
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3
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Narrated by:
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Grover Gardner
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By:
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Mark Twain
About this listen
The surprising final chapter of a great American life
When the first volume of Mark Twain's uncensored autobiography was published in 2010, it was hailed as an essential addition to the shelf of his works and a crucial document for our understanding of the great humorist's life and times. This third and final volume crowns and completes his life's work. Like its companion volumes, it chronicles Twain's inner and outer life through a series of daily dictations that go wherever his fancy leads.
Created from March 1907 to December 1909, these dictations present Mark Twain at the end of his life: receiving an honorary degree from Oxford University; railing against Theodore Roosevelt, founding numerous clubs; incredulous at an exhibition of the Holy Grail; credulous about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays; relaxing in Bermuda; observing (and investing in) new technologies. The autobiography's "Closing Words" movingly commemorate his daughter, Jean, who died on Christmas Eve 1909. Also included in this volume is the previously unpublished "Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript", Mark Twain's caustic indictment of his "putrescent pair" of secretaries and the havoc that erupted in his house during their residency.
Fitfully published in fragments at intervals throughout the 20th century, Autobiography of Mark Twain has now been critically reconstructed and made available as it was intended to be read. Fully annotated by the editors of the Mark Twain Project, the complete autobiography emerges as a landmark publication in American literature.
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If you are interested in the life of a very interesting and complex man
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first time listening
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Among other things to be gleaned from this volume are that Mark Twain really, really disliked Theodore Roosevelt; and that he really, really, REALLY disliked his former secretary Isabel Lyon. Roosevelt was exactly the kind of aggressive, macho poseur that Twain despised: a warmonger and big-game hunter who charged up hills with guns blazing, no matter what the cost - to others. Twain tells an hysterically funny story of TR tracking a great bear for three days, only to discover, when he finally caught up with it, that it was a cow. Is it true? It should be.
Isabel Lyon is a more complicated case. The real meat of this story comes not in the autobiography itself but in a three-hour-long "prosecutor's brief" that Twain wrote, in the last year of his life, apparently to get his own thoughts in order. It's included here as an appendix. I've read about this episode from several points of view. After years of service, Twain fired Lyon and sued her for misappropriated funds. Some writers have suggested that Twain's mind was poisoned by his daughter Clara, who was jealous of Lyon for some reason. But I have to say that Twain's reconstruction of dates and financial transactions over a period of years is impressively full and detailed, and every epithet he uses to describe Lyon - liar, thief, embezzler, drunk - is supported by mountains of specifics. He certainly convinced me.
The autobiography proper ends with Twain's heartbreaking essay about the death of his daughter Jean. Coming at the end of his recollections - at the end of this journey of hundreds of thousands of words - it seems even sadder, even more bereft, than it does in standalone form. It's as if the rest were silence.
The reading by Grover Gardner is, as always, clear and perfectly paced. Disclosure: I've corresponded with Mr Gardner on social media, much of it complimentary. But I don't think that affects my objectivity: I've been a fan of his readings of Mark Twain for many years. This entry is no exception. He's one of the best.
Worth waiting for
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How can anything done by Mark Twain
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The best of the three volumes.
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Wonderful Finish to Trilogy
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Complex content, compelling read!
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Still no mention of Nikola Tesla
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I love this man
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Sad to say goodbye to Mark Twain
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