and ending up dead. Like in Titanic.
I always felt the need to listen to those who offered a guide to how to stay alive long time. Like Bob said when he was asked what his role was.
As long as they are not medical practitioners I mean. They are like those motor mechanics who when they fix your car give it something else to cause you to need their expertise again fairly soon.
Suicides are off the radar.
And so much guidance is required for such a project that there is no time for anything not offering any useful ideas suitable for success. I see it as a part of the evolutionary chain that hasn't been properly identified yet. All the best writers make constant reference to their literary forbears. They are really quite snobbish about it.
Anyway--after a little sniff I found this--
Quote:When asked by a Brooklyn librarian about the situation, Twain replied:
I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' & 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, & it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.
Quote:
Those who disparage the Bible should think about that.
