| In 2010, the National Book Foundation,
in conjunction with the Mark Twain House & Museum, will
present Rumors of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated...:
The Work and Life of Mark Twain. This national
series of public events, educational programs, and publications
will explore the work and life of Mark Twain, commemorating
the centennial of his death and the 175th anniversary of his
birth.
“All
American literature comes from that. There was nothing
before. There has been nothing as good since.”
|
- Ernest Hemingway
on
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
|
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri,
near the Mississippi River, a place reflected in much of his
writing, including his two most famous novels, The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
After working as a crewman on a Mississippi riverboat, Clemens
settled on the pen name, Mark Twain—the call made by a
riverboat’s sounder when checking for the river bottom.
Often considered the father of modern
American literature, Twain was the first to make extensive
use of the vernacular. He explored a wide variety of themes
intrinsic to American life, including racism, social pretension,
literary pretension, independence, humor, and societal and
religious subversion. Each of these themes runs through
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the novel which marks
the highpoint of his literary career. To quote Ernest Hemingway
on the book: “All American literature comes from that.
There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”
As Mark Twain’s body of work,
unmatched in its breadth, originality, and comprehension,
continues to be widely read throughout the country, it retains
its place among the shared experiences that define what it
means to be American.
|
