Mark Twain unleashed

“…Whether anguishing over American military interventions abroad or delivering jabs at Wall Street tycoons, this Twain is strikingly contemporary. Though the autobiography also contains its share of homespun tales, some of its observations about American life are so acerbic — at one point Twain refers to American soldiers as “uniformed assassins” — that his heirs and editors, as well as the writer himself, feared they would damage his reputation if not withheld…” –From a review of the unexpurgated autobiography of Mark Twain. Here (NY Times).

Related: The unexpurgated new edition of the Autobiography selling very well indeed. In fact, to quote the article, it’s “flying off the shelves.” Here (NY Times)

A third grader’s marriage and divorce

I am Nujood, aged 10 and divorced.

If you only knew then what you know now

Life could be easier, much easier, if we only knew then what we know now (variable factor being the point in time). Anyway if only we could experience an epiphany before zero hour of our naivety, just before we blow the moment and want to seek refuge in a grocer’s freezer–or worse.

“…How was it that one moment you could look so good and the next you would give almost anything to crawl into your grocer’s freezer, settling beneath the pot pies until you reached that mysterious age at which a person could truly think for himself. It would be so peaceful, more drowsing than actual sleeping. Every so often you’d come to and notice that the styles had changed…You would look at the world as if through the window of a bus, hopping out at that moment of time you instinctively recognized as your own…You could look and act however you wanted…On leaving you’d pass a woman dressed  in a floor-length skirt…A beaded headband, delicate wire-rimmed glasses: shed ask you for a quarter, and you’d laugh, not cruelly, but politely, softly as if she were telling a joke you had already heard.”  This  excerpt is part of an autobiographical story by David Sedaris, The Change in Me (from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim). In other words, if you only knew then what you know now.