The time for his autobiography to be published, that is. Twain left instructions not to publish his autobiography until 100 years after his death, and the century is finally up; you can read all about it at Guy Adams’s story
in The Independent. Of course, most of the juicy stuff has been
skimmed by biographers and others who have had access to the material
over the years, but it will still be good to have the master’s
“extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography” available in full
(in several volumes—the whole thing runs to half a million words!).
Apparently it’s pretty bitter, but he certainly had a right to be after
what he’d seen of the world and of the direction his country was headed,
and I like my coffee black, unsweetened, and strong.Incidentally, the Mark
Twain Project Online is worth bookmarking; it “offers unfettered,
intuitive access to reliable texts, accurate and exhaustive notes, and
the most recently discovered letters and documents” and its “ultimate
purpose is to produce a digital critical edition, fully annotated, of
everything Mark Twain wrote.” Another fine use of the internet.
